For many in early seventeenth-century Portugal the period of Spanish rule was a time of anguish; but it was also an age of opportunity. Francisco Garro was a Spaniard who crowned his career at the Royal Chapel in Lisbon when this thriving metropolis boasted a vibrant musical life.

Four centuries after his death, Toby Ward and the expert voices and instrumentalists of Ensemble Pro Victoria triumphantly blow the dust from partbooks that survived political upheavals and the disaster of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, revealing a masterly oeuvre that in its richness and expressivity quite justifies the honour in which Garro was held in his lifetime.