The Forty Part Motet (2001), a sound installation by
Janet Cardiff (Canadian, born 1957), will be the first presentation of contemporary art at The Cloisters. Regarded as the artist's masterwork, and consisting of forty high-fidelity speakers positioned on stands in a large oval configuration throughout the Fuentidue帽a Chapel, the fourteen-minute work, with a three-minute spoken prologue, will continuously play an eleven-minute reworking of the forty-part motet
Spem in alium numquam habui (1556?/1573?) by Tudor composer Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505鈥1585).
Spem in alium, which translates as "In No Other Is My Hope," is perhaps Tallis's most famous composition. Visitors are encouraged to walk among the loudspeakers and hear the individual unaccompanied voices鈥攂ass, baritone, alto, tenor, and child soprano鈥攐ne part per speaker鈥攁s well as the polyphonic choral effect of the combined singers in an immersive experience.
The Forty Part Motet is most often presented in a neutral gallery setting, but in this case the setting is the Cloisters' Fuentidue帽a Chapel, which features the late twelfth-century apse from the church of San Mart铆n at Fuentidue帽a, near Segovia, Spain, on permanent loan from the Spanish Government. Set within a churchlike gallery space, and with superb acoustics, it has for more than fifty years proved a fine venue for concerts of early music.