Vicente Lusitano: Motets

Vicente Lusitano’s earliest biographer, writing two centuries after his death around 1561, omitted to mention that the composer’s mother was most likely a Black African enslaved by Portuguese colonialists. Choral ensemble The Marian Consort and its unflappable director, Rory McCleery, dive deep into the sacred motets of Lusitano’s Liber primus epigramatum, the first-ever publication of works by a Black composer. Their choice of 10 pieces reveals the striking breadth of invention, subtle textures and harmonies, and sheer beauty of his music, with each of those qualities present in full measure in the sublime Emendemus in melius (Track 7) and Sancta mater, istud agas (Track 9). There’s room, too, for the meandering melodies of Heu me, Domine (Track 6), with its startling chromatic lines, and Inviolata, integra et casta es (Track 10) for eight voices, a consummate magnum opus of Renaissance polyphony.