A throw of the dice will never abolish chance, wrote the French poet Mallarmé, showing the way for Boulez and Cage. Jumping back to the 1480s, Josquin played his own game of dice in his early Missa Di dadi (Dice Mass). The tenor part is marked, at the start of each movement, with a pair of dice that add up to different amounts. You need Peter Phillips’s excellent liner note to comprehend the mechanics, not easily audible but intriguing to know about, from a time when dice were associated with the devil. It is paired with another early mass, Une mousse de Biscaye. As ever this revered group, in the latest in their all-Josquin series, spins and weaves the long vocal lines faultlessly.
