Scene of countless coronations, royal weddings, state funerals and other national commemorations, Westminster Abbey stands not only as a monument to the durability of the British body politic, but also to the longstanding and relatively unbroken tradition of worship and music that has taken place on its site since the tenth century. Scandals continue to buffet church and state, yet the abbey’s music and worship, like the building itself, endure.

If this latest instalment in Hyperion’s excellent Westminster Abbey series is any indication, the abbey’s music is enjoying rude good health. James O’Donnell, who has been an intrepid explorer of choral music throughout his career, has brought together an exhilarating selection of twenty-first century works by three contrasting composers, many of which have had their first performance in the abbey. 

Jonathan Dove’s immediately appealing approach to text, voices and organ finds arresting expression in Vast Ocean of Light, an anthem from 2010 which hymns the “vast ocean of light, whose rays surround the universe,” and whose subject matter and quasi-minimalist style are not far removed the earlier anthem Seek...