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MUSIC REVIEW

Anonymous 4 puts a name to music’s mysterious joys

By Matthew Guerrieri

 |  Globe Correspondent  

  January 31, 2012

At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Sunday, the vocal quartet Anonymous 4 programmed a three-part motet from the 13th-century Montpellier Codex. The piece is odd. The lowest voice sings a snippet of sacred plainchant, slowed down to a glacial drone. The middle voice’s fancy turns to thoughts of more worldly devotion, pleading with a “dark-haired lady’’ for “your aid, your love, your comfort.’’ Meanwhile, the highest voice sings its own lament: “Love unfairly makes me suffer grief.’’

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