[Artist] Janet Cardiff and George Bures Muller
[Date] 2/24/2009―5/17/2009
The Forty Part Motet
“While listening to a concert you are normally seated in front of the choir, in traditional audience position. With this piece I want the audience to be able to experience a piece of music from the viewpoint of the singers. Every performer hears a unique mix of the piece of music. Enabling the audience to move throughout the space allows them to be intimately connected with the voices. It also reveals the piece of music as a changing construct. As well I am interested in how sound may physically construct a space in a sculptural way and how a viewer may choose a path through this physical yet virtual space.”
“I placed the speakers around the room in an oval so that the listener would be able to really feel the sculptural construction of the piece by Tallis. You can hear the sound move from one choir to another, jumping back and forth, echoing each other and then experience the overwhelming feeling as the sound waves hit you when all of the singers are singing.”
The Forty Part Motet is based on the renaissance choral music Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis (1514-1585). Forty separately recorded voices are played back through forty speakers strategically placed throughout the space.
Thomas Tallis was the most influential English composer of his generation and is one of the most popular renaissance composers of today. He served as an organist to four English monarchs – Henry VIII, Edward VI, Queens Mary and Elizabeth – as a gentleman of the Chapel Royal. One of his greatest works was this composition for forty parts – eight choirs of five voices. It is suggested that this was written on the occasion of the 40th birthday of Queen Elizabeth I in 1573, to emphasize humility in the context of her suppression of the Catholic faith.