Spem in alium
I’ve been to see the Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller show at the Millennium Galleries a couple of times this week. Most of it is interesting, but not hugely elevating - TVs showing video footage, pairs of headphones offering … binaural? … sountracks, recorded via two microphones placed at the position of each ear. It’s an interesting experience, but artistically… I’m not so sure.
But the undisputed crowd-puller of the show is Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet, the forty-part choral harmony of Spem in Alium nunquam habui, written by Thomas Tallis, played back over forty individual speakers, each one recording an individual singer or group of singers’ voice. It’s incredible, and it’s something that could only be achieved in this way. Of course, you could go to a church and hear the original sung (it was composed for a church with eight alcoves, with a group of five standing in each alcove to make the forty parts of the harmony). But you would feel a little strange walking around, encircling members of the choir, your ears inches from their head.
As it is, you can freely explore the eight groups of five floor-standing loudspeakers which form a circle around the room. Or you can sit in the middle, and be transported to a higher plane.
The piece loops every ten minutes or so, and before it starts each time you hear about a minute of the choir preparing. In the distance, the choirmaster issues vague instructions, while somewhere near your ear you hear the chit-chat of awaiting singers, one from each speaker. You have to get real close to catch the one or two voices closest to you… A bass clears his throat of phlegm. The tenor two places down from him says “I didn’t quite hear that properly”. They laugh. A boy soprano in a put-on voice says “and this is Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis… la de la…” while other boys chatter (each group of five speakers is the same, bass on the left, then baritone, tenor, … something higher [do men sing alto?], and on the right-hand end, a group of chattering choirboys).
(oops, I looked it up. It’s: treble, mean [mezzo/alto], countertenor, tenor, and bass. That’s what I get for basing my knowledge of choral music on my knowledge of saxophones.)
It’s awesome, and if anyone gets the chance to see (err, hear) it, it’s definitely recommended.
Heh. I also just read:
The earliest surviving evidence of Spem in alium’s existence is in a catalogue of the library at Nonsuch Palace made in 1596 lists “a song of fortie partes, made by Mr. Tallys.”
Anything from Nonsuch Palace is goode with me.
PS, can anyone tell me what Spem in alium means? One of the visitors’ comment cards said “ha ha ha. I just found out what spem in alium means”.
Perhaps their enlightenment was on a higher level?