Thomas Tallis and William Byrd together issued the printed collection of Latin motets known as the Cantiones sacrae in 1575. The joint effort featured 17 motets by each composer, and may have been intended thus as an offering of thanks to Queen Elizabeth for her grant to them of a monopoly on music printing—it happened to be the 17th year of her reign. Actually, one partbook of the print gives an apperently different look, as the brief but very interesting motet Miserere nostri is ascribed in it to "Wm. Birdi." Some earlier historians thought this meant that Byrd had composed an optional extra voice—known as a si placet part—to Tallis' motet. The very structure of the work, however, argues otherwise, as the "Birdi" voice is part of a highly intricate system of interlocking canons between fully six of the motet's seven voices.

On the surface, Tallis' Miserere nostri might seem a simple little ditty. Though scored for seven voice parts, the text only uses three words: Miserere nostri, Domine ("Lord, have mercy on us"). The music of Tallis' setting takes just a couple of minutes to sing, and is then over. But the deeper beauty of the composition is in how well Tallis hides its complexity. The seven voice parts derive canonically from only three original melodies. The upper two voices sing the same notes in canon, separated by one beat's rest. Four of the remaining five voices also use the same notes. The contratenor sings the same pitches as the discantus (the "Birdi" voice), but four times as long. Both bass voices are derived from the same melody, but in inversion, and at two further rhythmic permutations, one singing twice the note values and one singing them eight times as long. In a way, Tallis has thus created a perfect embodiment of the music: all the singers have their own distinct accents, but all as sinners are making small variants upon the same devout prayer for mercy.

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