Tallis's Spem in alium, a forty-voice motet, features all forty voices entering together for the first time at the fortieth semibreve, and its duration of 69 longs corresponds to the numerical value of TALLIS in the Latin alphabet.
Composition History
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi wrote his Stabat mater in the last months of his life while residing at a Franciscan monastery, preparing for his death.
Cultural Impact
Allegri's nine-part Miserere, a psalm-setting for the papal choir, was famously copied out from memory by the fourteen-year-old Mozart in 1770.
Composer Biography
Thomas Tallis, one of the finest English composers of his generation, served four monarchs (Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth) as a singer, organist, choir trainer, and composer.
Composition History
Tallis's forty-voice motet, Spem in alium, was composed after a music-loving Duke challenged English composers to create a piece as good as Alessandro Striggio's forty-part motet.
Composer Biography
Gregorio Allegri, a chorister trained in Rome, became a singer in the papal chapel of Pope Urban VIII in 1630.
Recording & Production
This recording of Tallis's Spem in alium uses a 'surround sound' arrangement, with the forty voices positioned to form four sides of a huge St-Chad cross.
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