The Forty Part Motet • Janet Cardiff

In the organizer's words:

A revision of Spem in alium by Thomas Tallis 1556/1573

In Janet Cardiff's iconic work The Forty Part Motet, sound, space and time merge in the baroque gallery at Herrenhausen to create a sensual meditation on listening.

Forty voices, forty loudspeakers, a room full of sound. The Canadian artist transforms Thomas Tallis' Renaissance motet Spem in alium into a spatial sound sculpture: each voice was recorded individually and can now be heard from one of the loudspeakers arranged around the room. The audience is invited to move freely - through the middle of the choir, between the soprano, alto, tenor and bass. What otherwise only the singers themselves experience becomes audible here: each voice sounds as an individual fragment, each ear hears a different work.

Cardiff is interested in how sound shapes space - physically and yet immaterially. When the voices throw themselves from choir to choir, respond to each other and finally condense into an overwhelming whole, music becomes architecture, listening becomes a physical experience. Visitors are offered a unique experience of closeness that they would never experience in a concert hall: The audience is completely immersed in the sound and emerges with a heightened sense of hearing.

ACCESSIBILITY

The gallery is accessible via a separate entrance, please allow some time and ask the staff on site.

Further information at: https://kunstfestspiele.de/the-forty-part-motet/

Price information:

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