SITTING in a darkened room, where the preparation for an act of religious worship is mixed with the visceral fear of discovery, suddenly there’s a pounding at the door …

This is a sensation that those who practise banned religions have known for millennia, often with violent, sometimes fatal, consequences. We are warlike animals and will find something to fight about, often hiding behind conflicting beliefs, or even interpretations of the same belief.

On Monday, Gesualdo Six singers and the consort of viols that is Fretwork came to Bath Abbey for the city’s annual music festival. The heatwave had broken, and the rains poured down from the heavens. The Abbey’s seats had been removed from the aisle, repositioned around a table on a dais, set for dinner. A Dominican priest was lost in prayer. Fretwork’s musicians, in two groups, played music by William Byrd (1540-1623), the great Renaissance composer whose conversion to Catholicism during the reign of Elizabeth I meant his religious observances had to be in secret – Secret Byrd.

This immersive presentation of some of Byrd’s most beautiful works allowed the audience to walk around the Abbey, join the singers at the table, read facsimiles of the original compositions and partake of wine, soup and bread in the candlelit atmosphere of a hidden place of Catholic worship always at risk of Puritan siege. Byrd’s mystic music – six fine singers chanting the age-old words of the Mass in the Latin that has now been largely abandoned by the Catholic church – was an extraordinary and moving experience.

Requests to abandon the technical accoutrements of 21st century life during the performance were largely followed, though a pathetic few could not resist the opportunity to photograph themselves at the event.

GP-W