Words of the Angel is the debut recording of Trio Mediaeval, the Norwegian female vocal trio formed in Oslo in 1997. Its backbone is the fourteenth-century Messe de Tournai, which critics describe as the oldest surviving polyphonic Mass, with motets, English polyphony and Italian laude between its movements. A new piece by Ivan Moody gives the album its title and closes the arc.
The three singers are Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Torunn Østrem Ossum. They had studied intensively with the Hilliard Ensemble, and share that group's equal interest in early and new music. The recording was produced by Hilliard singer John Potter, who also wrote the booklet essay, with Peter Laenger as engineer and Manfred Eicher as executive producer. It was made in December 1999 in the Evangelische Kirche Peter und Paul at Gönningen, in south-west Germany.
The six movements of the Tournai Mass are spread across the programme as they would be in a celebration, though the trio stops short of reconstructing a full liturgy. Around them come monophonic laude from the Cortona manuscript, such as Ave donna santissima and Lauda novella, and English sacred polyphony from around 1300, including pieces from the Berkeley Castle fragment. In Salve mater misericordie the voices match so closely in the rondellus passages that it is hard to tell which is on top. Moody's Words of the Angel, a Resurrection motet written for the trio, comes after a lament of the Virgin and before the final Ite missa est.
The disc was an Editor's Choice in Gramophone and a Recording of the Month in Stereophile. In Gramophone, David Fallows noted that the singers' "intonation is also astonishingly pure". Michael Oliver in International Record Review called it "an exceptional coupling finely and atmospherically recorded", adding that even listeners resistant to early music should try it. German critics compared the trio with Anonymous 4 and heard a more angular, characterful sound. It was also the trio's first recording for ECM.
This is the CD edition, ECM New Series 1753, first released in October 2001, with a booklet of texts and notes.
