Hyperion are to be doubly congratulated: first for having the faith to record a series of CDs of John Taverner's wonderful, but hardly mainstream, church music with Harry Christophers and The Sixteen, and second for re-issuing them on their budget label Helios. Taverner is something of a shadowy figure, difficult to pigeonhole. Born around 1490, he came to prominence during the last flowering of Catholic music before the Reformation under Edward VI. The composer may well have had Protestant leanings (he is reported to have repented of making 'songs to popish ditties in the time of his blindness', but his surviving music belongs firmly in the tradition established by late medieval English church composers. It is voluptuous in vocal texture and complex in its rhythmically interweaving part-writing. Listeners expecting a close connection between the music and the images in the texts it sets may be disappointed, but can revel instead in sweeping vocal lines that match the late Gothic buildings in which such pieces were meant to be sung.

The centrepiece here is Taverner's festal mass O Michael, which has not been otherwise available on CD until this re-issue. Its style suggests that it may be an early work, perhaps from 1519 when the Feast of St Michael fell on a Sunday and such a large-scale mass setting would have been appropriate. Written mostly in six parts, the mass exploits contrasts of vocal scoring, counterbalancing two high voices and a bass, or four men's parts, against the tutti. The Sixteen might have made more of this by giving more of the reduced sections to solo voices. Some of the small-scale sections are incredibly complex in their cross-rhythms: this music was composed for virtuoso singers and The Sixteen are every bit a match for it. Just occasionally, they push the tone and the soprano line has a tinge of harshness about it, and the tuning loses some of its purity. This is all the more noticeable as the performance is sung a minor third higher than Taverner's notated pitch, exaggerating the 'angelic' quality of the top line but sometimes encouraging the higher male voices to strain unduly.

English masses at this period did not usually set the Kyrie, which was normally sung to plainsong. On this CD, The Sixteen supply a separate Taverner Kyrie in four parts, sung with a gentle lilt as its rhythms sway from six-eight to three-four time, and also supply the plainsong Archangeli Michaelis on which O Michael is based. The disc concludes with a splendid performance of Easter piece Dum transisset Sabbatum in five parts. This is more modern-sounding, with more predictable harmonic movement, some imitation between the parts, and an expressive use of dissonance that looks forward to the more familiar style of Byrd. The Sixteen do it marvellously, with a sweep and sense of direction that are completely convincing.

John Bryan