If this is in any real sense a tapestry it must be because ancient and modern are interwoven. In most instances it is simply a matter of old words in relatively recent settings: Britten sets the Matins canticles, Howells those for Evensong and part of the Communion Service (though to Latin texts); W. H. Harris takes a prayer by Donne; Peter Aston brings his mediaeval text into the swinging sixties. Sometimes the twentieth-century composer shows his affinity with the Tudors, or (as with Howells) is quoted as affirming it; sometimes (in Orlando Gibbons's O clap your hands) the Tudor composer appears to share a modern taste for energetic rhythms or (in Tomkins's O sing unto the Lord) for syncopation. Generally it is perhaps not so much a tapestry as a panorama, though less than comprehensive as there is nothing to represent the cathedral tradition between (roughly) 1600 and 1900.
The performances vary from the admirable (Ah, see the fair chivalry come) to the merely acceptable or somewhat colourless (as in Byrd and Mundy). In many of the items one feels that efficiency is equated with success: imagination, excitement, tenderness are extracurricular, perhaps not entirely Anglican. Yet it is possible, without exceeding the bounds of good taste, to bring out in the opening of Britten's Te Deum an eager expectation (King's, Cambridge, did it under Ledger on EMI—nla), and I'm only sorry that there is no recording of Alleluya Psallat by a black choir, for they might show how it could be sung with audible, communicative enjoyment. But the real grumble concerning this record has to do with its presentation; the list of contents (printed twice) does not include the names of composers, and the sleeve-note fails to give basic information such as the identification and date of Howells's 'Worcester' Service. Admiring Thomas Tomkins's ''strikingly dissolant Alleluia'' we are sorry to read that he died penniless, but then we also learn that he lived from 1527 to 1656 and it seems likely that most of us would have fallen into the poverty trap over that time.'