At 10am GMT on each day of Advent I have been posting a video of a piece which, in my opinion, celebrates the best of music made by the human voice – with the occasional quirky video thrown in for good measure! You can catch up with the full Choral Christmas here.

Introducing Spem in Alium:

Thomas Tallis: Spem in Alium, performed by the King’s Singers

For this final day of my choral advent calendar, I wanted you to be able to see the performers singing, rather than a still abstract image or album cover. So, we see this piece intended for 40 voices performed by just six, using multi-tracking to stitch together several different performances.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to listen to the Audioboo above before enjoying the piece, and that you might feel that Reprieve is a worthy cause to donate to at this time of year.

In all it’s taken about three days – three consecutive Saturdays – to produce this series of blogposts. It’s been something of a labour of love. The overall traffic to the posts hasn’t been huge, but within the visits that there have been there have been a lot of tweets favourited, and recurring web visits. It’s been wonderful to know that people out there have appreciated some or all of the tracks, and I hope given the breadth of music covered there has been something for everyone. I heard many of the pieces for the first time when researching this series.

And, of course, there were the videos I would have liked to include but couldn’t. If you aren’t all sung out by now, I send you on your way with links to three bonus performances from the Tallis Scholars of Allegri, Byrd, and Palestrina.

Whether you came along for one day, or all twenty-four, thank you. Have a restful, peaceful, and very happy Christmas.

It’s a precious thing to hear a piece of music which never leaves you. To be absolutely confident that you know and may never forget every twist of the soundscape. For me there is only one work that has so comprehensively captured my soul, and burnt itself in to my memory. It goes by the title Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui Prater In Te Deus Israel – I have never placed my hope in any other but you God of Israel. More digestibly it is simply Spem in Alium.

Hearing that piece for the first time at the BBC Proms of 2005 ignited a love affair with its composer Thomas Tallis, that has stayed with me ever since. This coming week, BBC Radio 3 profile Thomas Tallis as their Composer Of The Week (thank you Scott). No doubt they will tell the story of Tallis’s masterpiece, Spem in Alium.

As direct historical records regarding Tallis are so sketchy, we often have to interpret and extrapolate from circumstantial evidence. Here, for what it’s worth, is my take on how Spem in Alium came in to being. My puny efforts at the British Library notwithstanding, Radio 3′s take will no doubt be better researched! Do have a listen.

The world around Tallis

The 16th century transformed the face of our planet, with repercussions still visible today.

As religious wars scorched continents, so too a fire of Renaissance arts and culture blazed out of Italy. Rome was devising a new “Gregorian” calendar – to all intents and purposes the calendar we use today. Time itself was changing, and the new calendar quickly spread its wings across Europe and beyond.

Burgeoning sea travel and the rapid expansion of trading markets saw many things spread faster and wider than they ever had before. Everything from the new calendar, to Smallpox. National boundaries were ever more hotly defended even as their lines, their power, and their meaning, were disintegrating.

A new breed of ambitious rulers, not least among them our own Henry VIII, were turning their eyes and ambitions overseas as never before. Not only to the neighbouring country, but to continents beyond. Dukes could concern themselves with county matters, the country increasingly in the hands of senior nobility and even a fledgling civil service. British monarchs looked abroad, and for the first time they saw the whole globe.

As Francis Drake departed Plymouth on a cold December morning in 1577 to circumnavigate globe, another man was ascendant over all others in his own chosen field – the creation of music for Monarchs. At the height of his powers was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, the greatest composer of the day, Thomas Tallis.

Tallis the great

There, wearing a cap and working on what presumably is a musical score, is Tallis. Although sorry to say if he actually looked like that the likeness is quite by chance. This figure, which forms part of the Frieze of Parnassus at the base of the Albert Memorial in London was sculpted in the nineteenth century by Henry Hugh Armstead, with only a portrait of Tallis’ face from which to create this full likeness of the man. There’s considerable doubt over whether the creator of that portrait, in turn, ever saw the real face of Tallis.

Whether Tallis would recognise his features among this crowd we’ll never know. We’ll also never know whether he would have felt humbled or vindicated to appear among such illustrious company, for Tallis appears here a celebrated figure in a tableaux of the finest culture known to the Victorians. Grouped with English composers who followed him, Tallis’s score is held by William Lawes as Orlando Gibbons, in the middle, looks on. I must admit I enjoy the conceit that this trio of now lesser-known British composers appear to have turned their backs on, almost to be shunning, no lesser figures than Ludwig Van Beethoven to their right, and Henry Purcell to their left.

This monument celebrates Victoria and Victoriana at the heights of its powers, and for Tallis it is the the end of his story – immortalised in marble as Tallis the great composer.

By chance it was just over the road from the Albert Memorial, in the Royal Albert Hall, that I first heard Spem – by far and away the most prominent work of Tallis’s musical legacy.

Music of power and politics

Back in the sixteenth century, and ten years before Drake set sail for his epic circumnavigation, another prominent figure of the day was busy navigating the difficult political waters of England.

In 1567, from his vantage point high on a hill at Arundel Castle in Sussex, the fourth Duke of Norfolk must have felt exposed in more ways than one. The Duke, Thomas Howard, who in his early life had professed himself to be Catholic now served a Protestant Queen, Elizabeth I.

Despite new-found protestations of protestantism, Norfolk found himself overlooked by his monarch. So, proud and keen to restore himself to prominence, he supported an uprising against Elizabeth to be led by the Gentry of Northumberland and Durham. Their goal was to place Elizabeth’s cousin Mary on the throne, and in so doing return England to Catholicism, reverse the protestant scourge, return the Church of England to Rome, and steady their political fortunes.

As Norfolk schemed, a thirty year old Italian aristocrat by the name of Allesandro Striggio – a diplomat and young jewel of the Italian Renaissance – was walking England’s shores. As much as he was engaged in diplomacy, Striggio was to a degree on tour, showing off his latest compositions. Among them were two incredible works for thirty, forty, or even sixty individual singing voices. It was polyphonic music unlike anything heard before, and it was music which was to reach the ears of the Duke of Norfolk.

When the uprising in which Norfolk had placed his hopes failed, he was left in a precarious position. He opted to throw in his lot entirely with the Catholic insurgence, conspiring to wed Mary Queen of Scots, the cousin Elizabeth loved, adored, hated, and feared. It was a union which would have threatened in time to topple Elizabeth from a throne which already seemed to her highly unsteady. When Elizabeth learned of the proposed marriage, she forbad it, and slung Norfolk in jail.

At some point in these difficult years, as he fought to gain or regain the trust of his monarch, Norfolk recalled Striggio’s mighty music. Perhaps with an eye to his political standing, perhaps even with a mind to preserving his life, he settled upon commissioning a gift of song for his Queen. It was to be a piece which would surpass Striggio’s scores, and in so doing shine brighter than the very finest of Italian renaissance choral music. According to one contemporary account, Norfolk

“asked whether none of our English men could sett as good a songe [as Striggio], and Tallice beinge very skillful was felt to try whether he would undertake the Matter”

This Tallis did, in extraordinary style, and the piece was first performed at Arundel.

What Norfolk made of Spem in Alium, we don’t know. What his audience made of the piece, we don’t know. What Elizabeth herself made of it, we don’t know. But within two years of being released from his prison cell, Norfolk was dead. Executed for treason, this time accused of conspiring with the King of Spain again to place Mary on the throne. His titles and lands were forfeit, and the name of Howard slipped in to noble insignificance for four generations.

Norfolk went to the block little realising he would leave his own global mark, a centuries-lasting legacy in the form of his high-stakes musical commission.

Thirteen years later, when Tallis himself passed on, his pupil and partner William Byrd wrote a stark musical eulogy, ending desperately “Tallis is dead, and music dies.” It is the perfect footnote to the life of an extraordinary composer. Have a listen.

Quite often I find myself driving home in the late evening, listening to Sue Marchant on radio Suffolk. One of her set piece questions is to ask her main guest where in time and space they would choose to travel if they could make a single trip in a TARDIS. It is a question that is simultaneously rather narrow (even geeky), and huge (sometimes inspirational) in scope.

I know what my answer would be. To the Chapel Royal of 1568, and lunch with Thomas Tallis. Like many enthusiasts of Tallis and his incredible composition Spem in Alium, I have questions I’d like to put to him. Not least of which is the piece’s relationship with Allesandro Striggio’s Ecce Beatam Lucem (embedded above).

Historial records indicate that Ecce was composed for a first performance in 1561, possibly a royal wedding. So far as we know, Spem was first performed seven or eight years later at Arundel house. As relatively little is known about the history of Spem a plausible if not definitive theory has gained currency – namely that the Duke of Norfolk, on becoming aware of Striggio’s work, commissioned Tallis to compose a work of equal or greater scale and complexity as a birthday gift to Elizabeth I.

While Tallis’s work makes a more finely developed use of counterpoint and spine-tingling antiphone, has seen greater enduring success, and could be argued to be technically superior, I prefer (on no rational basis whatsoever) to see the pieces as siblings. For example, both use the same technique of building steadily to great tutti moments – Striggio on the “O” of O mel et dulce nectar (oh honey of sweet nectar), and Tallis on the “respice” of respice humilitatem nostram (look upon our humiliation / lowliness).

But the killer commonality is the modesty. For me you will find it in the score of Ecce, and in the story of Spem. At the time he chose the words to use as a basis of  Spem in Alium, a plea to the almighty to watch over us in our lowliness, Tallis was at the zenith of his career – a musical giant who had survived numerous seismic shifts in the religious and political fabric of England. He could have been forgiven an inclination towards triumphalism, particularly given his royal audience.

When I listen to Ecce Beatam Lucem it is the last minute which blows me away. The whole piece is a joy on the ears, but as the piece approaches what could be a rousing finale with the words “This delight, this peace, this goal, this mark. Draw us from here straight to Paradise” the dynamics take the deliciously unexpected turn of slipping away from us – ever diminishing until the final word paradisum -paradise – is almost a whisper. There are no such dynamics written in to the scores I have. I would love to know if this is interpretation, or the will of the composer. In either case it’s little short of genius.

Regular readers of my blog will know that I am an enthusiast of Thomas Tallis’s work for fourety voices, Spem in Alium. If you haven’t heard it performed live there is an opportunity coming up in just a few weeks, for those who have no objection to attending evensong.

If you are north of the border you can hear Spem in Scotland on 2 July at the East Neuk festival, I’ll be there at the generous invitation of friends.

Then a week later there is what true artists call “a real humdinger” of a concert at Southwark Cathedral. I’ll be attending this one too – it will be very interesting to hear how the forty individual voices are able to fill a space as cavernous as Southwark.

I had planned to go on a pilgrimage of the significant places in the life of Thomas Tallis this Summer, to add some sense of emotional and geographical connection to my amateur study of his forty-part motet Spem in Alium. If you’re not familiar with the piece you can find a version here, though at 12 minutes long its about 2 mins too long for me.

So far, my pilgrimage hasn’t been possible – the year has been busy, and I’ve been learning more about the piece and its composer at a rate which has lead to a constantly changing stream of thoughts and opinions, each needing further work to understand better. I’d like my thoughts on the piece to have settled down a little before going to the places of Tallis’s life and death. In particular, if there is anyone out there of a historical bent who could make an educated guess as to the probable locations of Court in the years 1568/69, I’d really like to hear from you.

In the meantime, some of you might enjoy sharing this moment i just recorded where I indulge in the idea of an eighty party motet. I should’ve done my hair. I could’ve been less effusive. I shouldn’t peer over my glasses. Singing was a mistake. It could probably have used a script, but I thought I’d just fire up the camera and record this moment of late-night Bank Holiday early music geekery. Enjoy.

Update: I have heard a couple of people be quite sniffy about the King’s Singers version of Spem. They are, whisper it….. populist.

As there are only six singers in the group, they used multi-tracking to produce their recording. I find it one of the most interesting recordings. Fascinated then to see that they made a video when recording it, which gives some sense of the technical complexity (though a minor gripe is that it doesn’t show off the key antiphonal moments well). These guys either have an incredible sense of timing, or a metronome ticking in their headphones!

I’d love to hear from anyone in the BBC who can help me to access a couple of shows from the archives.

Earlier this year I promised myself I would take a tour – a pilgrimage if you like – of the key places in the life of Thomas Tallis, centered around a study of his fourty part motet Spem in Alium.

I am now trying to get my act together to do this, and would like to access / get a copy of two programmes – one is a specific episode of Radio 4′s Soul Music, and the other is a BBC four programme of a 1000 strong performance of Spem recorded in Manchester in 2006.

If anyone can tell me how I might lay my hands/eyes/ears on these programmes, I’ll be forever in your debt – please leave a blog comment, or perhaps drop me an email?