SWEELINCK: PSAUMES DE DAVID M

Although it is for his keyboard music that Sweelinck is remembered today, it's a curious fact (pointed out by Richard Marlow in his insert-note to this release) that it was his vocal music—and virtually all of it at that—that made it into print during his lifetime. One of his most notable achievements was to set all of the Psalms in French (the favoured language of the amateur circles for which this music was probably intended), an exercise that occupied his entire creative life and found its monument in four volumes of superb psalm-settings, published between 1604 and 1621. This new recording offers 15 pieces from the third book, published in 1614, and gives notice of the variety and ingenuity to be found in Sweclinck's vocal output, encompassing as it does robust antiphony in Venetian style, elegantly fluid counterpoint, and imaginative manipulation of his original psalm melodies in a manner not a million miles removed from that of a Bach organ chorale. The most striking characterist