New sacred choral setting - is it broken? I can't tell

Any time you can spare is probably more than I deserve, but that's a reassuring first impression!

Quirky Dave, especially the rhythm. I thought it actually worked quite nicely on recorders and would probably sound nice on a harmonium too - lovely with a choir though.

Tim's suggestion is a valid one of course re the time sigs but I personally would bar it differently in places because the crotchet beat is slow enough to be broken into the odd quaver beat. So at b19 for example, I would have a 3/4 followed by a 3/8 and at b20, a 2/4 followed by a 3/8. Continuing on, Tim's suggestion seems best although at b28 perhaps 4/4 again for the conducting pattern. B 9-10 should definitely be 3 bars of 4/4, as opposed to 2 bars of 6/4 and  b31 could be a 3/4.

I'd also do as Tim suggests on the final chord for the tenor.

Dave,
I've never sung in a liturgical choir, but any choir I've sung in uses key signatures. Personally, the instrumentalist in me is less confused that way. Many singers also play an instrument to some extent.

Nice work. Seems to fit the style you are going after. Definitely not nonsense. I'm not wild about constant meter changes, but I suspect that's just me.

I would like to hear this with choir sample. As it is, I think the alto or soprano in in the wrong octave.

Hey Dave,

Some comments on the notation (sorry, not trying to pile on, just been spending a lot of time with Elaine Gould's book and trying to get it right myself):

1) I think this is really a piece in Eb Major and should have the key signature. Because this piece is very tonal, it will actually make it easier for singers to sightread (flagging the few A-naturals when they appear vs. highlighting accidentals on every note)
2) When multiple notes are sung with a single, same syllable, the notes have to be slurred. Not having slurs is unclear and suggests re-articulating the syllable with each note (e.g., "col - um - um - um - bam - bam - bam -bam")
3) I find the changing time signatures hard to see well because they are actually less bold than your staff lines (when it should be the opposite).
4) There's a lot of odd bar spacing that will throw many singers off the rhythm (for example, in measure 4, the half note is way too squished for its sounding length; in measure 6, the weird spacing of the eighth notes in the tenor line doesn't reflect the rhythm visually; etc)
5) "Dei" is two syllables in Latin, so needs to be split to be clear what is "De" vs "i"
6) "Solo" should not be italics and doesn't need a period (full stop). You should use "Tutti" instead of "unis." ("unis" in a choral setting is for clarification after a divisi (not after a solo))
7) "rall." should be bold, not italics and a larger font
8) You have solos becoming tuttis in the middle of a word. I assume that's intentional, but it's an uncommon enough technique (in an otherwise straightforward piece) that you might want to create separate staves for the solo parts to make it clear that it's not a typo.
9) I would double-check all of your lines for typos. Just as an example, bar 2/bass, the "-sus" I think it supposed to be in bar 3 with the rest of the chorus? Bar 9/soprano, are the 2nd/3rd Bb's supposed to be tied? Similarly in bar 15?

OH GOD
Thy will be done.
Hmm. This clashes with most of my research and advice. I think I still need to repair it, but this is what the fixer alto for my choral session said when I asked her afterwards:

"There are a few examples where you should use slurs or just extend the note value . . . As for melismas, I believe that the continuous line should be used like this when it is a one-syllable word or the final syllable of a word . . . The dotted line should be used when a melisma happens on a syllable that is not the final syllable of a word."

So for her, slurs were for consecutive same notes on the same syllable, something I try to never do. More on that below! About half of the time, slurs are used interchangeably with long lines in choral scores. I haven't followed her advice because I forgot about it until today In this example, I got it right in the top staff but not in the bottom (T & B, b6)
Fixed, good call.
Also good call, I'll do some shuffling.
Whoops, I'll get on that.
I'll check again, but this mostly clashes with my own research and experience of direction formatting in scores. Tutti seems right.
I might just change them, if it's unusual, I think the tutti entry points were a bit arbitrary.
Lifesaver. B2/bass is correct but your other examples are clangers on my part. I don't like lines that repeat notes on the same syllable, and judging by how seldom I see them in classic works there's a good reason. B9 Bbs is where a slur would apparently go, but I've now extended the note to avoid confusion. Singing "li - i -" would work, but "li - li" wouldn't.
I'll definitely trawl and fix for big jumps. Red face.
This was the big one. Why have I resisted 5th and 8va restrictions so long? I had this idea they were born of stuffy formalisation and were followed at least in part as a principle to demonstrate craft but nope, there's excellent reasons, certainly for this kind of music. I tried some fixes for your spots and it sounded better, and there's definitely more - b34 is quite egregious.
These last two posts did send me into the shame hole for a few hours, but that's because I want to be the best and I still f*** things up. Tough critique is only fully disdained by morons, it's why Ning became so frustrating. That said, after revisiting I still like my voicing of the final chord so I reserve the right to be 20% moron. A good compromise is root, 3rd, root 8ve, 5th, a voicing Tallis uses a lot. Probably everyone used it a lot.

Seriously, thank you all.

Don't be too hard on yourself Dave, it's remarkable and encouraging that you can do what you do.
16thC vocal technique is a complicated study and takes a few years to get to grips with and needs a base knowledge of rudimentary notation and harmony. It starts with simple so called species counterpoint and progresses to complicated imitative work, I know, I went through it. You're right, the restrictions, although seemingly stuffy and limiting, are there because they are predicated upon good practice, proven in the workplace so to speak. (0ne thinks of Mahler here.."tradition is not the worship of ashes, it is the preservation of fire".)

You are at a stage whereby you do need to know some technique though, but imv you do not need to know it to degree level as this would just stymie your instincts, perhaps resulting in more pastiche and less Dexter. The music we both love from the Renaissance is often very technically wrought and controlled and there is a serene, inevitable beauty because of this. Beauty can obviously be achieved without such know-how and for your immediate and practical purposes I'd suggest studying choral spacing, harmonic doubling and developing a sense of a good singable line.

There's clearly more, a lot more to 16thC technique and choral writing in general, things like imitation, melodic inversion and canon still play a major role as technique in choral music today because they are idiomatic and actually developed from singing. If you can also incorporate some of the spirit of these techniques into your writing, your work will be even more effective. You've fallen in love with a music that requires taut control but there is no reason why the spirit of that music can't be re-created in a different way.