CJ Replay: Spem in Alium

(From the Choral Journal article, “Thomas Tallis’ Spem in Alium Nun Quam: Grandur in 40 Parts,” by Brock McEhleran.)

 

       There is only one lasting problem in performing Tallis’s celebrated motet – for the rest of one’s life a great deal of Renaissance music has been spoiled. Everyone I know who has conducted or sung this glorious piece finds that no other work of the period matches the thrill of performing “Spem”. It is not just its vast scale, but its hypnotic, stately, irresistible, procession-like movement, its harmonic audacity, its spell-binding antiphony, and its proliferation of exquisite detail, that dwarf anything written before the St. Matthew Passion, in this writer’s opinion.

       The early history of the work is murky. The best educated guess is that it was composed in the last quarter of the 16th century; suffice to say it exists today in a painstakingly edited version, as revised in 1966; the publisher is Oxford University Press.

       The work is written for eight 5-part choirs of S., A., T., Bar. and B. It begins with one note in the altos of Choir I, followed by the sopranos. After a short duet in Mixolydian mode, the altos of Choir II join in, soon followed by the other voices of Choirs I and II. The work slowly adds parts until Choir Venters at bar 23. Then the first choirs gradually stop, but the procession of sound moves inexorably around the hall as the remaining choirs enter in turn.