"This is the second volume of Stile Antico's 'Golden Renaissance' trilogy of recordings, commemorating the 400th anniversary of William Byrd ... The programme here concentrates on his later work written between 1605 and 1611, except for the final work, which is from 1575, and artfully intersperses his Mass for Four Voices and the Propers for the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary with "sacred songs" in both English and Latin ... Stile Antico are few enough in number for us to be able to hear individual voices but I do not mean to imply by that that there is any lack of homogeneous blend. The wide leaps, sustained dissonances and long lines in Byrd's music hold no fears for them ... Much of this music was unfamiliar to me, but it is consistently beguiling; complex, melodic, absorbing, never dull or routine".