William Mundy (composer)

[8][note 1] Coming of age during the reign of Henry VIII, Mundy's career spanned much of England's Tudor Dynasty, and reflected the changes in church music that accompanied the religious turmoil of that period.

He was a pioneer of the genre of verse anthem with organ accompaniment[1] (along with Richard Farrant and William Byrd) in works such as Ah, helpless wretch and The secret sins.

[12] Most musicologists definitively date Vox Patris caelestis to the brief English Counter-Reformation during the reign of Queen Mary (1553–58) due both to its subject matter and Catholic style.

[7][12][13] English tenor and historian of Tudor music, Nicholas Robertson[14] cites Vox patris caelestis as "the culmination of the great antiphon tradition" and describes its structure as beginning "with two voices only, expanding to a trio before the full choir enters with éclat in the second half, now in duple instead of triple time, the solo sections are enlarged in scope, climaxing in a "gymel" (derived from the Latin for twin) where two equal treble voices soar above the rich accompaniment of double alto and bass", and praises it as "elaborate and virtuosic, the range daunting".

[7] Another of Mundy's best known pieces, the service setting, Oh Lord, the Maker of All Things, first published in Barnard's partbook (First Book of Selected Church Musick),[15] was—bizarrely—originally attributed to Henry VIII.

[17] Also extant in a slightly reconstructed form is the large-scale motet Maria virgo sanctissima, a comparable work to Vox patris and similarly devoted to the Virgin Mary.