This programme focuses on the Missa pro defunctis by the composer Charles d’Argentil.

Recorded for the first time here, it is one of only a dozen musical settings of the liturgy of the dead written before 1550 to have survived to this day.

Little-known today, Charles d’Argentil, who worked in the prestigious Papal Chapel in Rome, was nevertheless a key figure in the French Renaissance, as well as in the establishment of musical settings of the Requiem for papal ceremonies.

His setting sits alongside the three Lamentations du samedi saint by Claudin de Sermisy, composer to the French royal chapel under François I, as well as Jehan Barra’s Salve Regina.

The Ensemble Gilles Binchois here sheds light on an all-too-often overlooked part of musical history, through the generation that directly followed Josquin des Prés.

The art of these three composers, who share a richly sonorous style, a good balance between imitation and homophonic declamation and formal clarity, bears witness to the high level of mastery attained by that productive and talented generation of French composers.