I know in this age of Lady Gaga, this is not going to be for everybody, but I was playing a little ditty in the car going to work this morning and before it was over, I was nearly welling up - in a good way. Some music has that effect on me.The little ditty, with the Latin title, "Spem in Alium", is a piece that was written around 1570 by Thomas Tallis. And anyone conducting this thing is earning his pay; Tallis wrote the piece to be performed by eight choirs of five people, or forty voices total. Now, those voices come in and out of the song, so it's not like everybody's in the game all the time. This is the absolute charm to the piece for me; it just unfolds and reforms itself over the eight or nine minutes it takes to waft through it. To my ears, it is absolutely gorgeous and spellbinding.
Thomas TallisIt is generally sung in Latin, but roughly translated to English, the lyrics go something like this:
- I have never put my hope in any other but in you,
- O God of Israel
- who can show both anger
- and graciousness,
- and who absolves all the sins of suffering man
- Lord God,
- Creator of Heaven and Earth
- be mindful of our lowliness
Most versions feature men's and women's voices. In the video you can watch by clicking here, it was tackled, I think quite successfully, by the all-men King's Singers. Collectively, they have quite a range, occasionally reaching the upper stratosphere.
clever cover: images of 40 guysAgain, this may not be your style. But I think that if you let it reveal itself to you, you just may be as spellbound as I am.
8 comments:
This is the same composer that wrote "Tallis' Canon"
I'll have to check this one out.
Ben, that was amazing! So beautiful--that was truly what I would call "making a joyful noise." Thanks for sharing it.
Yes, "Spem in Alium" is great stuff. The Renaissance must have been so incredibly strangely different from our own time to have produced such otherworldly music.
Naxosdirect.com had the Oxford Camerata's SACD surround sound version of this on sale for $2.98 a few months back, so I bought one for myself and one for my sister in law who sings in the Capitol Hill Chorale in DC. It is a full immersion surround recording with the eight choirs distributed around the full 360 degrees. Wow !!!!! Also included is another motet, a mass and some English songs for 77 minutes total.
It's amazing to me that Naxos is closing out its surround sound inventories (both SACD and DVD). Part of the "Lady GaGa" 21st century transition seems to be music delivered solely via MP3 and IPods through intravenious earbuds. But SACDs are thriving on small classical music labels - the long tail - and with BluRay the future looks bright, technologically at least.
Also check out Ralph Vaughn Williams' 20th century orchestral take on this music, his gorgeous Tallis Fantasia, which blurs the line between modern and ancient as well as any music ever.
Naxos is still selling the DVD-Audio version of this for $15 (same great surround sound):
http://www.naxosdirect.com/TALLIS-Spem-in-alium--Missa-Salve-intemerata/title/6110111/
Buy 5 discs and get free shipping.
It's slower than Ben's version (over 12 minutes) and includes women.
Nice.
This is beautiful Ben, thanks for writing about it. I love the ebb and flow. I also appreciate that your translated the essence for us. Music speaks to our soul. I'm going to read up some more on this. I've been doing Tune in Thursdays, covering whatever song or music I feel like bloggin' about. It's nice.
Hope you're having a great weekend!
the King's singers...was there an old vinyl of them in grampa's house? I seem to remember seeing it there...anyway, i'll give this a listen
William - I think you're right. Pretty sure they went and heard 'em live once, too.
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