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Of Guerrero’s nineteen Masses only three are based on themes of secular origin, the present one being modelled on a few passages from Janequin’s popular chanson La guerre, sometimes known as La bataille de Marignan; the battle at Marignano was fought in 1515 and the chanson was printed in 1528. Guerrero’s Mass came out in his Missarum Liber Secundus, printed in Rome in 1582. Its odd title refers in Spanish to the battle, adding the French ‘escoutez’, the first word of Janequin’s chanson. At the end of the century, Victoria used this graphic battle-piece as material for his own Missa Pro Victoria, creating a very lively work. Guerrero’s setting is more circumspect, sober in contrast with Victoria’s and Janequin’s own, rather literal, ‘parody’ Mass. It seems that Guerrero had no intention to be spectacular in the manner of the original, nor in the way that battle Masses and organ ‘battles’ became riotously Baroque in the following centuries.

It is best for the listener to forget the origins of Guerrero’s themes and accept his masterly work for its intrinsic beauty and vigour. Written for five voices (SSATB), the Mass has subsections for trios at ‘Domine Deus, agnus Dei’ in the Gloria and for the Benedictus (SSA and SAB, respectively); in the Credo, ‘Crucifixus …’ is for a quartet (SSAT). The second Agnus Dei calls for eight voices, but not as a ‘call and answer’ double choir. Variety is also introduced by the use of that swinging triple time which the Spaniards called tiempo de proporción (sesquialtera) in the second Kyrie and in the Osanna sections after the Sanctus and Benedictus.

from notes by Bruno Turner © 1999