Wolsey would have rejoiced to hear these two great Easter Masses sung, as he may well have done, in his own College of Christ Church, which he had founded with such magnificence. After his fall from favour, one of his biographers recalls that he went to spend Holy Week at Peterborough, carrying his palm with great devotion in the Palm Sunday procession. His piety and sophistication would have revelled in the spaciousness of these two Masses, their spirit of unhurried contemplation. But he would have been amazed had he known that 470 years on they were both being sung again, in the same church, by a similar combination of young voices. Stephen Darlington has done us all a great service by bringing them back to life: their individual flavour fills a gap in the vocal repertoire of a period up to now mainly represented by Taverner, Cornysh and Ludford. Before each Mass the choirmen prepare the listener’s ear by singing the Sarum plainsong upon which it is built – in the case of Thomas Ashwell, the well-known Short Responsory from Eastertide Prime. Darlington lets the polyphony speak for itself. He adopts a very gentle tactus – a slow heart-beat – and underplays the dynamics, relying chiefly on the composer’s different combinations of voices for variety and contrast. The trebles in the gymel sections (where one voice part divides into two) are true professionals, and if ‘young Robin’ in Wolsey’s day was anything like as good as the soloist at the ‘In nomine’ of the ‘Benedictus’, one can understand how he came to be so unfairly poached by the Chapel Royal!
Hugh Aston’s Mass Videte manus meas, based on an Easter Magnificat antiphon, is characterized by its sense of line, with fully developed melismata. The Sanctus is striking, with alternating trios and quartets and a strong homophonic ‘Hosanna’. The opening of the Agnus Dei is powerful in its simplicity – an upward-striding scale. Darlington’s straightforward approach brings all this easily into focus, my one criticism being that better balance could have been achieved by strengthening the entries of one or two rather quieter inner voices.'