Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, and John Taverner shaped the sound of English sacred music during one of history's most turbulent periods of religious change. This collection of motets moves between grief and hope: Byrd's Tristitia et anxietas gives voice to sorrow, his Miserere nostri pleads for mercy, Taverner's Gaude plurimum answers with joy, and Arvo Pärt's Da pacem Domine asks for peace.
 

That weight resolves in Tallis's Spem in alium — forty voices in eight choirs, surrounding the listener from every side. Its text is the program's title made sound: Spem in alium nunquam habui praeter in te — "I have never put my hope in any other but in thee."