Taking a little break from talking about composition and musicology: here's some thoughts about a new album I was listening to this past week!
Before we begin: I love that the title rhymes. Now on to the blog post proper.
I only found out Pullois existed last week, when Passacaille Records announced this album release. Honestly, half the reason I got this album was mainly because I was curious to see what this unfamiliar composer was all about (what was his life like? What's his corpus of works like, and are his chansons fun?), and also because the album cover design got to me (They designed a whole new appearance for Pullois!). As it turns out, this album has a lot of first-time recordings of Pullois's work, so I don't think I was alone in being unfamiliar with most of them. But at the very least, his La bonté du Saint Esprit and Flos spina have been recorded before.
A bit about his life: Pullois was probably a well-connected individual, with the album liner notes making a point of his seventeen benefices (and two additional ones he procured for Ockeghem) and his 20+ years in the papal chapel. The latter point isn't unheard of, especially considering that being in the papal chapel is usually how composers got more eyes on their works, but I found the first bit very amusing.
About the music: as with most other composers, I found his chansons to be most enjoyable: So lanc so meer/So lang si mire's1 attribution to Pullois may be contested, but I enjoyed Solazzo Ensemble's rendition of it very much. On the sacred side of things, I liked Flos de spina, though I wish the ensemble had also done Missa sine nomine, especially from from how it was mentioned to be one of the earlier cyclic masses on the continent.