Spem in alium

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Thomas Tallis (1505–85), the composer of Spem in alium

Spem in alium ( Latin for hope in someone else ) is a forty-part motet by the English composer Thomas Tallis . It was composed around 1570 for eight choirs of five voices each a cappella and, together with Gregorio Allegris Miserere , is considered a high point in the polyphony of Renaissance musicin the tradition of Venetian polychoral music .

history

The genesis of the motet is unclear. A catalog from the library at Nonsuch Palace mentions it in 1596 as "a song in forty voices, composed by Mr. Tallys". The oldest surviving manuscripts were created in 1610 on the occasion of the ceremonial installation of Henry Frederick Stuart as Prince of Wales .

The law student Thomas Wateridge passed on the following anecdote in a letter from 1611: In Queen Elizabeth's time, an impressive thirty-part chant came to England from Italy. A music-loving duke asked English composers to create something of equal value. Tallis accepted the challenge, and when his motet was performed in the long gallery in Arundel House it so far surpassed the other cant that the moved Duke removed his gold chain and put it around Tallis' neck.

Assuming that the thirty voices are a mistake, the Italian song is 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 , who is known to be he had visited London in June 1567. This representation corresponds to the catalog entry in Nonsuch Palace: Arundel House was the castle of Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel ; Nonsuch his country house.

The Duke named in the letter is believed to be Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk . If so, and the anecdote is correct, then Spem in alium must have been written before Howard's execution in 1572. Historians who do not consider the anecdote to be credible assume that the work was premiered on the fortieth birthday of Queen Elizabeth I in 1573. Other possible dates of origin are also mentioned, such as those in connection with Maria I , Elizabeth's predecessor.

An early score of the work is on display in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

Structure and performance practice

The motet is composed for eight choirs of five voices each ( soprano , alto , tenor and bass ), with a different pitch doubled in each of the choirs, so that there are five voices in each choir. The starting notes together make up the basic melody. Tallis probably intended to arrange the singers in a horseshoe shape. A performance lasts between ten and twelve minutes.

The work begins with a single voice from the first choir, which others imitate and then fall silent one after the other, so that the singing moves through the eight choirs. All forty voices are heard briefly, and then the initial pattern is repeated backwards so that the singing returns from the eighth to the first choir. After another short sequence in which all voices sound, the choirs toss the sound in pairs across the room. Finally all the voices sound again at the climax of the motet.

Although Spem in alium is written in an imitative style and is occasionally homophonic , the individual vocal lines work quite freely in the simple harmonic framework of the work and thus enable the expression of an astonishing variety of musical ideas. The motet is characterized by its contrasts: the individual voices sound and fall silent in turn - sometimes alone, sometimes in a choir, sometimes asking and answering, sometimes all together. So the work constantly brings new ideas to the listener. This, coupled with the unusual way of performing in which the singers surround the audience, can be overwhelming.

Spem in alium is not performed often because it calls for at least forty singers who meet the technical requirements of the work. The rehearsal effort is high compared to the duration of the performance. Forms of performance in which the singers are distributed in a large room, often without visual contact with one another, require special discipline and present additional acoustic challenges.

text

The text comes from a responsory of the Sarum custom at that time (from Matutin , for the third reading, in the fifth week of September), which is based on the deuterocanonical or apocryphal book of Judith (8.20 EU and 6.19 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 put my hope in anyone but you, God of Israel, to whom you will be angry and yet again be gracious, and to whom you will forgive all the sins of the suffering person. God, our Lord, Creator of heaven and earth, look at our lowliness. "

Recordings and performances

The installation Forty-Part Motet by Janet Cardiff

Recordings of the work include those of the Winchester Cathedral Choir , Tallis Scholars , 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 Clerkes of Oxenford , Cantillation , Huelgas Ensemble and Philip Cave's Magnificat . In a recording from 2006, the six-member male ensemble The King's Singers sings all forty voices in a multitrack recording. Also in 2006 the BBC organized what is probably the largest performance of Spem in alium at Bridgewater Hall , Manchester , with 700 singers . Many of the participating amateur singers had never sung the work before.

The Kronos Quartet included an instrumental version of the motet in their album Black Angels . Cellist Peter Gregson has released a multitrack recording in which he plays all forty voices himself. 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 of which can be enjoyed individually or together.

Spem in alium has inspired several modern composers to write forty-part motets, such as Giles Swayne ( The Silent Land , 1998), Jaakko Mäntyjärvi ( Tentatio , 2006) and Peter McGarr ( Love You Big as the Sky , 2007). Mäntyjärvis and McGarr's compositions were commissioned by the Tallis Festival in London, a choir festival inspired by Spem in alium .

literature

  • Paul Doe: Tallis (= Oxford Studies of composers. 4). Oxford University Press, Oxford 1968.
  • Davitt Moroney: Alessandro Striggio's Mass in Forty and Sixty Parts. In: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 60 No. 1, Spring 2007, ISSN  0003-0139 , pp. 1-69.
  • Elisabeth Richter: Spem in alium. In: Hans Gebhard (Ed.): Harenberg Chormusikführer. Harenberg, Dortmund 1999, ISBN 3-611-00817-6 , pp. 871-872.
  • Markus Roth: Organizational forms of polyphonic polyphony. Thomas Tallis' motet Spem in alium nunquam habui. In: Musik & Ästhetik 2 (1998), no. 7, pp. 5–20.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Suzanne Cole: Thomas Tallis and his music in Victorian England . Boydell, Woodbridge 2008, ISBN 978-1-84383-380-2 , pp. 97–129 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ Moroney, p. 28-33
  3. ↑ Thomas Kahlcke, in the booklet for The Tallis Scholars: Best of the Renaissance (Philips 1999)
  4. ↑ George Steel: The Story of Spem in alium Archived from the original on April 26, 2009. In: Andante . March 2002. Retrieved March 14, 2012.
  5. ^ People's Chorus . BBC. Archived from the original on May 11, 2008. Retrieved March 21, 2012.
  6. ↑ BBC FOUR Autumn 2006: The People's Chorus . BBC. Retrieved March 22, 2012.
  7. ↑ Spem in Alium for 1000 voices: Singing in 'The People's Chorus', Bridgewater Hall, Manchester 06/10/2006 . MusicWeb. Retrieved March 23, 2012.