Orlando Gibbons was baptised in Oxford on Christmas Day 1583. His father, William, was a musician who brought up his four sons to be musicians. According to a memorial plaque in Canterbury Cathedral, Orlando was an upright and charming man — in which case he had managed to shake off his father’s and grandfather’s reputations as somewhat difficult characters; his grandfather had been barred from the council chamber when he was an Oxford city councillor, and his father had been involved in a musicians’ punch-up in which a shawm was damaged.

Although Oxford might like to hail Orlando Gibbons as its musical son, Cambridge has the better claim. For while Gibbons was born in Oxford, his formative training was as a chorister at King’s College, Cambridge, where his much...