Spem in alium (Thomas Tallis)

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Full score

Editor: Philip Legge (submitted 2004-11-28).   Score information: A4, 25 pages, 421 kilobytes (KB)   Copyright: © 2004 Philip Legge; CPDL
Edition notes: Full score, all eight SATBarB choirs, 40 staves per page. A4 format, but should be printed or enlarged to A3 format. Individual parts also available below. Minor revision posted on 8 April 2006 to fix two known errata: missing underlay in Alto 6 in bars 74-76, and a breve rest mistakenly left as a semibreve in Tenor 1 in bar 110.

Partbooks

  • 8 Soprano parts: CPDL #8553: Icon_pdf.gif (189 KB).
  • 8 Alto parts: CPDL #8554: Icon_pdf.gif (198 KB).
  • 8 Tenor parts: CPDL #8555: Icon_pdf.gif (192 KB).
  • 8 Baritone parts: CPDL #8556: Icon_pdf.gif (190 KB).
  • 8 Bass parts: CPDL #8557: Icon_pdf.gif (167 KB).
Editor: Philip Legge (submitted 2004-11-28).   Score information: A4, 25 pages   Copyright: © 2004, 2006 Philip Legge; CPDL
Edition notes: Each partbook contains eight equal voices, one from each of the eight choirs. Pagination of partbooks is identical to full score above. A thorough bass part is provided, which indicates the lowest sounding notes being sung. Partbooks now include a second set of text: the English contrafactum Sing and glorify that was sung for the coronation of Henry, Prince of Wales, in 1610.

Individual chorus scores (other parts reduced)

  • Chorus 1 parts: CPDL #1151: Icon_pdf.gif (396 KB).
  • Chorus 2 parts: CPDL #1152: Icon_pdf.gif (400 KB).
  • Chorus 3 parts: CPDL #1153: Icon_pdf.gif (400 KB).
  • Chorus 4 parts: CPDL #1154: Icon_pdf.gif (400 KB).
  • Chorus 5 parts: CPDL #1155: Icon_pdf.gif (400 KB).
  • Chorus 6 parts: CPDL #1156: Icon_pdf.gif (400 KB).
  • Chorus 7 parts: CPDL #1157: Icon_pdf.gif (396 KB).
  • Chorus 8 parts: CPDL #1158: Icon_pdf.gif (392 KB).
Editor: David K. Means (submitted 2000-07-19).   Score information: Letter size, 34 pages   Copyright: CPDL
Edition notes: Individual chorus parts, with the other 7 choral parts in reduction. Pagination of each choir score is identical.

Individual chorus scores (no reductions)

  • Chorus 1 parts: CPDL #11073: Icon_pdf.gif (7 pages, 136 kbytes).
  • Chorus 2 parts: CPDL #11074: Icon_pdf.gif (7 pages, 140 kbytes).
  • Chorus 3 parts: CPDL #11075: Icon_pdf.gif (7 pages, 132 kbytes).
  • Chorus 4 parts: CPDL #11076: Icon_pdf.gif (7 pages, 130 kbytes).
  • Chorus 5 parts: CPDL #11077: Icon_pdf.gif (7 pages, 128 kbytes).
  • Chorus 6 parts: CPDL #11078: Icon_pdf.gif (6 pages, 126 kbytes).
  • Chorus 7 parts: CPDL #11079: Icon_pdf.gif (6 pages, 114 kbytes).
  • Chorus 8 parts: CPDL #11080: Icon_pdf.gif (5 pages, 110 kbytes).
Editor: Sabine Cassola (submitted 2006-02-25).   Score information:A4   Copyright: © SMC 1997
Edition notes:

General Information

Title: Spem in alium nunquam habui
Composer: Thomas Tallis

Number of voices: 40vv  Voicing: 8 choirs × SATBarB
Genre: Sacred, Motet

Language: Latin

Instruments: a cappella
, but may be accompanied by an organ thorough bass ad libitum.

Description: One of a very small number of extant 40–part motets dating from the 16th Century, another being Alessandro Striggio Sr's Ecce beatam lucem.

N.B. This motet is not the source for Palestrina's Missa Spem in alium, published almost contemporaneously in 1570. Palestrina's parody mass is based on a 4–part motet with a similar text, by Jacquet of Mantua (Jacques Colebault), dating from 1539.

External Websites

Performance of Spem in Alium by the dwsChorale

Original text and translations

Notes on source

No manuscripts of the original Latin motet are known to exist; the earliest copies preserved were made in the early 17th Century during the reign of James I, when an English contrafactum was made for the investiture of Henry, Prince of Wales, in 1610. The text sung was:
English.png English text Sing and glorify heaven’s high Majesty,
Author of this blessed harmony;

Sound divine praises
With melodious graces;

This is the day, holy day, happy day,

For ever give it greeting,
Love and joy, heart and voice meeting:

Live Henry princely and mighty,
Harry live in thy creation happy.

(This text is given as a alternative in the performance partbooks for CPDL #8558.)

The source for the original text of Tallis' motet is a respond in the Sarum liturgy. It is derived from Judith 8.19 and 6.19.

The Book of Judith is included in the Septuagint, which was translated into Greek for the use of Hellenized Jews in Alexandria. The book is included in the Roman Catholic Old Testament, but relegated to the Apocrypha by Protestants.

Latin.png Latin text Spem in alium nunquam habui præter in te, Deus Israel:
qui irasceris et propitius eris,
et omnia peccata hominum in tribulatione dimittis.
Domine Deus, Creator cæli et terræ,
respice humilitatem nostram.

English.png English translation I have never put my hope in any other but in you, God of Israel,
who will be angry and yet become again gracious,
and who forgives all the sins of suffering man.
Lord God, creator of heaven and earth,
look upon our lowliness.

Dutch.png Dutch translation Mijn hoop is slechts op U gesteld, God van Israel,
die toornig is en toch genade toont
en de zonden vergeeft van mensen die lijden.
Heer God, schepper van hemel en aarde,
zie om naar ons in onze nederigheid.

Additional notes

(The following is from the prefatory notes to the full score edition, edited by Philip Legge.)

The recent rediscovery of a forty– and sixty–part mass setting composed in the sixteenth century by the Mantuan gentleman, diplomat and musician Alessandro Striggio (senior) has made this species of composition less exceedingly rare than hitherto known. The researches of Davitt Moroney have made it almost certain that the extraordinary work performed in London in June 1567, and which formed the direct inspiration for this equally astonishing motet of Thomas Tallis, was the same composition of Striggio, namely the Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, written variously in 8–40 parts, with a brief but climactic 60–voice setting of Agnus Dei.

In addition to the letters of Striggio himself, a 1611 account by one Thomas Wateridge, a law student at the Temple, bears witness to the story. According to his account, after hearing the 40–part “song” a nobleman:

asked whether none of our Englishmen could sett as good a songe [...] Tallice beinge very skilfull was felt to try whether he would undertake ye Matter, wch he did and made one of 40 partes wch was songe in the longe gallery at Arundell house.

Arundel House was the London home of Henry FitzAlan, the 12th Earl of Arundel. However his country residence, Nonsuch Palace, possessed an octagonal banqueting hall, and a catalogue of music in the library at Nonsuch, drawn up in 1596, reveals the existence of a score of Spem in alium. In addition to its octagonal layout the banqueting hall had four first-floor balconies, so that it is possible Tallis designed for the music to be sung not only in the round, but with four of the eight choirs singing from the balconies.

Musically, the motet is a tour de force on many levels, not least for Tallis’ masterful exploitation of his choirs’ spatial distribution. If the choirs are arranged in circular fashion sequentially by number, then the music “rotates” through the opening points of imitation on Spem in alium nunquam habui (choirs I to IV) and Præter in te, Deus Israel (choirs V to VIII). After a short interjection from choirs III and IV (which functions antiphonally as "decani" to the "cantoris" of choirs VII and VIII) Tallis completes the circle with the entry of the final bass voice of Choir VIII; shortly afterwards, at the fourtieth breve of the work, all forty voices enter in the first of a series of massive welters of sound, which has been described as "polyphonic detailism". The next imitative section which follows at qui irasceris et propitius eris reverses the direction of rotation as new voices enter against varied countersubjects in the parts already established.

Tallis also manages to combine the exchanges between choirs in four different antiphonal arrangements, by amalgamating the singers in four groups of two choirs (as hinted at above), so antiphony can pass back between both "north" and "south", but also between "east" and "west"), but also as two groups of four choirs (ie one massive 20–voice choir against another) which can be arranged in two different ways (north and west versus east and south, or north and east versus south and west).

After the most intricate chordal passage so disposed between the various choirs, Tallis contrives the entire choir of 40 voices to enter as one after a pause, "upon a magical change of harmony". With the words respice humilitatem nostram Tallis ends with the most strikingly unhumble polyphonic passage yet heard, framed by the strong harmonic rhythms of the ensemble. The view that this might be Tallis' opus magnum is intriguingly suggested by Hugh Keyte's observation of a possible numerological significance in the work's duration being exactly 69 long notes: in the Latin alphabet, TALLIS adds up to 69.