This work has a strangely wide range of moods within itself, from quiet, almost whispering melancholy to the kind of high exuberance some treasure more than anything else in Byrd's music. These wide ranging differences aren't traced along a predictable continuum from one to the other. Rather, in a way reminiscent of madrigals, they're juxtaposed with a startling immediateness. The first section is quiet, delicate, but strong in feeling, the second vacillates between an even quieter state and one far more excited, while the third part becomes exuberant at points and turns dark and intense, almost overwhelming, near the conclusion.

The homophonic passages for the entire choir in the third section, already slightly unusual in Byrd who, like Palestrina, prefers a polyphonic density to homophony, are fairly abundant, surprisingly long, anthemic in their power. At several points, like at "Domine Miserere," the cadence is so strong and definite that the piece seems to have ended. But it goes on anyways, as if driven, invisibly, by the dare-we-say lusty vigor that is constantly smoldering within Byrd's music.

© Donato Mancini, All Music Guide