Sunday, February 05, 2006
Spem in Alium
Spem in Alium is a 40-part motet by Thomas Tallis. For those of you who do not know about such things- and I did not till very recently- that means that there are 40 different 'voices' in eight choirs of at least five singers each. I spent yesterday at a workshop run by the Lincoln Early Music Festival where we learned the piece and then performed it in the evening in Lincoln Cathedral's retrochoir. At this site you can hear a rather tinkly electronic version without the words but the score you can see while it is playing shows you how the parts come in and out. We stood in a huge semi-circle to sing it so the sound went round the circle and back which was cool and would have been even better had we sung it better! (We also sang Archbishop Parker's Psalter which is included- or a bit of it- in the BBC site about Tallis. And- to explain the picture- we also had some music on crumhorns and recorders by Bergamasca who are members of the LIncoln Early Music set. ) If you want to hear it properly then Naxos now do a surround-sound DVD of Spem, an interesting mix of new technology and very early music!
Spem in Alium was very hard- at lunchtime I wanted to give up and go home- but I persevered and with the support of the friends I went with and the help of the other very generous altos in choir 1 I got through it without making too much of a mess. It was interesting to be in a situation of being a frustrated learner and to feel so useless and to reflect on whether the workshop was too hard or the teaching style not right (probably a bit of both) and of course great to come out the other side. Also it reminded me of how utterly something like this takes me away from all everyday concerns as I can only think about the music. No multi-tasking in this situation!
# posted by Mary Plain @ 6:31 pm 
