The ancient idea of music as "heightened speech" is nowhere better demonstrated than in the Catholic liturgy's chanted settings of the psalms: as a sober meditation on the Passion, the Tenebrae Consort here offer a full setting of Compline, the last evening office of the day. The singing of the gentle psalms is hypnotically pure, and there is a full half hour of single-line chant before Tallis's polyphony bursts on to the scene in two of his famous Lamentations. Though the settings are restrained, the effect is powerful, helped by John Sheppard's Compline respond, In manus tuas. A brave and unusual disc.