Tallis is one of those composers of whom one never tires: fresh discoveries are made at each new listening. The fourth volume of the complete works is no exception. Together with its future companion, Volume 5, it presents settings of texts from the Divine Office: here we have five Vespers responsories, those for Christmas, Purification, Easter and Pentecost, the well-known Compline In pace, five Office hymns and an early setting of the Magnificat, based on the traditional Mode I (Dorian) faburden tenor.
The liturgical chant throughout plays a large and integral part. The problem is therefore to match up the excellence of each section of the performance, not only the polyphony. Chapelle du Roi, new to the field, had a unique opportunity to put into practice what has been discovered most recently about how the chant was performed in the time of Tallis. Had they thought more carefully about this they could have achieved a much better balance between the alternating sections. Disappointingly, the long sections of chant in the responsories tend to sound hurried and apologetic, with little sense of line or direction. The hymns are rather more successful in this respect, because there is some attempt at convergence of tempo between sections. But why not introduce an occasional metrical interpretation, as suggested by Nick Sandon in his excellent note, and indeed by Tallis's own polyphony? And why avoid the flattened seventh in Quod chorus vatum, since it features so unmistakably in all the polyphonic strophes?'