Thomas Tallis

[smittims]

Sorry to keep disagreeing with you. Mandryka, but I've just looked at the score of 'Spem in Alium' and can't find any passage where even one voice of one choir doubles a voice of another choir for more than the odd bar, inevitable in a diatonic piece. In the next bar, invariably, they're off on their own phrase. Of course, there are only few pages where the whole forty voices are heard at once.

I did genuinely wonder if you were confusing it with Allegri's 'Miserere' , which sometimes appears on the same CD, as your initial description fits that piece so well!

[Bryn]

It's not a version that I would not normally recommend but the lack of vocal sounds might make the Kronos Quartet's arrangement a route in for Mandryka, though it does, perhaps, lend the work at least a hint of Pärt.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFl875yOgpY)
.

[Mandryka]

Sorry to keep disagreeing with you. Mandryka, but I've just looked at the score of 'Spem in Alium' and can't find any passage where even one voice of one choir doubles a voice of another choir for more than the odd bar, inevitable in a diatonic piece. In the next bar, invariably, they're off on their own phrase. Of course, there are only few pages where the whole forty voices are heard at once.

It would be a shame to let a mere fact get in the way of a good argument!

[Mandryka]

It's not a version that I would not normally recommend but the lack of vocal sounds might make the Kronos Quartet's arrangement a route in for Mandryka, though it does, perhaps, lend the work at least a hint of Pärt.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFl875yOgpY)
.

Ha. That prompted me to look for other instrumental versions and, inevitably, I came across Noel Akchoté.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wcvuOjQOFQ&list=OLAK5uy_m-7h_KS5RZ0i-HQ81Id1F-CgDjXBk9n9A&ab_channel=No%C3%ABlAkchot%C3%A9-Topic

Any takers?

[smittims]

Thanks, Mandryka.

I wonder if the liking for hearing it 'in the round' is hallowed in history, as I'm not sure this is implied anywhere in the work itself. It's often assumed that stereophony is written-in to it.

John Amis, who was present at the first recording of the work at Abbey Road in 1948, gave an amusing but illuminating account of Michael Tippett's conducting on that occasion, part of which was reprinted in the notes to a NMC CD when it was reissued. Tippett went on to conduct a public perfromance at the Festival of Britain.

[DracoM]

Any evidence that Tallis or indeed any of his contemporaries actually heard Spem in Alium? OR one wonders if Tallis himself ever planned to / thought he WOULD hear it 'live' - as it were?

[JasonPalmer]

Five part litany on now, for this bloke really into church music eh

[smittims]

Good point, DracoM. I studied Renaissance polyphony at University, but that was fifty years ago. Even reading sleeve notes of Hyperion CDs convinces me that a vast amount of research into performance practice has been done since.

When Philip Brett edited the 1966 OUP edition of the score he pointed out that the earliest source was a manuscript dated probably over twenty years after Tallis' death, and set to secular words celebrating James I's two sons Henry and Charles (Henry died young, Charles became the ill-fated Charles I). That suggests that there was a performance at that time, but just how it would be done I cannot guess.

[W.Kearns]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hxlr

His life-story is a bit of a mystery. Digging by some energetic PhD student needed?

Back in the 1970s as a horrible precocious teen, I wrote a piece about him which - to my great excitement - appeared in the Waltham Abbey parish mag. As far as I remember, it was a re-hash of various encyclopaedia entries. Hearty cheers to John Harley and Kerry McCarthy for putting him at the heart of substantial-sounding books.

[Mandryka]

There are two instrumental works called "Felix Namque" attributed to Tallis in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, both quite long. The second has been performed on a lute, it's in the complete Tallis on Brilliant Classics -- I'm not sure who's playing. It's rather nice -- here

https://open.spotify.com/track/3U1TtwcNFxx24Ty6A1PbYC?si=39977a9f75c7471b

[Mandryka]

Fretwork's first recording included Tallis's consort music. There's a freshness and sense of discovery about the performances, worth a listen at least

https://www.discogs.com/release/10662045-Fretwork-In-Nomine-16th-C-English-Music-For-Viols-Including-The-Complete-Consort-Music-Of-Thomas-Tal

[Bryn]

The reworking for King Charles I was revived at St Paul's Cathedral for some occasion linked to King Charles III when he was formerly known as Prince. I might still have it on cassette, somewhere.

[mopsus]

When I've been asked by ambitious couples to sing Spem at a wedding, I've often thought that the substitute words (with the names of the bride and groom replacing those of the two princes) would be appropriate. The original words certainly aren't!