The award-winning Rose Consort of Viols takes its name from the celebrated family of viol makers whose work spanned the flowering of the English consort repertoire. With its blend of intimacy, intricacy, passion and flamboyance, this music (ranging from Taverner and Byrd, to Lawes, Locke and Purcell) forms the basis of the Rose Consort’s programmes. Their concerts often include guest soloists such as mezzo-soprano Clare Wilkinson, featured on this recording.

The Consort performs regularly at the York Early Music Festival and have also performed at the BBC Proms, London’s Cadogan Hall with vocal ensemble Tenebrae, and the National Gallery, as well as venues throughout Europe, Canada and the USA.

Focusing on two eminent composers from the English Renaissance period, this disc of historic gems includes Philips’ earliest surviving piece ‘Pavan’, dated as 1580, and two works published in Byrd’s last song collection from 1611.

It is suggested that Philips’ intense ‘Pavana Dolorosa’ was composed in 1593 while the composer was incarcerated on suspicion of plotting against Queen Elizabeth, and although none of his original fantasias for viols have survived, Jacobean players frequently took vocal pieces to perform instrumentally. This is the case with the two six part pieces also featured on this disc, now given the title Fantazia.

The collection also includes rare examples of Byrd’s writing for voice and five viols, in which he uses the treble to create a delicate descant above the sung line and Latin motets. Byrd was preoccupied throughout his career by the composition and publication of motets set to sacred texts in Latin, despite the scarce opportunities for them to be performed in public during his lifetime in Protestant England.