Since its rediscovery in manuscripts at Durham University by E H Fellowes and its subsequent publication in Tudor Church Music in 1922, Byrd’s The Great Service has come to be recognised not only as his most important Anglican work, but also as one of the great masterpieces of Elizabethan art. Fellowes himself did not hesitate to call it ‘the finest unaccompanied setting of the service in the entire repertory of English church music’ – an evaluation accepted in virtually all subsequent discussio...