It was surely with impish humour that the sixteenth-century composer John Taverner set an eight-part polyphonic Mass around the tune of an irreverent folksong imploring Christ both for a warm westerly with rain and a warm cuddle back in bed. The too-seldom performed Western Wynde Mass began the Tallis Scholars’ ninth “Choral at Cadogan” festival on 19 October. The festival runs until 17 May next year.

It was partly because of the work that the choirmaster of the then Cardinal College Oxford (later Christ Church) was thrown into a fish cellar for heresy and later excused because he was “but a musitian”. He quit music and became a town councillor, when anything to do with religion was high risk.

For the most part, Taverner places the song tune in the soprano, not in long notes deep in the men’s voices as on the continent (although he had proved himself in that technique in other works). At a practical level, giving the familiar pop tune to the boys meant less rehearsal time. Of course it was now clothed in Latin, a piece of vernacular smut worked into the liturgy.