Even though the Tallis Scholars have been front-runners in exploring and successfully winning audiences over to seldom-heard Renaissance music, Friday night’s concert at Columbia University proved that even the most skilled practitioners of any style, however revered, sometimes miss the point.

That this was anything less than a well-prepared, skillfully executed recital is not in question. Nonetheless, the evening of often inspiring religious works by notable Renaissance composers (just two weeks before Christmas) made little emotional – let alone spiritual – impression. It was no surprise to see concertgoers flipping pages of program notes, stealthily scanning cell-phone messages, or just plain nodding off.

This surprising failure of energy can be ascribed to the bad luck of a first-class group not having a first-class night, but several discernible choices contributed to the dispiriting affect. Primarily, the rotunda of the university’s Low Library is not a good choice for unaccompanied voices, especially a posse as small as the Tallis Scholars (at most 10.)

The hall is comparatively narrow, high-domed, with reflecting surfaces of several kinds surrounding the singers and swallowing sound in empty space behind them. In the middle ranges, voices were clear if never commanding, and occasionally attractive. Though none of the singers sounded in poor voice, lower tones sounded murky, and higher pitches were harshened by distortion, even a distracting buzz.

The ability to blend layered and complicated vocal parts without sacrificing word articulation, a trait the Tallises are celebrated for, was also challenged by the venue. The singers, on a platform not tall enough to allow an audience squeezed into lengthy, hot, uncomfortable rows to easily see them, were placed in a curve 6 to 8 feet from the front of the stage. That distance, and their constant use of music stands, encouraged additional remoteness from the music. Finally, rather than stand a few steps below the lip of the stage, conductor Peter Philips led his singers on it, blocking nearly everyone else’s view.

These are not just technical quibbles: All night, words and music, which are never just heard, could not be read and shared through the singer’s eyes and mouths (which, in the event, showed a calmness unrelated to the Advent spirit evident in the works). Tones failed to swell into eloquence, harmonies were rarely thrilling; these pieces’ devotional and ecstatic character were often lost or (perhaps worse) overlooked. And when voices are unable to ring with any force, they must also fail to sound in listeners’ hearts.

Despite facing an audience evidently stuffed with fans, and many old enough to have at least a child’s familiarity with the Latin Service, the star number of the evening, Palestrina’s “Missa O Magnum Mysterium,” was a largely leaden enterprise, moving the audience not to enthusiasm and delight but polite applause that woke up the nearly dozen concertgoers in my vicinity who had nodded off mid-Mass. Palestrina needs all the fervor singers can bring to him, for behind the confident joinery, the fresh stream of his music, a revelatory energy isn’t always evident.

Things improved in the second half, partly because the pieces were shorter and, many of them, better. The standout was Cipirano De Rore’s “Calami sonum ferentes,” one of only two pagan treats in an otherwise Holy Roman program. The four Tallis gentlemen who sang it overcame acoustics, the sometimes-flagging momentum of their conductor (Mr. Phillips sometimes needs to be less of a scholar and more of a showman), and the other problems of the night. They delivered music full of body and meaning, which moved unerringly, sweetly.

Everyone did well with the two exquisite Orlando de Lassus entries, and with the Isaac “Regina Caeli Laetare.” There, for just four lines, the Tallises not only offered their professionalism and erudition but what Isaac wrote: a rousing hooray for the Queen of Heaven.

For this is really the central responsibility of such a group: to help contemporary, often post-religious listeners get an idea of what it was like for centuries when music was anchored in devotion and used to impart and broaden religious belief. No amount of scholarship can compensate for an absence of this quality. Yet other groups (Chanticleer, Anonymous 4, and any number of sumptuous local choirs of all denominations) consistently provide it alongside their expertise and virtuosity.

The private spiritual beliefs of all these singers are none of our business. But making us believe, if only momentarily, in the truth and majesty of music that energized and solaced generations is the most essential part of such singers’ vocation. The Tallises mostly failed at that Friday night.