This second volume of The Cardinall’s Musick’s Byrd edition is, if anything, more impressive than the first (ASV, 11/97). It may be a matter of programming, for the works recorded here seem to me of a higher overall calibre: even an obviously experimental piece such as O salutaris hostia (which the conservatively minded Byrd may have judged too esoteric for publication) could have been included on merit alone – yet this is (to my knowledge) its first airing. It is in the nature of complete surveys that they sometimes turn up items of lesser interest, yet they also allow one to hear pieces that might have difficulty in finding a home elsewhere: witness the responsory In exitu Israel, an intriguing collaborative effort by Byrd and his contemporaries, Mundy and Sheppard. Finally, one can judge for oneself the authenticity of works that modern scholarship has deemed doubtful (such as the opening Ave regina caelorum).
Most of the pieces here involve male altos on the top line, and in contradistinction to the first volume, the disc is all choral. The centrepiece is once again a collection of Propers from the Gradualia of 1607, this time for the Nativity. And as before, Skinner’s and Carwood’s decision to structure each volume around a set of Propers proves an astute piece of programming, integrating shorter items as it does (such as the various Alleluia settings) within a framework that allows them their own space. The singers are on very fine form indeed. It takes confidence to carry off O salutaris hostia, whose fierce false relations could so easily have sounded merely wilful. Only in the final, extended settings does the pace flag somewhat: the disc’s last moments (roughly from 8'20'' of Ad Dominum cum tribularer) are rather ponderous, as though the ensemble had gradually been weighted down by the tactus. That aside, this is a disc to delight Byrd-lovers everywhere.'