[4] He appears to have remained active at the chapel up to the year of his death since he was awarded liveries for both the funeral of Queen Mary and the coronation of Elizabeth I.
[6][7] In March 1556 he witnessed the will of a fellow Gentleman of the chapel, Luke Caustell, and on New Year's Day 1557 he presented three rolls of songs to Mary Tudor.
MSS 30480–4) and elsewhere; and a setting for two soloists of the troped lesson 'Laudes Deo' for the first mass of Christmas Day is in a manuscript at Oxford (GB-Och Mus.
The six-part Gaude virgo Christipara, the only large-scale votive antiphon by Sheppard to survive in anything more than a fragmentary state, appears in a seventeenth-century set of partbooks that now lacks its sixth, superius book (GB-Ob Tenbury 807-11); the missing treble part can be partially completed with the help of other sources, but is still lacking in the fully scored, six-voice sections.
The principal unifying device, apart from the head-motive passages at the beginning of each movement, is the eight-note figure F-E-F-G-A-Bb-G-F, which occurs at various points in the tenor.
Two other cycles, Be not afraid and The Frences Mass are both elaborately contrapuntal and freely constructed, with the former scored exclusively for men's voices.
This 'plainsong' style, which was rhythmically uncomplicated and admitted no dissonance more complicated than a cadential suspension (although there is a notable exception in Sheppard's Agnus Dei), is also to be found in Taverner's Plainsong Mass – although this now survives only in conventional, mensural notation.
A good example of Sheppard's technique is his six-part setting of Verbum caro, the ninth responsory at Matins on Christmas Day.
Sheppard also composed a number of additional items for particularly solemn feasts of the Church calendar, including settings of the Kyrie and Gradual Haec dies for Second Vespers (not, in this case, the mass) on Easter Day.
Arguably supreme amongst all of Sheppard's compositions is his cantus firmus setting of the Lenten Nunc dimittis antiphon Media vita in morte sumus.
Here his innovative use of the cantus firmus in breves allows for an expansive canvas and a leisurely harmonic rhythm that effectively complement his solemn treatment of the text.
[20] Sheppard's bold counterpoint has led some to question whether the surviving text contains copying errors that make the work sound more modern than it should do.
Some of Sheppard's English-texted music, such as his setting of the Lord's Prayer and his cycle of metrical psalms by Thomas Sternhold (in GB-Lbl Add.
[24] Sheppard's fifteen English anthems, most of which are à 4, comply with the demands of the Protestant reformers for simplicity, clear, audible words and largely syllabic text-underlay.