Thomas Tallis - Spem in alium - текст песни (слова)

Sing and glorify heaven's high Majesty,
 Author of this blessed harmony;
  Sound divine praises
 
With melodious graces;
 
 This is the day, holy day, happy day,
  For ever give it greeting,
 
Love and joy, heart and voice meeting:
 
 Live Henry princely and mighty,
 Harry live in thy creation happy.  
(This text is given as a alternative in the performance partbooks for CPDL #8558.) 
 Additional notes

The following is from the prefatory notes to the full score edition, edited by Philip Legge: The recent rediscovery of a forty– and sixty–part mass setting composed in the sixteenth century by the Mantuan gentleman, diplomat and musician Alessandro Striggio (senior) has made this species of composition less exceedingly rare than hitherto known. The researches of Davitt Moroney have made it almost certain that the extraordinary work performed in London in June 1567, and which formed the direct inspiration for this equally astonishing motet of Thomas Tallis, was the same composition of Striggio, namely the Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno, written variously in 8–40 parts, with a brief but climactic 60–voice setting of Agnus Dei. In addition to the letters of Striggio himself, a 1611 account by one Thomas Wateridge, a law student at the Temple, bears witness to the story. According to his account, after hearing the 40–part “song” a nobleman:  asked whether none of our Englishmen could sett as good a songe [...] Tallice beinge very skilfull was felt to try whether he would undertake ye Matter, wch he did and made one of 40 partes wch was songe in the longe gallery at Arundell house.Arundel House was the London home of Henry FitzAlan, the 12th Earl of Arundel. However his country residence, Nonsuch Palace, possessed an octagonal banqueting hall, and a catalogue of music in the library at Nonsuch, drawn up in 1596, reveals the existence of a score of Spem in alium. In addition to its octagonal layout the banqueting hall had four first-floor balconies, so that it is possible Tallis designed for the music to be sung not only in the round, but with four of the eight choirs singing from the balconies. Musically, the motet is a tour de force on many levels, not least for Tallis' masterful exploitation of his choirs' spatial distribution. If the choirs are arranged in circular fashion sequentially by number, then the music “rotates” through the opening points of imitation on Spem in alium nunquam habui (choirs I to IV) and Præter in te, Deus Israel (choirs V to VIII). After a short interjection from choirs III and IV (which functions antiphonally as "decani" to the "cantoris" of choirs VII and VIII) Tallis completes the circle with the entry of the final bass voice of Choir VIII; shortly afterwards, at the fourtieth breve of the work, all forty voices enter in the first of a series of massive welters of sound, which has been described as "polyphonic detailism". The next imitative section which follows at qui irasceris et propitius eris reverses the direction of rotation as new voices enter against varied countersubjects in the parts already established. Tallis also manages to combine the exchanges between choirs in four different antiphonal arrangements, by amalgamating the singers in four groups of two choirs (as hinted at above), so antiphony can pass back between both "north" and "south", but also between "east" and "west"), but also as two groups of four choirs (ie one massive 20–voice choir against another) which can be arranged in two different ways (north and west versus east and south, or north and east versus south and west). After the most intricate chordal passage so disposed between the various choirs, Tallis contrives the entire choir of 40 voices to enter as one after a pause, "upon a magical change of harmony". With the words respice humilitatem nostram Tallis ends with the most strikingly unhumble polyphonic passage yet heard, framed by the strong harmonic rhythms of the ensemble. The view that this might be Tallis' opus magnum is intriguingly suggested by Hugh Keyte's observation of a possible numerological significance in the work's duration being exactly 69 long notes: in the Latin alphabet, TALLIS adds up to 69.