CHORAL & SONG CEREROLS. Missa pro defunctis. Missa de batalla. La Capella Reial Vocal and Instrumental Ensembles / Jordi Savall. Astrée Auvidis/ Pinnacle ® CD E8704 (69 minutes: DOD). Texts included.

Joan Cererols is hardly a household name. Born in 1618, he entered the choirschool at Monserrat as a child, and it was as a monk at the monastry there that he spent the rest of his life until his death some 62 years later. Trained as an organist and composer, he spent his last years in sole charge of the music at Monserrat; his contacts outside narrow monastic circles were few, and this in turn is reflected in the conservative character of his music. Both the large-scale mass compositions on this record are essentially cast in a polychoral dialogue texture, with the Missa pro defunct/s using two choirs and the Missa de bawl/a three, with some of the liturgical texts allocated to Gregorian chant. This style has a history among Spanish composers which stretches back to Victoria, but it would be hard to claim, at least on the evidence of these two pieces, that Cererols's music possesses that distinctive austerity that is the hallmark of the earlier composer.

Indeed, the most striking aspect of this record is not so much the music itself, which for much of the time is rather pedestrian, but rather the way in which it is performed. La Capella Reial are a recently-formed vocal and instrumental ensemble who take as their model the kind of royal chapels which are known to have been performing on the Iberian peninsular during the renaissance and baroque periods. Typically these consisted of some 20 to 30 singers and 15 to 20 instrumentalists, and at Monserrat itself there were on average 45 performers in the chapel during Cererols's lifetime. Jordi Savall has taken forces of this kind, and has used them to achieve a good deal of textural variety within individual movements. In the Missa pro defuncris, for example, the smaller choir are sometimes doubled with viols and sometimes a cornett and two sackbuts; the larger group with a quartet of vials or bassoons or with a combination of cornett and three bassoons. Whether such frequently changing 'orchestrations' are historically correct is hard to know, but the sounds themselves are of an extraordinary richness and power in comparison with the more familiar textures of a cappella choirs supported by continuo.

It is for the revelation of this kaleidoscopic sound world that I find myself returning to a record of music that although limited in its expressive resources nevertheless has a distinctly compelling quality. In general terms Savall's interpretational position is on the indulgent side, with much variation of tactus and generous expansions at cadences. Particularly in the opening movements of the Missa pro defunctis, the speeds are almost painfully slow, as if to invest the music with a magisterial solemnity. The attempt is not entirely successful, but despite these and other doubts, there is no question that anyone interested in the Spanish baroque should listen to the Capella Reial. IF.