Elizabeth I thought Christopher Tye's music-making in her chapel offered 'little to delight the ear'. Your Majesty, I disagree. The unaccompanied Latin church settings of this interesting, obstreperous and financially reckless composer couldn't be characterised as easy listening. But it's hard not to be impressed by the complex, thick-textured polyphonic webs spun by the mass setting known as The Peterhouse Mass and the psalm setting Cantate Domino, the latter the musical equivalent of a rich chocolate cake.

Singers with namby-pamby voices would be hopeless faced with Tye, as with Tallis and the other Tudor masters. You need fervour and muscle, enough to survive passing dissonances or other jolts in music that sometimes relaxes only when it reaches the closing bar. The five members of the European ensemble Cinquecento (six for Cantate Domino) couldn't be more robust if they tried, and sail through this bracing repertoire unafraid, no matter how choppy the waters.