My choice to interpret sacred vocal music of the 16th and 17th centuries with a group of solo singers was originally made for musicological reasons. In this it was in advance of its time. But it has now been accepted, for example, that Bach's cantatas and Passions (in a way the summum of this repertoire) were written for such a group, and the justification for this is based on an already-existing tradition of performance. Thus, modern interpreters have finally learned to place themselves in the historical context of Baroque creation, by working forwards through the practices that composers themselves knew, rather than backwards from subsequent habits - the practice as little as twenty years ago. It is now widely accepted that choirs are a creation of the 18th century.

The musical benefits of this decision are especially evident in contrapuntal music – each part is distinguished by vocal colour as much as merely range, and even the personality of the singer enters into the equation. In 17th century early Baroque music, when the individual triumphs over the collective, the benefits are even more marked. The Ensemble works hard to ensure that its soloists express themselves freely as individuals in solo sections, where it is appropriate, indeed in the Baroque ethos necessary, for them to do so. At the same time, in tutti sections the individual is sublimated to the collective good, to ensure that the whole is, as it must always be, more than merely the sum of the parts. This balance is the most passionately interesting part of the Ensemble's work and that which perhaps distinguishes it most from other groups: it seeks to accomplish a real social and collective endeavour – a "mini-society" – in which the spirit of the music, its écriture, is expressed by the collective whole as much as by individual idiosyncrasies, an unusual – even ascetic - aim in the modern world.

What we seek to create cannot be better expressed than by this review of a concert in Stockholm in June 2006 : "The French Ensemble William Byrd know how to sing in such a way that the worst heathen could be converted by a motet or a Salve Regina. Their voices glide peacefully through the room as if seeking to fill its empty spaces without colliding with one another; the harmony of the spheres in chamber form." (Aftonbladet, Stockholm)

The society where we all now live is Europe – a collection of nation-states, each with its own history but brought together for the greater good when they act as a tutti. And the aim of the Ensemble is ultimately to illustrate that that which unites these countries is much greater than that which divides them. In the 17th century this unifying force came from Italy, the fount of all Baroque musical creation. It influenced in varying degrees the music of all its neighbours – even (or perhaps especially) the most distant: the Polish king brought more than a hundred Italian musicians to his court in the twenty years around the turn of the 16th and 17th century, England was invaded by Italian violists, violinists and singers throughout both centuries, the Portuguese king João V recreated his Royal chapel in the early years of the 18th century in the image of the Vatican, sending his young composers (such as Esteves) to study in Rome, importing Italian maestri (such as Domenico Scarlatti) and outlawing the most typical Iberian form, the villancico, from court ceremonies. It must not be forgotten either that the greatest French composers of the 17th century, Lully and Charpentier, were in fact Italian, either by birth or by predilection.

As the Ensemble européen William Byrd exists to explore this repertoire (highlighting its differences, underlining its similarities) it is therefore natural that its programmes embrace music from the whole of Europe.

Recent explorations have included music from the period of the most Italian king of Portugal and from the collection of Gustav Düben, maestro di cappella to the Court of Sweden (and at the same time organist of the German church of Stockholm), who in his enthusiasm to understand and possess everything had music sent not only from surrounding Baltic countries and Germany but also from Italy (numerous Carissimi unica), France and England. For the Ambronay Festival in September 2006, the Ensemble will create for the first time in France a selection of 17th century Polish music, notable at once for its clearly-recognisable Italian origins and for its particularly Polish melodic and rhythmic formulae.

From 2007, the Ensemble and I are planning a return to our roots – English music of the 16th and 17th centuries. The period was rich in political and social upheavals: the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII, the Golden Era of Elizabeth I and the music of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, the age of Shakespeare, the Civil War of the 1630s, the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 and the extraordinary outburst of creative energy it provoked, and the Glorious (but bloodless) Revolution of 1688. Aided by its expertise not only in English repertoire, but its capacity to place it in a European, Italian-dominated, context, the Ensemble will be exploring works by both the best-known composers (Tallis, Byrd, Purcell) and lesser-known but important contemporaries – Sheppard, Taverner, Dowland, Tomkins, Blow, Locke, Eccles, etc. The Ensemble will bring to this exploration its habitual attention to musicological and organological questions – instruments (the Ensemble was the first – in 1990 - to record Purcell sacred music with a theorbo among the continuo), tuning (the Ensemble is the only group to habitually use mean-tone), pitch (lower than the English habitually use), voicing (haute-contres à la française, not Italianate altos) – as well as, uniquely, serious attention to the pronunciation and prosody of 16th and 17th century English.

- Graham O'Reilly