Search - John Taverner, Harry Christophers, The Sixteen :: Taverner - Dum Transisset Sabbatum; Missa O Michael, Leroy Kyrie, Respond 'Archangeli Michaelis interventione (Hyperion)

This Mass, probably from the 1520s, is an example of the spectacular festal Masses English composers probably wrote early in Henry VIII's reign, before the break with Rome. One of the very few Masses of the period to have survived the Reformation, it's in typical Eton Choirbook style: big passages for full six-voice choir alternating with florid, rhythmically complex writing for reduced voices (including several instances where one or two of the voices divide). But don't expect the music to express the text at all--in this period, music was considered an adornment to worship in the way that dressing up a saint's statue was--in both instances, the more fabulous the better. The other two pieces are simpler in style; all are skillfully performed. --Matthew Westphal