Randall Thompson (1899-1984) was an all-round American composer and academic but his orchestral music has vanished on CD, leaving his choral music to which this new release of unaccompanied choral works adds impressively. His idiom is so close to Tudor models that there’s little scope for individuality: the triad reigns radiantly – or at times blandly – supreme.

Thompson’s setting of Whitman’s The Last Invocation dates from 1922 when he was a student at Harvard, where he finally taught, but he shows a consistent approach right up to his setting of Walter de la Mare’s Fare Well more than 50 years later. The Peaceable Kingdom is based on a painting by the American primitive painter Edward Hicks (1780-1849) showing a child safely enjoying the company of wild animals. Thompson then chose passages from the book of Isaiah to elaborate the theme of peaceful coexistence. All the textures are precisely gauged in terms of diatonic harmony, easy on the ear and easy to sing. The spacious ending even has elements of Tallis’s 40-part motet.

The ever-popular but subdued Alleluia (1940) was the best-selling choral piece in the US in 1968 and it now resonates with a type of sacred minimalism. The half-hour Mass of the Holy Spirit is more elaborate, with impressive moments like the soft start of the Sanctus, although it’s often hard to tell in which century the music was written. The Schola Cantorum under James Burton radiates in performances that could not be bettered.