The Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas is Taverner’s masterpiece, and it sparkles with contemporary fervour. The mass is based on a plainchant antiphon for Trinity Sunday: Cardinal College was dedicated to the Trinity, so the piece is locked into a time and a place. And the equal-note rendition of the plainchant in the second highest part in the In nomine section of the Benedictus spawned a whole new musical genre: the instrumental ‘In nomine’. All the while Taverner experimented with and combined continental imitative practice, thrilling sequential writing, and English harmonic sonorities in a unique way.

This was the musical landscape that surrounded John Sheppard as he grew up, and two years before Taverner died, Sheppard became Director of Music at Magdalen College in Oxford. Sheppard’s music also inhabited a unique soundworld – one that was characterized by bold harmonic shifts and a wilful and minimalistic fascination for choral textures. Four of Sheppard’s best-loved motets were presented here as footnotes to the four movements of Taverner’s Mass, in order to show how Taverner’s bold experiments influenced an equally bold and original younger contemporary.