For 20 years, Gothic Voices and their director/scholar Christopher Page have been at the cutting edge of the research and performance of medieval music. Their recent CDs have been veering towards the Renaissance world of mass cycles, but here they return to 'The Earliest Songbook in England'. It consists of a few folded leaves of parchment, now in Cambridge University Library, probably copied in the late 1100s and later used as the binding for another book. Despite its rough treatment, its damaged state and the difficulty of deciphering its notation, it yields up a fascinating cross-section of the types of music enjoyed by educated singers in a significant medieval religious foundation. The majority of the pieces here are monophonic (single-line melodies) ranging in subject from celebratory Christmas and Easter pieces to the vacillations of a love-lorn student. As with the more famous Carmina Burana collection, sacred and secular rub shoulders throughout.

Apart from the earliest piece of English three-part harmony (Verbum patris umanator - whose clanging dissonances are here given a rather reverential performance) the rest of the collection is in two parts. Since the original notation does not give definitive rhythms, Gothic Voices' interpretation of exactly how the two parts fit each other is necessarily speculative. But their decisions feel right: sometimes they use a dance-like regularity, and at others a more improvisatory waywardness befitting the often florid melodic flourishes on a single syllable of text. This CD shows that English musicians were thoroughly up to date around 1200, fully aware of the different ways in which their French counterparts were adorning single-line melodies by the addition of extra parts.

Of course the compilers of the Cambridge manuscript never intended it to be performed straight through: it was an anthology to be dipped into for different occasions, whether for use in church services or for entertainment at social gatherings. Gothic Voices do their best to give the disc variety and structure by alternating monophony and polyphony, and by using a range of different voices. The clear ringing tones of Catherine King's mezzo brilliantly capture the ecstasy of the Easter piece Diastematica, while Charles Daniels' more gritty tenor is ideal for the cynical Licet eger, which broods on the greed of the church. Steven Harrold and Rogers Covey-Crump, whose effortless delicacy and phrasing in the high-tenor register show off the harmony with impeccable intonation, mostly take the two-part pieces. However there are some uncomfortable changes of pitch-centre between tracks and I would recommend focusing on one track at a time rather than treating this CD as a concert. Nevertheless, Gothic Voices and Hyperion deserve high praise for bringing this virtually unknown repertoire to life so convincingly.

John Bryan