Tucked away in a far corner of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, the room where Canadian artist Janet Cardiff’s sound piece The Forty Part Motet is exhibited was chosen for its resonance. Indeed, this immersive sonorousness is felt especially while sitting on one of the silver benches in the center of the space, surrounded by the speakers that are the physical manifestation of Cardiff’s audio work—ostensibly a 2001 recording of the Salisbury Cathedral Choir singing a reworking of Spem in alium, a Renaissance motet originally composed by Thomas Tallis in the late 16th Century, but really much more.
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The Forty Part Motet is on loan from MoMA, though it is also in the Glenstone’s collection and was on view at MoMA PS1 in 2012 and then at the Met Cloisters in 2013, and it’s rare to experience it in a religious space rather than a museum or gallery. The official year of Tallis’ composition is not known; some sources say 1573, but MoMA says 1556. What is known is that the singers were originally arranged in a circle, as Cardiff’s forty speakers are arranged. In walking around the room and pausing at each speaker, the distinction between each voice becomes crystal clear. There are low notes and high notes, voices that sound young and those that sound older, all forming an audiological assemblage that Cardiff sees as sculptural. “Enabling the audience to move throughout the space allows them to be intimately connected with the voices,” the artist writes on her website. “It also reveals the piece of music as a changing construct.”
The cyclically repeating piece officially begins with the captured coughs, whispers, laughs and conversations that precede the choir, which adds a layer of humanity that feels important when you’re in a room full of........