BBC Singers - 10/01/2009

Peter Phillips conducts the BBC Singers in a concert giving a bird's-eye view of Flemish Renaissance composer Nicolas Gombert's choral music - including an elaborate mass setting, a motet describing the grief of King David for his dead son and another which is a lament for the most famous composer of the age, Josquin des Pres, who may have been Gombert's teacher. 'The Profound Musician' was one contemporary's description of Gombert, while another theorist wrote that 'he shows all musicians the path, nay more, the exact way to refinement'. From provincial and humble beginnings, he came to be choirmaster to the Hapsburg Emperor Charles V and travelled across Europe as a member of his court.