• WhatsOn Arts and Crafts

Janet Cardiff: The Forty Part Motet

@ Auckland Castle

Book Now

Forty separately recorded voices are played back through forty speakers placed in an oval in the space.  Visitors are invited to walk throughout the installation, listening to the individual voices of the singers or to absorb the impact of the choir as a whole. The Forty Part Motet is a re-working of Thomas Tallis’s 16th-century composition Spem in Alium, a forty-part choral composition. Cardiff’s reworking was sung by the Salisbury Cathedral Choir.

This installation is a deeply moving and memorable experience. It forms part of the ongoing series of contemporary art exhibitions at Auckland Castle, which started last summer with the presentation of Bill Viola’s Martyrs in the chapel. This series of contemporary artworks respond to, examine and question the meaning and expression of faith and belief. These contemporary responses to the nature and expression of faith foreshadow the themes that will be explored in the forthcoming permanent exhibition in the new Faith Galleries at Auckland Castle, opening 2018.

---