The composer bears a venerable name. I don’t know whether Christopher Fox (b1955) is descended from either the Quaker founder or the Georgian-era Foreign Secretary but, blood-relation or not, his intellectual and spiritual affinity with 17th- and 18th-century Radicalism is evident.

The Puritan vision of Sion sounds a dour place, so that, while I admire Fox’s artistic intentions and respect his technical ability, I found it hard to make any emotional or aesthetic engagement. Open the Gate, a setting of a 16th-century manuscript of O clavis David in which the Israelite King is appealed to as a gatekeeper with the power to admit sinners to salvation, inhabits the mainstream of English choral tradition, with the kind of fundamentally consonant but nonetheless sour harmonies common in post-Great War compositions. Sion’s Glory itself is an ambitious attempt to evoke a debate between views current during the Civil War/Revolutionary period. Rendered Account uses a text by Ian Duhig and achieves clarity through writing that is more declamatory than songlike.

We’re in a different sound world with the earlier works: The Missoury Harmony, for solo organ, suggests what might have resulted if Messiaen had been drawn to Minimalism, although I think the Shaker music it evokes, creating ‘an inspired heterophony around the original melody’, as Fox explains, was a more joyful affair. American Choruses, part of Fox’s DPhil submission, pays homage to Charles Ives, Christian Wolff, John Cage and Terry Riley. I found these works warmer and more accommodating, with the Riley-influenced ‘Transcription’ rather magical.