This album is the third in a series of nine covering the complete works of Thomas Tallis (c1505-1585). Not for nothing is Tallis known as the 'father of church music'—with his colleagues at the Chapel Royal he created most of the church music genres that we take for granted today. In chronological terms Volume 3 follows on quickly from the Edwardine music of Volume 2 with repertoire written for the Marian reversion to Catholicism in 1553. Here we meet Tallis the composer of music for the old English liturgy in both a modern 'continental' style and a self-consciously old fashioned English style.

The music includes the extraordinary seven part mass Puer natus est nobis of 1554 and the similarly-scored motet Suscipe Quaeso. A speculative reconstruction Beati immaculati opens the album and it concludes with the monumental six part votive antiphon Gaude Gloriosa.