This Requiem is known in five sources: two of them mention no composer, two attribute it to Antoine de Févin, and one (the Occo Codex), to Antoine Divitis. It is recorded here in the version transmitted by an early sixteenth-century manuscript, the Occo Codex, a sumptuous, richly illuminated volume. The book was originally intended for use in worship at one of the oldest churches in Amsterdam, built in the fourteenth century on the site of a miracle which played a fundamental role in constituting the religious identity of Amsterdam. Occo was the name of the rich merchant who financed the production of the manuscript. It contains some fifteen masses by great composers of the fifteenth century.

Composed at the very end of the fifteenth century, shortly after Iohannes Ockeghem’s setting, this Requiem presents a perfect synthesis of the plainchant tradition and the supreme technical skills of the Franco-Flemish polyphonists who diffused their art throughout western Europe. It was discovered at the end of the twentieth century and has not yet received the full measure of attention it deserves. It is a luminous work. The plainchant melodies, constantly present, sculpted by the living flesh of the polyphonic texture, blaze, shine and reveal the inner energy that, cutting through the centuries, fashions the deployment of time.