Spem in alium
Spem in alium (Latin for hope of another ) is a forty- part motet by the English composer Thomas Tallis. It was composed in 1570 for eight choirs of five voices a cappella, and is, together with Gregorio Allegri's Miserere, as a culmination of Renaissance polyphony music in the tradition of the Venetian polychorality.
History
The genesis of the motet is unclear. A catalog of the library at Nonsuch Palace mentions it in 1596 as " a song in forty voices, created by Mr. Tally ". The oldest surviving manuscripts were the occasion of the ceremonial investiture of Henry Frederick Stuart created in 1610 as Prince of Wales.
The law student Thomas Wateridge handed in a letter of 1611, following anecdote: At Queen Elizabeth's time was from Italy an impressive thirty -voiced singing to England arrives. A music amorous Duke had asked British composers to create something equivalent. Tallis had accepted the challenge, and was listed as his motet in the long gallery at Arundel House, they have the other song so far exceeded that of the Duke taken taken off his gold chain and she had placed around the neck Tallis.
Assuming that the thirty voices are a mistake, is the Italian song either the forty part motet Ecce beatam lucem or the forty - to sixty -part mass Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, both composed by Alessandro Striggio from which we know that he had visited London in June 1567. This representation is consistent with the catalog entry in Nonsuch Palace: Arundel House was the town house of Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel; Nonsuch his country seat.
Referred to in the letter is probably Duke Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. If so, and the anecdote is true, must be created Spem in alium before Howard's execution in 1572. Historians who do not keep the anecdote for credible, assume that the work was first performed on the fortieth birthday of Queen Elizabeth I in 1573. Other possible emergence of data are called, as those related to Mary I, Elizabeth's predecessor.
An early score of the work is on display at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Structure and performance practice
The motet is for eight choirs of five voices (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass) composed. Probably intended Tallis, the singer set up in a horseshoe shape. A performance lasts between ten and twelve minutes.
The work begins with a single voice of the first chorus, the other to align themselves imitating and then one after another silence, so that the song moves through the eight choirs. Short resound all forty voices, and then the initial pattern is repeated backwards, so that the song returns from the eighth to the first chorus. After another short sequence in which all voices be heard, the choirs throw the sound in pairs across the room. Finally back to sound all voices to the climax of the motet.
Although Spem in alium is written in an imitative style and occasionally homophonic, the individual vocal lines act quite freely in simple harmonic framework of the work and allow the expression of an amazing variety of musical ideas. The motet is distinguished by its contrasts: the individual voices heard and silenced in turn - sometimes alone, sometimes in unison, sometimes questioning and answering, sometimes all together. Clearly, the work always carries approach new ideas to the listener. This may be connected with the unusual performance method, in which the singer surround the audience seem overwhelming.
Spem in alium is not often performed because it requires at least forty singers that meet the technical requirements of the work. Performance forms in which the singers are distributed in a large room, often without visual contact with each other, require special discipline and present additional acoustic challenges.
Text
The text comes from a responsory of the then - common practice Sarum ( from Matins, to third reading, in the Fifth Week of September ), based on the deuterocanonical or apocryphal Book of Judith (8.20 and 6.19 EU EU):
" Spem in alium nunquam habui praeter in te, Deus Israel qui irasceris, et Propitius eris, et omnia peccata hominum in tribulatione dimittis. Domine Deus Creator coeli et terrae, respice humilitatem nostram. "
"I have never my hope in any other as laid thee, O God of Israel, you will be angry and yet be merciful again, and you will forgive all the sins of suffering man. Lord our God, creator of heaven and earth, look at our lowliness. "
Recordings and performances
Among the recordings of the work are those of the choir of Winchester Cathedral, the Tallis Scholars, the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, Oxford Camerata; the choirs of King's and St John 's College, Cambridge, as well as The Sixteen, The Clerke of Oxenford, cantillation, Huelgas Ensemble and Philip Cave 's Magnificat. In a recording from 2006, the six-person men's ensemble The King's Singers singing all forty voices in a multi-track recording. Also in 2006, organized by the BBC at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, with 700 singers arguably the greatest performance of Spem in alium. Many of the participating lay singers and singers had the work previously never sung.
The Kronos Quartet took an instrumental version of the motet on in their album Black Angels. The cellist Peter Gregson has published a multi- track recording, in which he plays all forty voices themselves. Janet Cardiff's Forty-Part Motet (2001), an installation in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, is an adaptation of the motet with forty speakers, the sound can be enjoyed individually or together.
Spem in alium has several modern composers inspired to compose forty -part motet, so Giles Swayne ( The Silent Land, 1998), Jaakko Mäntyjärvi ( tentatio, 2006) and Peter McGarr ( Love You Big as the Sky, 2007). Mäntyjärvis and McGarrs compositions were commissioned works by Tallis Festival in London, one of Spem in alium inspired Choir Festival.