Renaissance works by Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Thomas Weelkes, Thomas Tomkins, and Orlando Gibbons filled the first half of the concert. In this more familiar terrain, the 24 professional singers' effortless and polished style produced shining results. Well-known anthems such as Tallis' O nata lux (O born light of light) were rendered exactingly, the moving lines breaking through the chordal passages with bright resonance. In Byrd's motet Laudibus in sanctis (Celebrate the Lord), the singers were careful to observe how individual lines rose and fell in importance. Dynamics and tone ranged appropriately to match the word painting in Byrd's motet Ave verum corpus (Hail the true body), which began with a hushed entrance, reached a quiet and tender moment at "in cruce" (on the cross), and achieved utter languidness in "O dulcis, O pie" (O sweet, O merciful) and then aching tenderness with the tenors on "miserere mei" (have mercy upon me). ABS created all this with perfect pitch and a tight sense of ensemble.

As choir member Suzanne Elder Wallace explained in the informative preconcert lecture, these English composers lagged behind developments on the Continent. But somehow the tradition they shaped emerged from the influence both transformed and reimagined. Tallis incorporated dissonances and angular cross-relations into his uniquely pointed sound, which his pupil Byrd innovated upon even further. It was also a time of shifting religious allegiances, especially for Tallis, who witnessed the creation of the Church of England under Henry VIII, the papal restoration under Mary I, and the return to Protestantism under Elizabeth I. His works on the program straddle both pre- and post-Reformation styles, the latter of which called for "musical sobriety," the taming of polyphony, and the preferred use of English. Tallis was instrumental in creating the more chordal, Anglican style of choral music. Byrd, a staunch Catholic under Elizabeth's reign, wrote in a more cryptic and personal style that nonetheless broke new ground.

The "verse anthem," another reinterpretation of Continental styles, contrasted full choir with soloists and viols, played with great depth and feeling in the concert by a consort of five viols. Such works as This is the record of John used exaggerated declamation ("Art thou the prophet? And he answered: No.") and the musical humor of plain declamations ("I am not the Christ") paired with florid vocal lines, while Almighty and everlasting God employed straightforward word painting in "Stretch forth thy right hand." Throughout, ABS adopted the crisp upper-class English accent that's standard in today's performance practice, although it is interesting to note that musicologists debate whether accents in this period had the same class associations as they do now. (A concert in a cockney accent might sound a little jarring to our modern ears, even if it is more "historically accurate.")

The consort of viols — featuring John Dornenburg, Peter Hallifax, Julie Jeffrey, Steven Lehning, and Elisabeth Reed on instruments ranging in size from a violin to a cello — came in on This the record of John. Daniel Hutchings sang an even, clarion tenor solo, but ran into trouble being heard over the voicelike viols. The viols next provided a welcome break with an instrumental setting of In Nomine a 5, a mournful, droning interplay of viol lines that oozed delightful melancholy. For anyone unfamiliar with the sound that can be produced from these period instruments, they strike a thick, otherworldly tone that I can only describe as sounding like the aural equivalent of light filtered dimly through amber.

In Blessed are all they that fear the Lord by Gibbons, the choir graced the piece with crisp cutoffs, satisfying bass lines, and a clear sweetness from soprano soloist Ruth Escher. In all, the first half was a feast of early music, and the only thing missing was Henry Purcell, arguably the greatest of all English composers, although he lived much too late to be counted in this strictly Renaissance survey.

ABS came back for the second half, transformed into a choir with an entirely different sound to match the stolid, neoromantic music that was the hallmark of England's choral revival in the last half of the 19th century. The era followed what director Jeffrey Thomas called, in his notes, "a long period of decline." The program featured such composers as Charles Wood, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Edward Bairstow, Edward Elgar, Herbert Howells, and Charles Villiers Stanford (two of whom lived in England but were born in Ireland, still technically part of England when these pieces were published). Perhaps not surprisingly for a choir with such an affinity for the floridly emotion-laden works of the Baroque era, this is the music ABS was destined to sing.

The choral sound in Hail gladdening Light by Wood was of utter alignment and richness, with the solid uprightness and hymnlike devotion that is so characteristically English, even though the writing was also inspired by the antiphonic style of the 16th century Italian Renaissance composers.

But it was Vaughan Williams' Mass in G Minor that provided the highlight of the concert. Vaughan Williams' writing has an undulating quality that mirrors the rolling landscape of the English countryside. It also reached back to Tallis and Byrd for inspiration, as part of the early 20th century revival of Tudor church music, and employed the well-worn interplay between soloists and double-choir.

This mass is a masterpiece that transports the listener far from the everyday, to a green, pastoral land. The tenors and basses rise and fall, and sopranos and altos add to the rolling, quiet purity of the Kyrie. In the Gloria, the choir cast pealing sonorities up the octave. Soloist Edward Betts' clear, shining tenor stood out on the Kyrie and Gloria, while alto Katherine McKee sang with a lovely, pure sound that mixed early music and romantic singing styles, as befits Vaughan Williams' ode to tradition and the bucolic landscape. In the Credo and Sanctus, the choir soared with harmonies so tight, focused, and rich, and with overtones so ringing, that they pleasantly stung the ears.

English critic Neville Cardus once summed up Vaughan Williams with a description that could just as easily describe the English sound on display this evening:

"His music is an atmosphere. It does not woo the impressionable senses; it does satisfy all the moods of pleasure-loving and sinful man. The greatness of it comes from a certain order of our national way of living, independent, and natural as a growth out of the earth, refreshed by all the weathers and humours and dispositions of the reserved but romantic English."

The other major piece in the second half was Herbert Howells' Requiem, which was first written in the 1930s but not published until 1980, three years before his death. The work is striking in its difficult chromatic dissonances and suspensions, sometimes building up dense chordal textures in a section like "et lux perpetua" (and let light perpetual) that more straightforward word-painters might have rendered lightly. Tenor Kevin Gibbs and bass Raymond Martinez each gave clear and winning solos throughout. The piece built to an enormity of sound after the second "Requiem aeternam" section, which was only slightly marred by pitch problems that required director Jeffrey Thomas to stop the choir briefly in order to repitch.

Considering all this vocally fatty English fare, the rest of the second half seemed overstuffed with too much of the same, even if the pieces were interesting and worthy works. It's significant that the somewhat arbitrary timeframe of the concert stopped prior to World War II. Today's multicultural, urban, and hectic England is a far cry from the pastoral nation that these more recent composers longed for as the empire's sun set. Still, it lives on in the imagination, at least, perhaps to be reconfigured by the next wave of change in the English choral tradition.