Until recently, all most people knew about Ghiselin Danckerts was that he was a singer in the Papal chapel and was thrown out because ‘he had no voice, was very rich and too fond of women’. There was also a treatise and a tiny quantity of music. But his own report was that he had composed lots of music, which was puzzling because he sang there for 30 years and there is not a trace of his work among the fairly comprehensive choirbooks. Then, 10 years ago, the Italian musicologist Arnoldo Morelli published an article about a previously unknown choirbook in Rome which he argued could conceivably be an autograph of music by Danckerts. The present CD (a reissue of an Amadeus disc published in 2015) contains a Mass ordinary cycle and four Mass proper movements from that manuscript.

Cantar Lontano field 11 male singers, which is roughly what you would expect to hear from the Papal chapel; and they include some of the most famous early music singers in Italy. But the sound is uneven, perhaps because the recording was done in two different churches. Some movements (in particular the Sanctus and Agnus) sound lovely, while others (particularly the Mass proper movements where for some reason they double the bass cantus firmus an octave lower) sound thoroughly confused. There are also issues of pitch and vibrato. But the music is very odd indeed, as the conductor’s booklet note points out; so this is something for those in search of the curious.