In around 1570. Thomas Tallis wrote possibly his most famous work. The 40 part motet “Spem in Alium”
I've tidied this contemporary anecdote into modern English:
In Queen Elizabeth's time, there was a song sent to England in 30 parts, which the Italians were calling the finest in the world, and which being sung, made a heavenly harmony. The Duke of (illegible) bearing a great love of music, asked whether none of our English men could set as good a song, and Tallis, being very skilled was felt to try whether he would undertake the matter, which he did, and made one of forty parts, which was sung in the long gallery at Arundel house, and which so far surpassed the other that the Duke, hearing the song, took his chain of gold from his neck and put it about Tallis' neck and gave it to him. The song was again sung at the princes coronation.
It's a clever piece. Tallis is inventive in that he uses 8 choirs of 5 parts spread at a distance from the listener so there is an intense spacial effect, Italian composers had been doing stereo with double choirs for a while, Tallis essentially made a surround sound piece.
Now of course, if you're in the cheap seats at the back, you don't really hear this effect, it relies on you being sat by the conductor for best results. As Carl Sagan said, from far enough away, the earth is just a pale blue dot, and a bad recording of Spem in Alium is essentially a slab of chords. I've always wondered how this piece would work at different orders of magnitude.
There's been a very successful reduction made for 11 parts – Quite a lot of the piece is duplication of material in different parts of the sound field. But I was more interested in what would happen if you made it bigger.
Instead of 8 choirs of 5 parts, what if we had 8 choirs of 40 parts? Tallis' own conceit multiplied by itself? 320 parts? Don't be ridiculous, Loomes, no one is ever going to perform a 320 part choral music.
So, much as I hate doing things by halves, this is a 160 part motet.
lyrics
Spem in alium nunquam habui
Praeter in te, Deus Israel
Qui irasceris et propitius eris
et omnia peccata hominum
in tribulatione dimittis
Domine Deus
Creator caeli et terrae
respice humilitatem nostram
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