John Coprario, though rarely mentioned in the same breath as his English contemporaries Byrd, Gibbons and Dowland, was a well respected composer and valued member of the retinue of the future Charles I. His intimacy with the royal family no doubt accounts for the emotional honesty of the Songs of Mourning, composed on the death in 1612 of Charles’s older brother Prince Henry and addressed respectively to his father King James I, his mother, brother Charles, sister Elizabeth, friend Frederick of the Rhine, “most disconsolate Great Britain” and finally “the World”. With words by Campion, they reveal a composer whose skill in vocal melody, contrapuntal integrity and soulful melancholy not only represent much that was noble in early 17th-century English music but also touch the heart with their expressive truth; listening to these songs, even now, it is hard not to feel sorrow for this young man’s untimely passing.

They are combined here with Coprario’s other memorial set, Funeral Teares of 1606, composed on the death of another public figure, Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire, and whose words (possibly by Coprario himself) include “In darknesse let me dwell”, later raised to greater heights by Dowland. To cheer things up there is also a short sequence of dances and songs from The Masque of Squires, got up for the happier occasion of the marriage of Lady Elizabeth.

The combined voices, viols, lute and harp of two French ensembles perform these songs with loving care, using darkly covered “old” English pronunciation and paying attention to the music’s declamatory side. But if there is a natural fragility to the singing which adds something to the music’s effect, there are times too when it would have to be described more frankly as technically shaky.