This setting, which not only nods towards the Gloria of Byrd’s five-part Mass by appropriating some of its imitative ‘points’, but also tests how far the wider principles underpinning Byrd’s mature polyphonic writing can survive transplantation into an expanded tonal and harmonic idiom. The music alternates seamlessly between 4/4 ‘common time’ and an irregular 7/8 time signature. The latter, less amenable to imitative counterpoint, therefore serves mostly to usher in contrasting moments of rhythmic and verbal unanimity.