A new recording of funeral music from the Southern Netherlands with music from the first half of the 18th century: Pierre-Hercule Brehy and Joseph-Hector Fiocco, all of which are premiere recordings - Flemish Requiem.

The first decades of the 18th century do not seem to have been a period during which polyphonic music for funeral use flourished in the Southern Netherlands. The spirit of the Counter-Reformation that had given such important impetus to sacred music from the 1600s onwards had already passed its peak; although well-off parishioners increasingly ordered sumptuous burials with matching musical adornment during the first half of the 17th century, the same urban elite showed much less interest in music for funeral use after 1650.

The works on this CD illustrate how various musicians from the region, including Pierre-Hercule Brehy and Joseph-Hector Fiocco, still saw a future in composing polyphonic music for funeral use. A Requiem Mass and several motets pro defunctis by Pierre-Hercule Brehy, the master of singing at the church of St- Michel et Ste-Gudule in Brussels from 1705 to 1737, have survived.

A polyphonic setting of the Requiem by a certain Fiocco is to be found in the 18th-century collection of music housed in the Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal in Antwerp.