Time was when English vocal groups had a monopoly on this repertory. But just as the French composers of the 15th century took something from their English counterparts, this all-vocal ensemble is staking a claim to the performance of English music of the late Middle Ages. Diabolus in Musica is a new signing for Alpha Productions, and their previous form suggests a shrewd move on the part of this enterprising label. That form is maintained (at the very least) on this latest recording.

A few of these pieces (like the opening Servant regem, or the canonic Gloria) are undoubtedly linked to the English royal chapel and its satellite institutions. These two pieces provide the chronological boundaries of the period surveyed, encompassing the reigns of Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV. Some selections will be familiar from previous anthologies from the Gothic Voices and the Hilliard Ensemble (among others), but many are new to the catalogue. Just as important, the performances are of a very high standard: these singers are not afraid to sing out, adding more than a hint of vibrato at the peak of melodic lines. (By way of comparison, Ensemble Organum has not issued a recording of polyphony in a little while, but those familiar with its style will find something similar here, without some of the eccentricities peculiar to Marcel Pérès.) Although light ornamentation is an option, Diabolus in Musica’s take on performance is quite straight, though rhythmically rather more flexible than one finds with English groups. Following current scholarship, they sing one to a part, and their tempi usually strike the right balance between jauntiness, clarity and sensitivity to the acoustic. One reservation, however: in the jauntier pieces (Servant regem, for example), the sound recording betrays a hint of boom, as though at the threshold of distortion. Above all, what one might call the ‘English exception’ comes across all the more clearly for being delivered by recognisably foreign voices. (Listen, for example, to the hugely extended melisma that concludes O laudanda virginitas.) Paradoxically, this carries an authentic charge all its own: given the exchanges between warring courts (think of King John II of France, a captive in London for several years, with his own retinue and household), such crossover was a fact of life.