Years ago when I studied music, Tudor Church music was thought to be totally dominated by Tallis and Byrd. Cds have shown how one-sided this view was. Groups like the Sixteen, the Tallis Scholars and the Cardinalls Musick have brought the music of such figures as Sheppard and Ludford to the light and shown that there were others writing equally superb music in that incredibly rich musical age. To this list must be added the music of William Mundy. His range is extraordinary, from the haunting melody of an anthem sung by solo voice accompanied by organ which is tenderly taken up by the choir at the end of each voice to the splendour of Vox patris caelestis, which at nearly 18 minutes runs Sheppard's famous Media vita a close second for length and elaboration.
Mundy had a wonderful sense of drama - the way this long anthem is built; a duet becomes a trio with the first entry of all the voices together thrillingly exciting to the final lone peroration in which two stratospheric treble parts (here womem's voices) circle each other above the other voices like two falcons in a thermal current. On this disc is also the wonderful Magnificat and Nunc dimittis for three spatially separated choirs and sometimes in eleven parts. This must have been written for some important occasion at the Chapel Royal.
When it comes to the performances, it is time to drag out those over-used but inescapable superlatives. The pitching is faultless, the phrasing a constant delight and the blend of voices wonderful. Above all the acoustic seems to me to be ideal; at once resonant as appropriate to music written for an echoing church but at the same time without obscuring the lines in Mundy's often dense textures. If this cd were at full-price, I would have pleasure in recommending it, but at under a fiver this is a deal that should not be missed