The music of Robert Ramsey occupies a place in a transitional period of English church music, stemming from the tradition of Orlando Gibbons on the one hand and looking forward to later Baroque developments on the other. In addition to his English church music and secular music, Ramsey is also known for a small amount of liturgical Latin works written for use at Peterhouse, Cambridge, an institution known to have used Latin in its chapel services. His background is obscure, but he may have been related to Scottish musicians of the same name who came to England with King James VI and I at his accession to the English throne in 1603. From 1615 until his death in 1644 he served as organist and master of the choristers at Trinity College, Cambridge. Among other composers, Ramsey contributed his elaborate ‘Dialogues of Sorrow upon the Death of the Late Prince Henrie’ to commemorate the death of Henry, Prince of Wales in 1612 at the age of 18, the heir to the English throne, an honour which fell to the future Charles I. Ramsey’s setting of ‘When David heard’ may come from around the same time as the death of the prince or serve a similar purpose. Other contemporaneous settings of this text from England include celebrated settings by Tomkins and Weelkes (both included in a manuscript source dated 1616), as well as lesser-known pieces by Michael East (printed in 1618) and a certain ‘Mr Smith’ (after 1615). Earlier in the previous century on the continent, settings of e.g. ‘Planxit autem David’ (Josquin), ‘Rex autem David’ (Clemens non Papa) and ‘Lugebat David Absalon’ (Gombert) had a similar currency, and no doubt sought to create a portrait of human suffering through premature death by portraying the mourning of a biblical king as a poetic allegory. Unlike Tomkins and Weelkes, Ramsey sets the opening of his setting polyphonically, reserving chordal writing for the more declamatory outbursts of King David. However, this piece still falls within the category of what might be termed a ‘sacred madrigal’, a work with a religious text set in a more expressive style redolent of the secular repertoire of the time. In terms of liturgical use, this piece is rather difficult to pigeonhole. Settings of this biblical text in the Roman Rite are few, and tend to be employed as Magnificat antiphons. By this estimation ‘When David heard’ may be sung at evening services, or else in times of national mourning.