How Spem in Alium came to exist – supreme music of power and politics

It’s a precious thing to hear a piece of music which never leaves you. To be absolutely confident that you know and may never forget every twist of the soundscape. For me there is only one work that has so comprehensively captured my soul, and burnt itself in to my memory. It goes by the title Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui Prater In Te Deus Israel – I have never placed my hope in any other but you God of Israel. More digestibly it is simply Spem in Alium.

Hearing that piece for the first time at the BBC Proms of 2005 ignited a love affair with its composer Thomas Tallis, that has stayed with me ever since. This coming week, BBC Radio 3 profile Thomas Tallis as their Composer Of The Week (thank you Scott). No doubt they will tell the story of Tallis’s masterpiece, Spem in Alium.

As direct historical records regarding Tallis are so sketchy, we often have to interpret and extrapolate from circumstantial evidence. Here, for what it’s worth, is my take on how Spem in Alium came in to being. My puny efforts at the British Library notwithstanding, Radio 3′s take will no doubt be better researched! Do have a listen.

The world around Tallis

The 16th century transformed the face of our planet, with repercussions still visible today.

As religious wars scorched continents, so too a fire of Renaissance arts and culture blazed out of Italy. Rome was devising a new “Gregorian” calendar – to all intents and purposes the calendar we use today. Time itself was changing, and the new calendar quickly spread its wings across Europe and beyond.

Burgeoning sea travel and the rapid expansion of trading markets saw many things spread faster and wider than they ever had before. Everything from the new calendar, to Smallpox. National boundaries were ever more hotly defended even as their lines, their power, and their meaning, were disintegrating.

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Housekeeping

The blog has just moved hosting providers and design. For now it has reset a lot of of the Twitter and Facebook counts to zero, but all comments should have come across intact. if you notice anything odd going on please let me know.

Latest video project for work focuses on student success

At CIMA I’ve introduced an HD quality Sony HVR-A1E camera to our comms and marketing arsenal, as we branch out in to online video. This latest video saw our senior web editor Kate in charge of the camera, and I did the interviewing and editing / post-production. I’ve been editing in Final Cut Express on a MacBook Pro.

“Meet the new members” – a video to encourage CIMA students to progress with the qualification

After every set of exam results there are always some students who haven’t made the grade on that occasion, and this video will be drawn on at that time to hopefully act as small inspiration, and give an insight in to how those who have made it all the way feel rewarded, and how they have found the qualification useful. The filming took place in the beautiful garden of the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington, London.

Act now Barclays, or the Boris Bike is here to stay

The Barclays Cycle Hire scheme in London is now four weeks old, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to the conversations of my fellow hobby cyclists, or observers on the street. No, instead, we say a happy four week birthday to “Boris Bikes.”

The attempt to brand the scheme Barclays Cycle Hire was always doomed to fail. It pursued only the most basic approach to sponsorship – slap a logo on anything that moves, slap a logo on anything that doesn’t move, and insert the name of of the sponsoring company on anything to do with the subject of the sponsorship.

This approach is failing for many reasons. Read the rest of this entry »