This new recording including Byrd's four-voice Mass had me both excited and disappointed. Exciting is the concept behind the disc: the Mass is presented with motets and organ pieces appropriate to the feast of Corpus Christi. It is not intended as a strict liturgical reconstruction, but rather as an evocation of the kind of semi-secret domestic devotional setting in which the Mass and much of Byrd's other music would have been performed. This original context for the music led Paul Hillier, the Director of the US-based Theatre of Voices, to approach the performance of it as vocal chamber music with one singer to a part. This is not the first time that a Byrd Mass has been recorded in this way (I still have fond memories of an Etcetera recording by the Dutch group Quink from some years ago, 9/90), but it surely is a valid and potentially revelatory approach. I use the word 'potentially' advisedly, for while I agree wholeheartedly with what Hillier is trying to do, and while it is also good to have some of these Byrd pieces on disc for (as far as I am aware) the first time, the end result is musically a let-down.
The main problem, for me at least, is the combination of voices. No information about the group is provided in the notes, but the title would suggest that Hillier is trying to get away from the English choral tradition to something perhaps more rhetorical, perhaps more soloistic. In the latter he certainly succeeds, for the overall impression is of four soloists who for much of the time seem to go their own way—an effect heightened by close miking. Worst culprit is the American countertenor Drew Minter who does not, in my opinion, make a good ensemble singer. In the course of this recording he often sticks out like a sore thumb, giving undue prominence to his line and unbalancing the texture (take the cadence at the words ''Jesu Christe'' in the Gloria). Both he and soprano Judith Nelson have quite fast and prominent vibratos and I find that this is distracting and tends to muddy the texture and curdle the intonation.
Single voices should help with the flexibility of rhythm and expression of the text Hillier is aiming for, but there is precious little that comes over as really expressive: even such magical moments as the opening duet of the Agnus Dei and the ''Crucifixus'' are just ordinary here, and the ''Et resurrexit'' follows far too hard on the heels of ''sepultus est''. This results partly from the choice of tempo which makes the rising phrases on ''et ascendit'' very exciting but otherwise the singers seem to be making rather heavy weather of the music at this speed. The songs, with 'original' pronunciation, fare a little better than the Latin sacred music. If I were Hillier, I would think again about my team; there must be other singers in America.'