Thomas Tallis, the father of English Church music, was the subject of the first chamber music concert of the Proms season at Cadogan Hall. The Cardinall’s Musick sang six Latin and three English works that reflected the see-sawing religious convictions of Tallis’ times from Henry VII to Elizabeth I. The Catholic works in Latin were comparatively long and indulgent, involving the melismatic elongation of syllables and complex counterpoint, while the Protestant pieces in English were mostly short, syllabic and homophonic.In the first piece, Videte miraculum (“Behold, the miracle”), conductor Andrew Carwood, choirmaster of St Paul’s, maintained a steady, unchanging pulse, permitting no emotive rallentandos at cadences in a rational, unemotive, plainly beautiful,