バードの評伝風の記事より引用↓
Byrd’s music from that time is “wonderfully intimate,” Dawes said. “Four singers can sing it one-to-a-part, and it can feel so much more powerful than a Mahler symphony.”

また同様に↓
As a composer Byrd was, in essence, a miniaturist, said Peter Phillips, the founder of the early music ensemble the Tallis Scholars — “a kind of jigsaw composer” who wrote “little snippets of music that fitted together mind-bogglingly well.”

↑に対する自分のコメント。
3声でも充分力強いと思います。
音楽は濃縮(?)というか圧縮(?)されているような感じがあったと記憶しています。 [参照]