Codex Speciálník takes its programme from a Prague manuscript compiled around 1500, a songbook of sacred polyphony in two to four parts. The Hilliard Ensemble drew 25 pieces from it, most of them anonymous, alongside music by little-known composers and a few names from the wider European repertoire. The result is a rare recorded portrait of the music sung in Bohemia at the turn of the sixteenth century.
The four singers are countertenor David James, tenors Rogers Covey-Crump and John Potter, and baritone Gordon Jones. They recorded the programme in January 1993 in the Stadtkirche of Gönningen, with Peter Laenger as engineer and Manfred Eicher as executive producer. The music was edited by Jaromír Černý, who also wrote the liner notes, and the disc was released in May 1995.
The sequence opens with short anonymous pieces in an older style, such as the linked Exordium quadruplate, Nate dei, Concrepet and Verbum caro. The Christmas song In natali domini follows, sung in block chords. Several pieces are duets, among them Congaudemus pariter and Presidiorum erogatrix by Petrus de Grudencz, whose four pieces form a group at the centre of the disc. Later come Chorus iste by Johannes Touront, the Czech-texted Bud' buohu chvála cest by Gontrasek, and O virens virginum by Alexander Agricola. The anonymous Missa Petite Camusette is the one large-scale work here. Its Credo and Sanctus alternate with the motets Tota pulchra es by John Plummer and the anonymous Ave pura tu puella. The programme closes with the Ave Maria of Josquin Desprez.
Tyran Grillo, writing on Between Sound and Space in 2010, said that with this record the group "left one of their most lasting footprints". He praised the duets, the Grudencz pieces and the Kyrie and Gloria of the mass, and singled out Covey-Crump in Sophia nascitur and James in Magnum miraculum. Todd McComb's Early Music FAQ describes the order of the disc as a progression from an older style towards the music of Josquin's generation.
This is the CD edition, ECM New Series 1504, first released in 1995.
