Though less well known than his namesake Michael, Hieronymus Praetorius was part of a German musical dynasty, and as organist at Hamburg’s Jacobikirche he was one of the city’s most important cultural figures. So it is remarkable that his magnificent mass for Holy Week, the Missa Tulerunt Dominum meum, has until now remained unrecorded. Here, some four hundred years after it was first performed, Siglo de Oro present it as it might have been heard in seventeenth-century Hamburg, weaving in motets for Easter from some of Praetorius’s most gifted contemporaries. Bavarian Hans Leo Hassler, Netherlandish Orlande de Lassus, Venetian Andrea Gabrieli, and the itinerant Jacob Handl – each lends a motet to complement the unfolding liturgical journey, from the quiet solemnity of Maundy Thursday through to the exultant joy of Easter Day.

This is Siglo de Oro’s second recording for Delphian.