Thomas Tallis, John Sheppard, Christopher Tye, The Hilliard Ensemble

Audivi vocem is a programme of English Renaissance polyphony by three composers of the Chapel Royal, Thomas Tallis, Christopher Tye and John Sheppard, sung by The Hilliard Ensemble. Its pieces were written while England swung between Catholic and Protestant rule, and the album shows how that upheaval shaped the way these composers set words to music. It also contains the first recording of movements from Tye's Missa sine nomine, reconstructed from incomplete part-books.

The singers are David James (countertenor), Rogers Covey-Crump and Steven Harrold (tenors), Gordon Jones (baritone) and, as guest bass, Robert Macdonald. They recorded the programme in March 2005 at the Propstei St. Gerold in Austria, with Peter Laenger as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. The scholar David Skinner prepared the scores, advised on the repertoire and wrote the booklet essay. For the Hilliards, Tallis is an old companion: they recorded his Lamentations of Jeremiah for the New Series in 1986, and his music returned in their work with Jan Garbarek on Mnemosyne.

The four movements of Tye's mass form the backbone of a composed recital, interleaved with responds, antiphons and psalm settings by all three men. Tallis appears with In ieiunio et fletu, Audivi vocem and Salvator mundi, Tye with Omnes gentes plaudite, one of the densest pieces on the disc, and In pace in idipsum. Sheppard's psalm settings Beati omnes and Laudate pueri, both over six minutes, are among the longest pieces, alongside his hymn Eterne Rex. Skinner's notes argue that the Reformation pushed composers towards new techniques of text setting, and the programme lets the listener hear that change from piece to piece. The singing is one voice to a part, and the recording brings the harmonies closer than on many earlier Hilliard albums.

Writing in International Record Review, Robert Levett praised "a shifting range of tone colours that never seems premeditated" and called the album "yet another magnificent release from a fine vocal outfit". Berta Joncus, on classical-music.com, was cooler: she found the ensemble flawless and the sound crystalline, but felt the performance "ultimately lacks sparkle".

CD edition, ECM New Series 1936, recorded in 2005 and released on 2 May 2008.