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In the half-century since he began his reign as King of the Surf Guitar, Dick Dale has remained one of rock’s most innovative and influential axemen. A bold pioneer in the use of speed, volume and sonic texture, the charismatic Dale invented surf music, and in the process permanently altered the role of the electric guitar in rock ’n’ roll. Of all the surf guitarists who would follow in Dale’s wake, none could match his prodigious technique, his fierce showmanship or his restless inventiveness…

Taking its title from a poem by the sixteenth-century Jesuit martyr Robert Southwell, Times go by Turns comprises three masses composed during a period when the conditions for English Catholics – and Catholic composers – underwent radical change. Active at a time – the 15th century – when the Catholic Church flourished in England, John Plummer’s death roughly coincided with the ascension of the Tudors, a dynasty that would irreversibly alter religious traditions. As a consequence, the bulk of Plummer’s music was destroyed during the Reformation, the remainder surviving almost exclusively in sources from the continent. Born a century later than Plummer, Tallis witnessed the separation of England from the Catholic Church and his Mass for Four Voices displays a simple lyricism and economic use of polyphony which may well have been driven by liturgical necessity. Such constraints had grown even stronger by the end of the century, when his student and colleague William Byrd composed his own four-part Mass, intended for clandestine worship at a time when dissidents were dealt with by cruel means.