Best A Cappella

Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Officium Defunctorum is a significant Renaissance-era Spanish requiem mass. Composed around 1584, it showcases his masterful polyphonic style and innovative approach to liturgical music. The work features a complex and emotionally resonant choral texture, notable for its exp...

The motets BWV 225-230 are six choral works traditionally grouped under Johann Sebastian Bach's name, although the authenticity of BWV 230 has been questioned. The collection includes Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf, Jesu, meine Freude, Fürchte dich nicht, Komm...

Sergei Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil, Op. 37, is an unaccompanied choral setting of texts from the Russian Orthodox evening and morning services. Composed and premiered in 1915, its fifteen movements combine traditional chants with melodies created in a chant-like style. Written for mixed choir, th...

Ave Maria... virgo serena is a four-voice Latin motet by Josquin des Prez, probably composed during the late fifteenth century. Its text addresses the Virgin Mary through a sequence of salutations associated with her major feasts, followed by a personal prayer. The music moves between imitative entr...

Josquin des Prez's Missa Pange lingua is a four-voice setting of the Mass Ordinary based on the plainsong hymn Pange lingua gloriosi. Usually regarded as a late work, it draws melodic material from the hymn throughout the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei rather than quoting it only as a...

Tomás Luis de Victoria's Officium Defunctorum is a collection of music for the Catholic Office and Mass for the Dead, published in Madrid in 1605. It was associated with the funeral rites of the Dowager Empress Maria, whose chaplain Victoria had served, and it became his final published work. Most o...

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli is a six-voice setting of the Latin Mass Ordinary, published in his Second Book of Masses in 1567 and traditionally linked with Pope Marcellus II. The music alternates flowing counterpoint with chordal passages that clarify important words. It...

Thomas Tallis's Spem in alium is a Latin motet for forty independent voices, arranged as eight choirs of five parts each. Probably composed in the late sixteenth century, it sets a prayer adapted from the Book of Judith. The music passes material among separate choirs, builds large antiphonal exchan...

Johannes Ockeghem's Missa Prolationum is a Renaissance polyphonic setting of the Mass Ordinary, probably composed in the fifteenth century. Each principal movement is constructed from mensuration canons, in which pairs of voices derive different rhythmic realizations from the same written material....

Sicut cervus is a four-voice Latin motet by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, first published in the sixteenth century. Its text begins Psalm 42 in the Vulgate, comparing the soul's longing for God to a deer seeking flowing water. Written for unaccompanied choir, the piece uses balanced imitation, c...

William Byrd's Mass for Five Voices is an unaccompanied Latin setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, probably composed during the 1590s. It is one of Byrd's three surviving Mass settings, alongside works for three and four voices, and was created when public Catholic worship was prohibited in Elizabet...

O magnum mysterium is a four-voice Latin motet by the Spanish Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria, published in Rome in 1572. Its responsory text reflects on the mystery of animals witnessing the newborn Christ and includes an "Alleluia," making the work appropriate for the Christmas season....

Missa Papae Marcelli represents a pivotal moment in Renaissance sacred music. Composed by Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina around 1562, this choral work is notable for its exceptionally clear and balanced polyphony. It exemplifies the musical style favored by the composer, which influenced subsequent g...

Monteverdi's Eighth Book of Madrigals, 'Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi' (1638), introduced the stile concitato (agitated style) and contains the dramatic narrative 'Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.'

Carlo Gesualdo's Tenebrae Responsories are three sets of sacred vocal works published in 1611 for the services of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Written for six unaccompanied voices, they set responsory texts associated with Christ's Passion and burial. The music combines Renaissan...

William Byrd's Mass for Four Voices is an unaccompanied Latin setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, probably composed during the 1590s for private Catholic worship in Protestant England. It is scored for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass and is the most compactly voiced of Byrd's three surviving Mass se...

Musikalische Exequien is a German-language funeral composition by Heinrich Schutz, published in 1636 and written for the obsequies of Heinrich Posthumus Reuss. Its three parts combine biblical and chorale texts selected for the prince's coffin with writing for voices, continuo, and small vocal ensem...

Lux Aeterna is an unaccompanied choral work composed by György Ligeti in 1966 for a mixed choir divided into 16 independent vocal parts. It sets the Latin communion text from the Requiem Mass and uses micropolyphony, in which closely interwoven lines create slowly changing fields of sound rather tha...

The Penitential Psalms by Orlando di Lasso are Renaissance polyphonic settings of the seven psalms traditionally associated with repentance. Probably composed around 1560 for the court of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, they were initially preserved in an elaborately illustrated manuscript and were not...

The Mighty Boosh was a British television series developed by Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. It presented surreal comedy segments frequently incorporating diverse musical styles like electro and funk. The show is recognized for its use of short, a cappella “crimping” songs created and performed b...

Figure humaine is a secular cantata for unaccompanied double mixed chorus composed by Francis Poulenc in 1943 during the German occupation of France. Its eight movements set poems by Paul Éluard concerning suffering, resistance, human dignity, and freedom. The final movement sets Éluard's poem Liber...

Geistliche Chormusik is a collection of 29 German sacred motets by Heinrich Schütz, published in Dresden in 1648. Written mainly for five to seven vocal parts, the pieces demonstrate contrapuntal composition and careful treatment of German biblical and devotional texts. Schütz presented the collecti...

Guillaume Dufay's Missa L'homme armé is a Renaissance polyphonic setting of the Mass Ordinary, probably composed during the 15th century. It uses the secular melody "L'homme armé" as a cantus firmus, placing the borrowed tune within the work's contrapuntal structure. Dufay's composition belongs to a...

Ralph Vaughan Williams's Mass in G minor is an unaccompanied sacred choral work composed in the early 1920s for double choir and four vocal soloists. It sets the Latin Ordinary of the Mass in five principal movements and combines modal harmony and modern sonorities with textures influenced by Englis...

William Byrd's Cantiones Sacrae are two printed collections of Latin motets published in 1589 and 1591. Written chiefly for five or six unaccompanied voices, the works use imitative counterpoint, expressive text setting, and carefully controlled dissonance characteristic of Byrd's mature sacred styl...

Seven Last Words from the Cross is a sacred cantata composed by James MacMillan in 1993 for mixed chorus and string orchestra. Its seven movements set sayings attributed to Jesus during the Crucifixion, drawing on the Gospel narratives and incorporating additional liturgical text. Written for the BB...

Kanon Pokajanen is an extended unaccompanied choral work by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, completed in 1997. It sets the Orthodox Canon of Repentance in Church Slavonic and was written for the 750th anniversary of Cologne Cathedral. Organized around the traditional sequence of odes and prayers, the w...

Nesciens mater is a Latin motet by the French Renaissance composer Jean Mouton, setting a Marian text about the Virgin giving birth while remaining undefiled. It is written for eight voices as a canon between two four-voice choirs, with the following choir reproducing the first at a fixed interval a...

Requiem is an unaccompanied choral work by the English composer Herbert Howells, written in 1932 for mixed voices with divided sections. Rather than setting the complete Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, it combines selected Latin Requiem texts with English biblical passages drawn from Anglican wors...