All the music in this programme comes from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and most of it was collected by its founder, Richard, Seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion (1745 – 1816). A polymath, lover of music, amateur composer and harpsichordist, musically active from about 1760 until his death, Fitzwilliam created a legacy of exceptional importance to English musical culture.

The series ‘L’Oreille de…’ from Cypres and the Huelgas Ensemble, that began with "L’Oreille de Zurbarán" and "L’héritage de Petrus Alamire,” juxtaposes the music of a particular period and the creative world of a contemporaneous painter, scribe or explorer. What might he have listened to if he had had a transistor radio, a hifi system or the possibility of streaming on a computer? In conjunction with the exhibition: "Theodoor van Loon, a caravaggist between Rome and Brussels" in BOZAR Brussel, this album introduces the first Southern Netherlands Caravaggist between Rome and Brussels through the music of the seventeenth century. Paul Van Nevel has selected some emblematic pieces played in Italy, where van Loon used to live between 1602 and 1608, and in the musical chapel of Albert and Isabelle.

At the beginning of the 17th century the Brussels court experienced an extraordinary cultural splendour thanks to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella Clara Eugenia, during a period of peace and prosperity in the Southern Low Countries under Spanish Habsburg rule. The sovereigns, who were great collectors and patronized artists such as Brueghel de Velours and Rubens, maintained a magnificent musical chapel with a substantial number of Spanish, Italian and English musicians. It was in this context that the work of the Zaragoza native Pedro Ruimonte unfolded. Master of chamber music under the Archdukes, his Parnaso español (1614) represents one of the capstones in the history of Spanish music.