The Marian Consort - Vicente Lusitano: Motets - Apple Music

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.