Pierre de la Rue is one of the great Franco-Flemish Renaissance composers. His works were known throughout Europe during his lifetime and the reformer Martin Luther also had high regard for his compositions. It is therefore not surprising that works of Pierre de la Rue can also be found in Wittenberg at the Court Chapel of Luther's Protector, Frederick the Wise. This repertoire has been handed down to us in the so-called 'Jena Choir Books', used by the ensemble officium for its interpretation. Pierre de la Rue's Missa pro defunctis is one of the earliest polyphonic settings of the requiem and became the best-known work of this genre during the Renaissance. The impressively low range of parts of the Mass vividly represents the position of the sinner knocking at heaven's gate. Alongside this is la Rue's Missa de Beata Virgine, in which the missing Proprium parts of the Mass have been completed by Gregorian chant from a manuscript of St. Thomas's Church in Leipzig. The result is a Mass of St. Mary as it might have sounded in (then still Catholic) Wittenberg around 1500.