{"id":115,"date":"2005-07-18T13:14:49","date_gmt":"2005-07-18T13:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vhkssinging.wordpress.com\/2005\/07\/18\/pieces-ive-sung-spem-in-alium\/"},"modified":"2017-02-12T21:46:51","modified_gmt":"2017-02-12T21:46:51","slug":"pieces-ive-sung-spem-in-alium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/2005\/07\/18\/pieces-ive-sung-spem-in-alium\/","title":{"rendered":"pieces I’ve sung: Spem in Alium"},"content":{"rendered":"

A comment on my last posting<\/a> prompts me to write about Tallis’ Spem in Alium<\/i>. This was something of a cult piece when I was in Cambridge and all three performances I’ve sung in were there. The only one under really satisfactory conditions (I had a soprano line to myself) was at a wedding (!). Another was with the Cambridge Taverner Choir, transposed up a tone; I sang an alto line and struggled to project it when it went below the stave. The third involved more than forty performers and I shared the soprano 1 part with another singer – unfortunately the parts had been assigned in an arbitrary way so that those who had a line to themselves could not necessarily hold it!<\/p>\n

Performances don’t seem to happen so often in these parts and were virtually unknown in Manchester when I lived there (and I suppose if they hadn’t been the soprano parts would have been taken by the eight sopranos who sang in everything).<\/p>\n

I have rather mixed feelings about Spem as a piece of music. It doesn’t come over well on a recording (I’ll describe an exception to this below). Even in live performance I find much of the interest comes from seeing how the music is distributed around the eight choirs rather than in the vocal lines themselves, although they are more rhythmically complex than one might think.<\/p>\n

A few years ago there was an installation in the cloisters at Salisbury Cathedral. A performance of Spem had been recorded, Swingle-style, with one microphone per singer. The resulting forty tracks were played through forty speakers, arranged at about head height on stands and disposed as the singers would be in performance. Visitors to the Cathedral found this intriguing and wandered round the eight groups of five speakers. I enjoyed it too, though for me the experience was nothing new – it was like being in the middle of a choir performing the work.<\/p>\n

It’s so long since I’ve sung this piece and my score of it is gathering dust propped up awkwardly in a corner. I’d love to explore one of the soprano lines I haven’t done (that is, any except first and fifth choirs).<\/p>\n

[I did get to sing it in April 2009. Read about it here<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A comment on my last posting prompts me to write about Tallis’ Spem in Alium. This was something of a cult piece when I was in Cambridge and all three performances I’ve sung in were there. The only one under … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[1128,1127,44,114],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4561,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/4561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.virginiaknight.org.uk\/vhkssinging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}