Of Roland de Lassus’s nearly eighty masses, only two were written for the Office of the Dead. Vox Luminis and Lionel Meunier bring them together on a single album, revealing two contrasting sides of the composer: a four-part setting deeply rooted in plainchant, and a five-part Requiem published towards the end of his life. 
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With Roland de Lassus: Requiem, released on Ricercar, Vox Luminis and Lionel Meunier bring together the Franco-Flemish composer’s only two known funeral masses. The first, in four parts, was published in Paris in 1577; the second, in five parts, appeared in Munich in 1589 in the final collection of masses published during Lassus’s lifetime.
One of the album’s particular points of interest lies in the approach taken to the four-part Requiem. Rather than relying solely on the Paris edition of 1577, Vox Luminis draws on a copy preserved in a choirbook from the former Benedictine Abbey of St Ulrich and St Afra in Augsburg, dated 1575. In this source, the work is transposed down a fifth for an all-male ensemble – tenor, baritone, bass and deep bass – and includes the complete Dies irae, omitted from the French edition. Plainchant and polyphony alternate throughout, with the addition of an extra verse, Ne me perdas sed regnare.
The five-part Requiem offers a very different balance, turning towards the light. Published in Munich by Adam Berg in 1589, it leaves behind this exceptionally low tessitura in favour of a cantus (high voice), an altus (middle voice), two tenors and a bass. This new disposition considerably broadens the upper range: the cantus and altus lighten the texture and bring a clarity, even a brightness, absent from the dark depth of the four-part Requiem. At several points, Lassus also reduces the scoring to two or three voices, creating moments of space within the fuller choral texture.
Founded in 2004 and directed by bass Lionel Meunier, Vox Luminis has established itself in the vocal repertoire of the sixteenth, seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Its work is distinguished by a particular attention to balance between the voices and to the clarity of polyphonic writing. In these two Requiems, that search for transparency comes fully into its own: the polyphony remains dense without ever becoming opaque, while the text running through it stays consistently intelligible.
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