‘Blessed are all they that fear the Lord’, Psalm 128 in Prayerbook wording for the solemnisation of marriage, carries barely inferior cachet, for Boxing Day 1613 in Whitehall Chapel: ‘A Weddinge Anthem first Made for my lord of summersett’. Robert Kerr, the Scots favourite who preceded the great Duke of Buckingham in the king’s affections, had fallen for a demure court charmer, Frances Howard; unfortunately already wife to the Third Earl of Essex. James repeatedly leaned on his bishops to pronounce an annulment, then raised the young nobody to a newfangled Earldom of Somerset, to equal his blushing fiancée’s titular rank. Choral recapitulations and spatial effects enhance a graceful affirmativeness; the ensemble form’s exultant running bass Amen broadens and lengthens the circulated church version. (At times the score provides a remarkable extra boon, unique expansions.) Two years on, scandal blighted the match. The not-so-virginal bride’s murderous proclivities came to light: a Lucrezia Borgia-like poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, leading to death sentences for the pair, commuted by royal indulgence to permanent house-arrest. This contretemps did nothing to dent the setting’s cathedral popularity.

from notes by David Pinto © 2017