The Cardinall’s Musick

A sequence of music featuring rarely-heard verse anthems by Thomas Tomkins who provided music for Christmas Day and the feasts after Christmas – St Stephen, St John the Evangelist and the Holy Innocents. These anthems are elegant and witty, the very best chamber music of the early to mid-19th Century in England. Around them is another rarely-heard setting of the Mass by Palestrina, based on his own motet Dies sanctificatus. Typically elegant and expressive, it encapsulates both the wonder and joy of Christmas. To finish and to point the way forward is a verse anthem by John Bull for the feast of the Epiphany when we celebrate the visit of the Three Kings, and finally an eight-part ebullient setting of Dies sanctificatus by Palestrina.