WHEN crackpot King Erik XIV of Sweden still entertained hopes of wedding Queen Elizabeth I in 1566, he gave her four part-books of French and Italian music, written on costly vellum, splendidly bound in red leather embossed with her arms. She turned him down but hung on to the books.

Fortunately for us, they survived, somehow finding their way into the library of Winchester College. Their light-hearted French chansons, along with other more earnest Franco-Flemish works of the mid-16th century, formed the backbone of Rose Consort’s polished programme on Tuesday evening. Samples of contemporary English music, by Tallis, Byrd and Parsons, lent perspective.

Accompaniment by viols added a fireside warmth to the harmony of songs that with lute alone might have sounded wan, although Clare Wilkinson’s supple mezzo provided charm to burn in music by Sermisy. Gombert and Lassus. She explored love’s turbulence with chameleon emotion. The Rose were in impeccably-tailored form, constantly inspiring confidence. Two English five-voice In Nomines were especially captivating.

The tricky, sitar-like figurations of Lassus’s Susanne Un Jour held no fears for Jacob Heringman, whose lute was equally alive to humour and rhythm in three pieces by Adrian Le Roy.

Later in the evening, the five male voices of the Orlando Consort supplied a live soundtrack, newly devised by Donald Greig, to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s ground-breaking silent film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928). This was a feat of immense stamina – more or less continuous singing over 90 minutes – that involved some 50 extracts of plainsong and early 15th-century music, some possibly known to Joan of Arc herself. Occasional silence might have helped.

Several of the pieces directly reflected on-screen action – the Agincourt carol when Joan is taunted by English soldiers, for example – while others painted a more general canvas, such as extracts from masses by Dufay, Binchois or Le Grant. All added immediacy to the saintly portrayal of Joan by the androgynous Maria Falconetti and Dreyer’s close-up techniques on the faces and personalities of her smug, overweening inquisitors. Imaginative and riveting.