BOSTON -- It's not often that you go to an underground concert and somebody pulls out a lute.

For classically-trained lutenist Charles Iner, however, it's a common occurrence. The Boston-based musician is used to performing small concerts in living rooms and basements. It's the natural home of the lute, a staple instrument in the domestic secular music of Renaissance Europe. In England during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, such close-knit musical gatherings took on a new role: Accompanying the worship of Catholics who had to pray and attend Mass in secret due to persecution from the Protestant royals.

"I think the lute is such an intimate sound, and it's such an economical sound," Iner said. "And so much of this music, in general, is based on this tension and release structure, these dissonances and consonances in the harmony that pulls you along from phrase to phrase in a piece of music."

Iner and Boston-based soprano Kendra Comstock performed "A Pilgrimes Solace: Secret Worship Under the Tudors," a selection of works by English Catholic composers William Byrd and John Dowland, at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross's Blessed Sacrament Chapel on June 1.

The setlist included works in English and Latin. Some have biblical text, while others have original text whose author is unknown. The works are on the melancholy side, personal expressions of faith and doubt in a time of repression.

"The Dowland pieces are mostly about feeling forlorn in this earthly veil, and longing for Heaven," Iner said.

"I'm always really taken aback when I sing Dowland, because it ... feels very personal, and it feels like there's a lot of internal struggle and suffering that you can put into the music," Comstock said. "And when you perform it, it definitely has a universal quality."

This, she said, is why Dowland's work continues to resonate with modern audiences.

"It's very musically striking," she said. "And I think it helps evoke a lot of feelings of silent or secret prayer. And I think Charles did a really good job of pairing all the pieces together."

All of the Byrd pieces were originally scored for four voices. Comstock sang the soprano while Iner's lute filled in for the lower three voices.

"That was a really interesting challenge for me," Comstock said, "because I think in that style of writing, each of the lines is almost like a strand of a braid. They're weaving in and out."

Iner, who is himself Catholic, got into Renaissance sacred music while attending Benedictine College.

"In the Catholic Church in the 1500s and 1600s, they were really at the cutting edge of composition at that time," he said, "and they were funding a lot of great composers, particularly of vocal music. And it was a rich wealth of really beautiful music from that time period."

It was both musicians' first time performing in the cathedral. Comstock said it was "breathtaking."

"You play a lot in churches, but I haven't done something that has this specific of a Catholic identity in a Catholic church," Iner said.

As he and Comstock rehearsed, baptisms were taking place in the main sanctuary. The towering cathedral they performed in was itself a symbol of U.S. Catholics rising above persecution and asserting their faith's place in the young nation. Playing the works of Dowland and Byrd made Iner reflect on his own faith and the people throughout the world who are forced to worship in secret.

"It's interesting to think about it in the context of the continuum of Catholicism that has existed," he said. "When you're a musician looking back on this older music and trying to connect to it, that's an easy connection point, because there is this throughline of religion that reaches back to that time that still exists today."