The Forty-Part Motet : 40 speakers, 40 voices. A Janet Cardiff sound installation.

Artworks - 06/04/2016 - Article : Marian Lacombe - Video : Marian Lacombe

 40 loud speakers in an empty room overlooking the garden. The installation is simple but the experience amazingly beautiful.

The Canadian artist Janet Cardiff recorded Spem in Alium a 16th-century choral work by an English composer, Thomas Tallis. What you hear exactly depends on where you stand. Each singer of the 40-person choir has been recorded separately. You move close to an individual speaker for an intimate experience with a single voice, bass, tenor, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass…or you stand in the middle to hear all forty voices united.

This is one of two Janet Cardiff sound installations at Inhotim. Another pavilion houses The Murder of Crows written with her husband, George Bures Miller, a 30-minute composition, unsettling but ending on a lullaby.

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