Like the goddess Athena who emerged fully formed from her father’s head, Josquin des Prez (ca. 1450–1521) burst onto the scene in the 1480s with music of unreasonable perfection. This program homes in on that crucial decade, spent partly in Milan down the street from Leonardo da Vinci. The centerpiece is a breathtaking cycle of motets (Vultum tuum deprecabuntur) that showcases Josquin’s intimate-but-also-showy, simple-but-also-complex, idiomatic-but-also-startling writing. Bookending the program is a pair of five-voice pieces that gives a taste for the heights Josquin reached in the years after 1500.

Led by Stanford professor Jesse Rodin, Cut Circle specializes in music of the “long fifteenth century”—Guillaume Du Fay, Johannes Okeghem, Josquin des Prez, and their contemporaries. The ensemble is the recipient of the Noah Greenberg Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to historical performing practices (American Musicological Society); the Prix Olivier Messiaen (France); Editor’s Choice (Gramophone, UK); and a Diapason d’Or (France). Cut Circle marries cutting-edge research with deep knowledge of and commitment to the music’s twists and turns.

Sonja DuToit Tengblad, superius; Lawrence Jones, altus; Jonas Budris, altus/tenor; Bradford Gleim, tenor; Rupert Peacock, bassus; Jesse Rodin, director