This recording of Orlando Gibbons’s Hymnes and Songs of the Church will be a valuable documentary for anyone interested in the early development of English hymnody. The collection consists of the melodies and their bass part, leaving the organist (or even the choir) to improvise the middle parts, as needed and as was the custom. Andrew Pitts and Alexander L’Estrange have excelled in fulfilling this task, illustrating both the customary techniques of Gibbons and his generation and introducing some modern, even contemporary harmonisations. We hear Gibbons’s attractive and familiar melodies in many guises: sometimes played on the organ, or sung by a solo voice, soprano or bass, or with the whole choir, in unison or with harmony. Once (The Fifth Canticle, alias Gibbons’s Song 13) we are offered only the bass-line by itself. There are also a few examples of new compositions by L’Estrange, Pitts and his younger brothers, Richard and John.

This presentation might well suggest a carefully prepared lesson in harmony and counterpoint, particularly with its insistence on how to compose the middle lines. Back in the 1930s, I remember one lecturer who gave his students so much encouragement to develop their skills in this area that they sent him a Valentine via the Cambridge Review which contained the following quotation: “But lo, thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shalt make me to understand wisdom secretly” (Psalm 51: 6) – it must surely have been a choral scholar!