William Byrd and Thomas Tallis are prominent names in English Tudor music, but John Mundy and to an even greater extent Robert White are less well known, the latter being almost entirely neglected until the music historian Charles Burney unearthed much of White’s music towards the end of the eighteenth/start of the nineteenth centuries. All four were born and brought up as Catholics, but all witnessed the pain and suffering endured by many, including family and friends as the Nation’s religion swayed between the Catholic Devotions of Queen Mary and the new English Protestantism of Elizabeth I. This collection of works represents some of the most devotional and inspirational music these composers ever produced and leaves us in no doubt as to the strength of their religious convictions – regardless of which
Monarch they favoured.