Among Palestrina’s 375 or so motets, Exsultate Deo has always been a favourite. With its joyous tunefulness and vivid word-painting depicting musical instruments, it refutes the inaccurate myth of Palestrina as a cold, bloodless master of abstract polyphony, a myth due in part to the reverence surrounding him even in his lifetime and to the use of his music ever since as a model in the teaching of counterpoint, an unfortunate fate indeed for a composer whose music, at its best, leaps off the page and demands the excitement of performance.

from notes by Collegium Records © 2009