Editor’s Note: You may want to go to the end of this story and click on the choral work, to listen while reading…

Our pilgrimage begins near the banks of New York’s Hudson, as that river flows swiftly past late autumn foliage, burnished a toasty golden brown in a warming sun. From the vantage point of the parkway, the briefest glimpse of a stalwart Romanesque-style tower rising high above the tree line offers a tantalizing hint as to our ultimate destination. The ascent on the narrow road leading to the hilltop retreat helps set the stage for the experience that awaits, as city sights and sounds fall away, replaced by the dense, old growth forest of Fort Tryon Park and the strident call of a mockingbird from high atop a spiring oak. artes fine arts magazine

Our journey continues as we approach The Cloisters, a multi-tiered composite of Medieval and Early Renaissance monastic ruins, literally plucked from the Italian countryside and reassembled within sight of the George Washington Bridge and New York City’s skyline. The building—really a complex of smaller spaces fitted together—becomes a tangram of chapels, gardens and exhibition areas spanning several centuries and architectural styles. We cross a crude cobbled drive and enter the museum through swinging wooden doors. Cool stone hallways and a steep double bank of stairs lead us ever upward to our final destination. Dark ceilings arch high above our heads, as bright patterns of light from small windows cast irregular patterns on well-worn stonewalls.

We have traveled to The Cloisters, a Metropolitan Museum of Art outpost whose creation was funded by Rockefeller money in the 1930s, to witness a contemporary artistic event, a high-tech installation work taking place in an 800-year old setting. The Forty Part Motet (2001), a sound installation by Janet Cardiff (Canadian, born 1957), is presented in The Cloisters’ twelfth-century, Fuentidueña Chapel. Consisting of forty high-fidelity speakers positioned on tall stands in a large, inwardly-facing oval formation throughout the acoustically superb and evocative architectural setting, the fourteen-minute work, with a three-minute spoken prologue, continuously plays an eleven-minute reworking of the forty-part motet, Spem in alium numquam habui, a polyphonic choral work by the Tudor composer Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505–1585). Spem in alium, which translates as In No Other Is My Hope, with text derived from the apocryphal book of Judith, is perhaps Tallis’s most famous composition and may have been composed as part of the fortieth birthday celebration of either Queen Mary Tudor (1556) or Queen Elizabeth I (1573).

Cardiff recorded each voice individually as England’s Salisbury Cathedral Choir performed the choral piece. The forty-track sound recording, offers a powerful audio-sculptural experience. Visitors are invited to walk among the loudspeakers and hear the individual unaccompanied singers—bass, baritone, alto, tenor, and child soprano, one part per speaker—as well as to experience the immersive effect of the combined voices. Cardiff said, “When listening to a concert, you are normally seated in front of the choir. In contrast, this work lets the audience experience a piece of music from the viewpoint of the singers, each of whom hears a unique blend of the choir’s voices. By enabling the audience to move freely within the space, the work reveals the piece of music as a changing construct. As well, it poses the question of how sound may physically construct a space in a sculptural way and explores how a viewer may choose a path through this simultaneously physical and virtual environment.”

Cardiff has placed the speakers around the room in an oval, allowing the listener to feel the sculptural construction of the piece by Tallis. One senses the glorious sound moving from one section of the choir to another, reverberating,  then producing an overwhelming sensation— sound waves registering—the entire choir joining in. The setting, as well as the surround-sound musical experience affects each listener very personally. Standing in the center of the chapel with several dozen others on a busy Saturday morning, the 11-minute performance offers a moment of studied concentration for some, prayerful contemplation for others, and absolute glee for yet others. Some stand entranced, unable or unwilling to move from their self-selected ‘sweet spot,’ where sounds converge on the ear and the imagination; others gaze about at the pristinely-restored apse in seeming disbelief. Another moves excitedly, like a child discovering something new, placing her ear against a speaker, waiting for a single vocalist to add his or her voice to the chorus. When it finally emerges from the speaker, a broad smile is elicited.

Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet experience is transformative, and her installation—on the road for nearly a decade now—does not disappoint. In this particular setting, it is a multi-sensory experience. The melding of the human voice, raised in song, together with the unlikely pairing of forty 21st century speakers standing like sentries in an ancient, sacred space, transports the listener to another time and place—perhaps one of their own particular making.

By Richard Friswell, Publisher & Managing Editor

Janet Cardiff: The Forty Part Motet, through December 8, 2013

40-track sound recording, 40 speakers, 14 minutes (11 min., music; 3 min. commentary)

From the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Sung by Salisbury Cathedral Choir

Recording and Postproduction by SoundMoves

Edited by George Bures Miller

Produced by Field Art Projects

The Forty Part Motet by Janet Cardiff was originally produced by Field Art Projects with

the Arts Council of England, Canada House, the Salisbury Festival and Salisbury

Cathedral Choir, BALTIC Gateshead, The New Art Gallery Walsall, and the NOW

Festival Nottingham

Listen to a stirring performance of Tallis’ Forty Part Motet:

Visit The Cloisters and learn more about the history of Fuentidueña Chapel:

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