Thomas Tallis died in Greenwich in 1585 at about 80 years of age, of which more than half had been spent as a musician at the English Chapel Royal. During his time in royal service, no less than four different monarchs sat on the throne, each of whom insisted on imposing his (or her) own differing beliefs on the country. Passionate religious disputation and high political drama followed. Tallis undoubtedly remained a Catholic all his life : in 1576 he stood godfather to Byrd’s son Thomas, inconceivable if he wasn’t of the faith, and he may have had as patron the well-known recusant Anthony Roper, grandson of Sir Thomas More, whose seat was at Eltham, just three miles from Greenwich. But he seems to have been content to show a non-aggressive face to the world. Music was his means of expression – his real secret garden – and in this, he had no peer. ‘Mild and quiet’ Thomas Tallis managed to dominate 50 years of Tudor musical life. A musician’s musician, capable of the most staggering feats of technical virtuosity (Spem in alium), he was also able, by the simplest and most elegant means, to express in music sadness and joy, calm and excitement, anxiety and resignation. In this recording, Graham O reilly has been guided by the circumstances of performance that this music may have had in the Elizabethan period. He does not seek to recreate the splendour, ceremony and high solemnity which must have accompanied its first performance in the Chapel Royal or some such august institution. Rather he aims for the intimate atmosphere of a chamber performance, generally with one voice to a part, with the exchange and sharing of musical ideas which polyphony, by its very nature, always seems to demand.