'The Bohemian Palestrina'
Radio 3 had a very interesting programme about the Slovenian 16th-century composer Jacobus Handl. I'd never heard of him before (not that I know a lot about Renaissance music). Worth listening to, especially the last few motets, which have some very unusual passages (IMHO...). Google produces more information from a choir's website.
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There's a very agreeable, and quite widely available, CD which includes a good cross-section of Handl/Gallus's Latin music (none of it, I'd have thought, beyond the competence of any decent church choir):
http://www.musicabona.com/catalog/SU3716-2.html.en
This cross-section is coupled with a Mass by Krystof Harant, another late Renaissance Eastern European composer well worth getting to know. (Harant came to a sticky end: he was among the Bohemian nobles executed after the Battle of the White Mountain.) The disc's performances - from the 1960s - are perhaps a bit clumsy by Tallis Scholars standards, say; but I, for one, continue to relish them.
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