This is rather special. Not so much for the exceptional purity of intonation and balance that have always been characteristic of Gothic Voices though I think this may be the best-tuned record of Western music that I have heard. Nor for the excellent diction throughout, which gives added colour and vitality to this largely word-based music. Nor even for the beautifully manipulated 'theme', with which Christopher Page manages to integrate a group of mixed twelfth-century pieces and make them easily palatable for those without a specialized interest in medieval music.
No, the real point is that most of the record focuses on a single genre: the Conductus. This is a massive repertory of mainly homophonic Latin songs. It has hardly been heard on record so far partly because any but the most refined performance can make it seem like too much of the same thing. As in most surviving polyphony of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it can jog along endlessly in 6/8 rhythm, and the strict metre of the poems means that almost everything ends up in regular four-bar phrases. If the music was to be heard in the hard-edged rhythms you so often hear, it is difficult to see why anyone bothered to write so much music in this style. The true skill of these performances lies in the way the musicians bend, soften and vary the surface regularities of the music, drawing attention to the infinite range of sounds and ideas that lie within the pieces. And the main virtue of the record is the way it reveals this repertory in all its brilliant variety but does so by taking just a dozen pieces from a relatively short time-span.
So the record has an intensity and a clarity of purpose that seem to put it in a different class from the admittedly wonderful records that Gothic Voices have produced so far. And it is almost as an afterthought that I mention the note, a masterly piece in which Page explains the music so clearly that he forces you to relisten and rethink.
Are there no possible reservations? Well, there is a nasty moment near the end of the second stanza of Vetus abit littera. Some people may find the performances rather too delicate and insinuating for the major political statements contained in the texts. And, strictly speaking, one should take exception to a woman on the top line in polyphony of this kind. But I do think it is the best record I have ever reviewed.'