Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium may be considered among the most famous motets of its period, if only because people know that it is written in forty independent parts. Strictly, it is written for eight choirs of five voices each. Its origin is, in fact, somewhat contested: it is often dated to c.1570, though the earliest reference to is appears to be 1596 in the library catalogue of Nonsuch Palace. An anecdote from 1611 suggests that it was written in a spirit of competitiveness with an Italian composer, whose piece in many (thirty, although some people think that is an erroneous number and that the model may have been closer to the forty of Spem) parts had impressed. That anecdote dates from several years after the events it purports to describe, and so cannot be assumed to be accurate.

Tallis held royal appointments as a musician under Henry VIII and all three of his successors, thus serving Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I – this is significant, as it can hardly be said that the requirements of these four monarchs in terms of church music were in obvious continuity. Tallis is held to have held onto Catholicism throughout the reforms of English Christianity he lived through, and indeed was held in some suspicion for doing so, but must, practically, have made some peace with providing music for his sovereigns’ requirements.

It is in that context that some suggest an earlier date for Spem in alium: the text is drawn from a responsory of the Sarum Rite, not any edition of the Book of Common Prayer, and references the book of Judith, considered deuterocanonical (at best) by many Protestants. This is not necessarily sufficient for an argument that the motet must have been composed for Mary I rather than Elizabeth I, but some take it as suggestive. An early manuscript of the music, dated 1610, so also post-dating the supposed composition, in fact uses a different text altogether, in English rather than Latin (but by no means a translation of the Latin!), suggesting that by Jacobean times the text was thought problematic.

Within the context of the Sarum Rite, from which the responsory is taken, it falls between the fourth and the fifth reading from the book of Judith – from chapters 2 and three of the book – but the text itself seems to reference chapter nine of the Latin version of the book, which ends et non est alius præter te.

The full text of the responsory, then, is:

Spem in alium nunquam habui preter in te Deus Israel. Qui irasceris et propitius eris et omnia peccata hominum in tribulatione dimittis. Domine Deus celi et terre : respice ad humilitatem nostram.

Which may be translated as :

I have never put hope in any other but you, God of Israel, who are both angry and merciful and forgive all the sins of men in trouble. Lord God of heaven and earth: look on our humility.

It is valid, of course, to wonder how much humility is demonstrated by the opulence of the setting, for so many voices – if it was indeed composed for Nonsuch Palace, there was a hall with multiple balconies, from which the effect of the different choirs would have been richer still. The music has a renaissance purity to our modern ears and perhaps expresses more of the certainty of hope placed in God than it does the humility and tribulation of our sinfulness, and might one even speculate that a certain Catholic commentary of Protestantism might have been implied thereby? The immediate juxtaposition of irascibility and grace in the text, on the other hand, might have leant the other way.

Regardless of its origin, and indeed of sixteenth century religious politics, how does the motet speak now to us? Perhaps there is a clue in the last paragraph in which I saw both sides of a raging debate possibly reflected, and the multiplication of different voices might help us to understand that even within difference there can be harmony and beauty. Deus, exaudi nos!