Take a 16th century Flemish composer who worked in Italy, France or Germany and you may well have heard of him. Guillaume Dufay, Josquin des Près and Orlandus Lassus have achieved lasting fame and have warranted the greatest attention in contemporary Renaissance studies. Take a Flemish composer of no lesser ability who spent almost all of his creative life in Spain, however, and it is a very different story. The Spanish were not very keen because it was an import from Flanders: the Belgians are not very interested because it all happened in Spain…

This dilemma dogs the careers of many artists working abroad, but few so much as the Flemish musicians whom Emperor Charles V and his successor King Philip II exported to his court in Madrid in the 16th century. There is a long line of them including Pierre de Manchicourt, Gérard de Turnhout, George de La Hèle, Philippe Rogier – and they are all unfamiliar names.

Philippe Rogier (1561-1596) was appointed chapelmaster to King Philip II of Spain in 1586 and composed some 250 works before his untimely death at the age of 35. A native of Flanders, Rogier lived and worked almost all his life in Spain and his music combines the poise and skill of the northern Franco-Flemish polyphonic tradition with the greater emotional intensity of southern Europe.