This is by far the most comprehensive anthology of music by Thomas Morley currently available on record, and for that reason alone it deserves to be welcomed back into the catalogue. No introduction to the Deller Consort is needed, but you may not have come across the name of the Morley Consort before. This is in fact a carefully selected group of first-class players who between them made up the characteristic combinations of English mixed (or 'broken') consorts: Simon Standage (violin), David Munrow (flute and recorder), Oliver Brookes (bass viol), James Tyler (lute and viol), Nigel North (cittern and viol) and Robert Spencer (bandora and lute). To be frank, they rather steal the show: the balance between these miscellaneous instruments is excellent, the sonorities are rich and thrilling, and there is some splendid division playing, especially by the lutenists. I'm not sorry that the group never went on to record the entire contents of the two publications from which this small selection is made, the 1599 Consort Lessons (collected by Morley) and the defective Lessons for Consort of 1609 (arranged by Philip Rosseter). As it is, there spirited performances serve only to punctuate the more substantial contribution of the Deller Consort, who not unnaturally claim most of the record for themselves—Morley did after all leave a large and varied assortment of vocal music but relatively few consort works.
Perhaps more modern attitudes towards this music have tainted my appreciation of the Deller Consort's approach to madrigal singing, but I do find their performances here somewhat ponderous, predictable and lacking in variety and local colour. The group adopts a more serious tone for the anthems and motets, but even here the interpretations sometimes jar, not least in the lovely closing bars of Agnus Dei, where a sudden sforzando attack seems incongruous and totally miscalculated. There is the added problem that several of these sacred works were conceived with a proper choir in mind rather than a consort of solo voices, and they do not sound their best in miniature. Buy this record, then, for the useful cross-section of music by Morley that it contains, and for the excellence of the playing rather than the style of quality of the vocal performances.'