The music of Spain’s Golden Age has always been near to Harry Christophers’s heart, a commitment that shines through in this new recording. The careers of Francisco Guerrero and Alonso Lobo were closely intertwined, the younger Lobo serving as Guerrero’s assistant at Seville before returning there some years after the latter’s death. Mass movements and motets by both composers are interspersed on this disc, whose predominantly sunny tone is tempered only by a couple of selections of funeral music, including Lobo’s famous Versa est in luctum, which is very well managed, restrained but without a sentimentality that would jar with the rest of the collection. The way Lobo’s Kyrie and Guerrero’s Agnus Dei bookend each other perfectly though they are taken from different Masses says much for the homogeneity and coherence of the programming.

That The Sixteen’s current run of form stretches back a few years is attested by the Credo of Guerrero’s Missa de la batalla, recorded back in 2009, which doesn’t sound markedly different from the rest of the disc, recorded last November. Most of the music is written for at least six voices (usually more), a richness of texture to which The Sixteen respond admirably: the textures remain lucid and legible throughout. The only conspicuous ‘wrong note’ occurs right at the start, in the opening motet, Guerrero’s setting of Duo Seraphim, whose introductory duo is uncertain both in tone and intonation. It’s a slightly odd piece, too, seeming to end almost in mid-phrase before a perfunctory ‘Amen’. Apart from this uncharacteristic miscalculation, a very fine disc.