Among the musical anniversaries being celebrated this year, one seems slightly relegated to the shadows. OK, the composer in question is definitely better known for other things, but King Henry VIII was nonetheless a composer, and 500 years ago this year he ascended to the throne.

“Most of his music was written when he was young,” Brabant Ensemble director Stephen Rice told us, “before other matters occupied his attention.” Naturally, the young Henry wasn’t purely motivated by religious texts: “Your figure is like a palm tree, and your breasts like grapes,” go the words of Quam pulchra es. Meanwhile Alas, what shall I do for love found him in sentimental mood.

Surrounding four of Henry’s compositions, the Brabant Ensemble offered religious music from the pre-Reformation Church, and from the Reformation period itself – appropriately for a concert taking place in St Mary Magdalen, which has long been positioned towards the high end of the Anglican church.

First came a composer from just down the road: John Taverner moved to Oxford in 1526 to found the choir at Wolsey’s new Cardinal College, later to become Christ Church. His fluid Mater Christi sanctissima throws the sopranos in high and cold, a situation that didn’t seem to worry the Brabants at all.

Tallis, supremely adept at switching styles to suit the prevailing religious wind, was represented both by the pre-Reformation Dum transisset Sabbatum and by the later, triumphant, Christ rising again. A jaunty mood was invoked by Philip van Wilder’s Hélas, Madame.

Reticent about themselves, you have to go to their website to discover that the Brabant Ensemble was founded in Oxford in 1998 by Stephen Rice. Also, the web reveals, Brabant enjoys a prolific relationship with the Hyperion CD label. Here, the ten-strong group sounded immaculately balanced, with each piece meticulously thought out. Yet there was no lack of freshness in the performances.

n The Brabant Ensemble’s latest CD, of sacred music by Morales, is on Hyperion CDA67694.