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A gallery
filled with three dozen speakers - each one belting out a single
voice which combines to make a magnificent choral performance -
We just had to send someone along to check it out.
Janet Cardiff’s
award winning ‘forty part motet’ is an emotional and spine
tingling piece.
Review by Louise
Baker.
The installation
consists of forty speakers, each emitting an individual voice from
the choir as they sing ‘Spem in Alium’ by the Elizabethan
composer Thomas Tallis. The speakers are grouped around the magnificent
space at the Future-Peace centre on Russell street, and as a visitor
to the piece you walk amongst the music in the most adept surroundings.
The piece is
a hauntingly, beautiful and unique event, as it allows you to walk
amongst the choir and become cloaked in the experience. It allows
for a wholly original approach rather than being positioned in the
slightly colder, less intimate environment of the traditional audience
positioning, that of being sat in front of the performance.
The visitors
to the installation last Sunday were full of admiration and praise.
Considering the piece of music lasts fifteen minutes each time it
plays (which is continuous over the whole six hour period), many
stayed for two, three and even four repeats, working their way between
voices and building up to the crescendo of the experience by standing
in the centre and allowing themselves to be lost within Tallis’s
piece.
‘Forty
Part Motet’ really is something for the soul. Situated in a
wonderful, imposing building it has the perfect environment in which
to take you wherever you choose to go.
Janet Cardiff’s
‘Forty Part Motet’ is open for the duration of the NOW
festival, 22nd October until 11th November, everyday from 1pm-7pm.
Entry is free and it is on at the Future-Peace centre which is situated
on Russell street, Radford, off Forest Road West at the Alfreton
Road end.
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