As did so many important English composers, Edmund Rubbra wrote a great deal of sacred choral music, and many feel that the Missa in honorem Sancti Dominici is among the best of it. Written in 1948 for a cappella chorus and otherwise known as the St. Dominic Mass, the work is a setting of the Latin Mass Ordinary, but Rubbra himself later made an English-text version. It is short and remarkably lean, but still summons up that rich Anglican choir sound that Rubbra was so adept at making irresistible.

The usual six Mass movements are all present in the Missa in honorem Sancti Dominici: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei. As its text demands, the Kyrie takes a three-part shape (Kyrie eleison I—Christe eleison—Kyrie eleison II). The opening is admirably "plain" and almost wholly homophonic, but in the Christe eleison portion, the tenors and altos exchange a warm melodic arc while the outer voices drone in open fifths.

The Gloria has many internal changes of tempo and key, moving from a Moderato beginning through a bright D flat major Allegro (at the text "Laudamus te") and a darker C sharp minor ("Domine Deus") and finally closing with a brilliant, fortissimo Amen in C major. Towards the end of the Credo, from about "Et iterum venturus est" on and then especially with "Et in Spiritum Sanctum," Rubbra writes energetic, shifting-meter music that makes a lively syncopated sound.

The Sanctus is the first of three adagio movements. The voices enter one at a time at the start, but then they all agree on a single purpose and share it until the end. A quiet opening grows into a robust fortissimo close in the Benedictus; but in the final Agnus Dei all is peaceful and quiet.

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