Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
The Tallis Scholars
Allegri - Miserere
(Gimmel, 2005)
The secret sound of heaven: available to you, every day.
Any recent visitors to Tate Britain, walking in the windless calm of the west wing (aka "the free bit") drifting through the current displays of 20th Century art, nosing at the Hiltons, Hodgkins and Hockneys, might possibly have heard the distant call of a heavenly choir.
Those who followed this sweet sound would have found themselves standing in a dark octagonal gallery, illuminated only by a grainy colour video projection on the far wall, depicting the slow-motion exit of various bewildered looking individuals through the International Arrivals doors of British airport. The work is Mark Wallinger's 2000 installation, Threshold To The Kingdom, the music playing is the Tallis Scholars' 1980 recording of Gregorio Allegri's "Miserere mei, Deus".
Although originally composed in the 1630s, Allegri's Miserere is a child of many fathers. The idea of setting the text of Psalm 51 as a falsobordone, with two alternating choirs of five and four voices between verses of plainsong, was first coined by Renaiisance composer Costanzo Festa in 1514, and refined by the likes of Palestrina and Guerrero, before Allegri composed his version for Pope Urban VIII.
After its debut performance in Sistine Chapel, as part of the Tenebrae service on the Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week, the Pope was so struck by the piece's beauty that he forbid the piece to be transcribed, on pain of excommunication.
As a result, the Tallis Scholars beguiling version, recorded in Merton College Chapel Oxford, its haunting top C, sung by a lone voice, against the sweeping harmony of the larger choir, is the result of a series of unauthorized by-memory transcriptions down the years - including one by a fourteen year old Mozart - multiple versions that attempted to capture the ethereal beauty of Allegri's original, as hear in the Sistine Chapel.
The dreamlike nature of the piece as it's heard today (another great argument against the idea of 'authenticity' in music), performed by a choral group at their early 80s peak, invests Wallinger's film with a glow of transcendental warmth, an act of transubstantiation that invests these his tired, weary, relieved and teary travelers with the spiritual grace of lost souls arriving at the final, final destination.
So if you find yourself in London, weighed down by the woes of family, work, or the lack of sufficient Stackridge coverage in the latest edition of MOJO, you could do worse than step into the West Wing of Tate Britain and give yourself up to a brief interlude, that contains within it the celestial vesper calm of heaven on earth.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 3:08 PM GMT 21/03/2011
Further Listening
Thomas Tallis – Spem In Alium (Gimmell, 2001)
Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972 (Kranky, 2011)
Morton Feldman – Rothko Chapel (New Albion, 1992)
Previous Disc of the day
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Earl Brutus - Larky
Last salvo of Ginsters Pasty-Warholism from Britpop ramraiders.
12:04 PM GMT 08/06/2011
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Loudon Wainwright - T-Shirt
An overlooked small wonder from an unpredictable career.
6:00 AM GMT 03/06/2011
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Landscape - From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… To The Hell-holes Of Uranus
Dry computer club Futurists, upon hitting implausible chart paydirt.
6:00 AM GMT 17/05/2011
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Causa Sui - Summer Sessions Vol 1-3
Epic Danish jams, for when the neighbours get you down.
6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2011
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Ah yes Stackridge mentions - bring 'em on - never mind these wierdo Tommy Tallis types we want falsetto Jimmy Warren!
Posted by Jim Spinner at 2:58 PM GMT 22/03/2011 Report Abuse
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Ah yes Stackridge mentions - bring 'em on - never mind these wierdo Tommy Tallis types we want falsetto Jimmy Warren!
Posted by Jim Spinner at 2:59 PM GMT 22/03/2011 Report Abuse
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Where did this guy (A Wale) learn to write?
Posted by chelsead at 9:47 AM GMT 25/03/2011 Report Abuse
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