Robert Parsons: Ave Maria
Thomas Tallis: If ye love me
Thomas Tallis: Magnificat and Nunc dimittis octavi toni
Orlando Gibbons: See, see, the word is incarnate
William Byrd: Sing joyfully
Orlando Gibbons: Behold, I bring you glad tidings
Orlando Gibbons: Almighty and everlasting God
Orlando Gibbons: Behold, thou hast made my days
Thomas Tomkins: Praise the Lord, O my soul
William Byrd: Ave verum corpus
William Byrd: Iustorum animae
Orlando Gibbons: We praise thee, O Father
Thomas Tomkins: O God, the proud are risen against me
Orlando Gibbons: Almighty God, who by thy Son
Thomas Tomkins: When David heard that Absalom was slain
William Byrd: Peccantem me quotidie

I must have been asleep at the wheel back in 2017 when Volume 1 of 'Threads of Gold - Music from the Golden Age' was released as it seems to have flown under my radar. Nonetheless, another fine recording by the Choir of York Minster from 2015 titled St Peter's Day at York Minster did manage to catch my attention since I closed that review by saying: "If you like to hear choral music performed in its native environment and to submerge you in glorious sound, this will do it." Mind you, the focus of that release was on more opulent 19th and 20th century works whilst the recording at hand is fully concentrated on music from the Renaissance, but nevertheless this choir, whose roots seem to go all the way back to AD 627, sounds proficient in whatever they perform.

Under the direction of Robert Sharpe, they tackle the highly contrapuntal lines of William Byrd's Sing joyfully with equanimity and resolve. They also very well capture and project the same composer's simple and yet profound veneration within his richly harmonic Ave verum corpus. All in all throughout the disc their blend is immaculate. When you consider that they consist of more than 30 boy and girl choristers, 5 altos, 4 tenors and 4 basses, they generate a clarity and balance of voices that is quite impressive. It's also common for choirs this size to drift from pitch when singing a cappella works longer than three minutes, but that is not an issue here as all voices steer the course from start to final, beautiful, harmonic resolution. Relive the Golden Age!