"I'm...on to the Missa Brevissima," Walton quipped to a friend in 1965. "I doubt if there will be more than eight to ten minutes of it. Remembering the boredom I suffered as a dear little choirboy, I've made it a point of making it as brevissima as possible." In his characteristically self-effacing and irreverent tone, Walton's remark referred to his Missa Brevis ("Short Mass"), which had been commissioned by the Friends of the Coventry Cathedral to highlight the cathedral's new choir. (Ironically, because of illness among the choirboys, the intended premiere was canceled.) Walton scored the work for double choir and, in the Gloria, organ; true to his promise, the mass runs only about seven minutes. Except for the employment of the original liturgical text in the Kyrie ("Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison"), Walton sets English mass texts. Also, according to Anglican Church practice, the Gloria is placed after the Agnus Dei (thus the use of the organ, which renders the Gloria as a sort of finale).

Aside from the employment of the organ, the work relies on textural contrasts to articulate the divisions and moods of the mass text. The Kyrie opens with soprano duet that gradually expands to five parts, each entrance marked by the reiteration of the initial ascending figure (save the alto line, in which the figure is rendered upside-down). Though employing some of Walton's characteristic harmonic oddities, the polyphonic writing of the movement renders the tonality lucid, while the minimal demands of the short Kyrie text allow Walton to demonstrate his skillful part-writing. The ensuing Sanctus and Benedictus contrasts the polyphony of the Kyrie by employing a largely antiphonal sound. The women declaim the initial praise ("Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts") in harmonically rich homophony; the men respond at intervals with similar chordal declamation. The entire ensemble converges in forte eight-part harmony at "Hosanna in the highest." At the very end of the movement, Walton employs a curious effect: the first choir's final fortissimo "hosanna" is answered immediately by a hushed chordal echo in Choir 2. The Agnus Dei employs soprano and tenor soloists singing in a lyrical duet, their phrases alternated with chordal antiphony sung by the choir. There appears to be subtle symbolism in the metrical alternations Walton uses here: the soloists' phrase invokes the Lamb of God with the divine perfection of triple meter; the choir's responses, comprising the fallible mortal's plea for mercy, are rendered in duple-based rhythms. The Gloria is the final and most involved movement. In addition to the utilization of the organ, which presents itself here for the first time with a scalar flourish and a series of pungent major seconds, Walton uses a wide variety of vocal combinations to render the more prosaic liturgical text. The solidity of homophonic text delivery contrasts with the textural fluidity of polyphonic passages, in which Walton uses various kinds of voice pairings, imitative entries, and featured soloists.

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