Music
Ten-minute earthquake
Peter Phillips
You could say that if Tallis's 40-part motet Spem in alium didn't exist it would be necessary to invent it, but then one quickly realises that it is uninventable. I don't believe anyone now, whether computer-aided or not, could conceive it, and that is not just because styles have changed. Apart from the sheer audacity of setting out to write a ten-minute piece which proceeds for much of its length in 40 real or independent parts, subject to the strict rules of Renaissance composition, there is the achievement of making the actual detail of all those parts fascinating to follow. To give some comparison from recent times: Strauss's Metamoiphosen is nominally scored for 23 solo strings, a tour de force of contrapuntal elaboration within the confines of tonality, yet because of the constant doublings and movement at the octave Strauss rarely worked with more than six separate lines. There is no doub- ling of the melodies in the Tallis at any point.
As if to support its almost mythical sta- tus, very little is known about the origins of Spem. I rather like the idea that Tallis con- sidered the Biblical number 40 posed him the ultimate challenge of a long and distin- guished career, and was egged on by having heard a very mediocre 40-part motet by the Italian composer Alessandro Striggio, who maybe had proceeded from the same Bibli-
cal starting-point. The project was
well beyond Striggio, as Tallis must instantly have perceived, and perhaps he decided to outdo it. Scholarly debate on the subject turns on the theory that Tallis wrote his piece to celebrate the 40th birthday of a monarch (both Mary and Elizabeth were on the throne at 40), but nobody knows. Nor does anyone know how Tallis was physically able to write down so many sepa- rate lines, given the rather eccentric way that music was transmitted in those days; and, since not a single note of any piece by Tallis has survived in his handwriting, that mystery will not be resolved either. Performances of Spem are still very rare. For choirs which cannot trust their mem- bers to hold a line of Renaissance polypho- ny by themselves, the optimum number of singers will be at least 120; for those which can, 40 parts will probably necessitate call- ing in a number of extras: a fully profes- sional performance is extremely expensive. And there is the slightly embarrassing fact that the piece only lasts ten minutes: a long time looking at it from Tallis's point of view, not so long when it has taken months for the local Choral Society to learn the notes.
The first modern performance of Span that I've been able to trace was given by the Cambridge University Musical Society under Boris Ord in King's Chapel around 1935. The first recording was made by the Morley College Choir under Michael Tip- pett in 1948. This was a curious production by current standards, recorded on three sides of two 78s, which, since no editing was possible, necessitated everyone stop- ping unanimously at the predetermined point representing the end of the side, and starting again unanimously afterwards. This trick eluded them. The 1960s CUMS recording under David Willcox was, I sup- pose, the watershed which eventually led to the establishment of Spem as a fairly nor- mal repertoire piece. There are about six recordings of it in the catalogue at the moment.
Last week the Tallis Scholars gave the first fully professional performance of Spem in my experience outside the UK, at the Bremen Festival, made possible by the financial intervention of Mercedes-Benz, aided by the collapse of the pound. In order to give value for money we sang the motet twice. In the first of these perfor- mances I made a mistake which I have never made before and shall never make again: I added a beat before the great `Respice' chord. When I realised what I d done, I felt as if I were standing in a cathe- dral during a medium-strength earthquake. Total destruction of the vast edifice was somehow averted, though I can feel the shock waves still. However, whatever I caused to be heard that night, it was proba- bly more than Tallis ever heard. There !s no evidence of any performance during ills lifetime. Spem probably remained all in his mind.
Previous page
