The booklet cover has as its illustration the famous painting of the young King Edward VI attributed to Guillame Scrots. He was just one ruler to whom Tye had to adapt, but in a way, he was the most significant. Tye had started out writing massive, typically early Tudor works like the Missa Euge bone (Hyperion CDA67928) and was later writing anthems in English like ‘Praise ye the Lord all ye Children’ and ‘Christ rising from the dead’ which are well known to choristers all over. The works on this new disc celebrate, stylistically at least, it seems to me, a halfway house.

The Peterhouse Mass can be found in a manuscript now in Cambridge and it has been reconstructed for this disc by Paul Doe. It first reminds me of Tallis, especially with its regular ‘English cadences’ with their false relations. The composer’s aim was clearly to make the text more audible and meaningful to the listeners, so that most of the unnecessary and over-complex counterpoint has been avoided in favour of a more lyrical approach. At twenty-three minutes, its length would suit a modern-day Cathedral Eucharist.

Tye was very highly regarded during Edward VI’s reign and might even have taught Henry VIII’s children. He translated the first fourteen chapters of the Acts of the Apostles into English verse and provided music for each chapter. He was also popular as a poet, but on the death of the young king and the accession of (“Bloody”) Mary we find Tye writing Latin church music harking back to the early Tudor period, even the Eton composers. An example is the setting of the Miserere (Psalm 56) in its complex polyphony and the ebullient and Cantate Domino (reconstructed by Jason Smart) with its almost tiresome, continuous imitative counterpoint. Tye was, after all, a member of the Chapel Royal. Intriguingly however, after his ordination in 1561—that is, during the reign of Elizabeth—based mainly at Ely Cathedral, he does not seem to have composed again. Perhaps he didn’t feel at home with the new music of the period and felt that it was the Latin sacred works which were his inspiration.

Of the remaining works not yet mentioned, it proves striking that both the In pace and the Kyrie ‘Orbis factor’ use plainchant ‘in alternatum’ just as earlier composers had done. Amavit eum Dominus is a ‘Responsory for the Common of a Martyr’. Alleluia, Per te Dei Genetrix for a Lady Mass and Sub tuum protectionem a Votive antiphon to the virgin again, all suitable for the pre-Edwardian age or for Mary’s reign.

Hyperion discs of this sort are always well supplied with excellent liner notes, and this is no exception. Grantley McDonald goes into considerable detail about the composer and the music even telling of Tye’s many lawsuits. Reading it all, I’m not sure I would have wanted much to do with him!

Cinquecento consists of five male voices with an extra tenor needed for the Cantate Domino. Their blend is exemplary, as is their diction; they also have a rare way of colouring their voices, dependent on the text, so that there is next to no blandness or sense of routine. They do their best with these pieces, not all of which are out of the top drawer, but I am pleased to have made the acquaintance of most of them. Of all the discs by the ensemble that I have so far heard—and I think that this is the fifth—I can honestly agree with colleague David Truslove who wrote that they sing with a ‘sumptuous luminosity’.