I have to confess that this is not exactly an Advent Carol. In fact, today was meant to be The Truth Sent From Above, but as I was looking for the King’s Singers version, I found their recording of Spem in Alium, a piece designed for eight choirs of five voices.<\/p>\n
Since there are only six singers in The King’s Singers, I immediately had to see how they’d managed it…<\/p>\n
[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XJDLQZWKWe8&w=420&h=315]As you can see, they managed it by undergoing mitosis, with a little help from a recording studio, and recording the parts belonging to each choir over each other.\u00a0 There’s a fascinating interview with them about the recording here<\/a>.\u00a0 I don’t think I can add much to it, to be honest.<\/p>\n Having heard it, I was so fascinated that it was the only possible choice for today.\u00a0 The richness of sound they produce when multiplied in this fashion is just incredible. Though I do like the comment at the end of the recording “Well, the end was good…”.<\/p>\n I honestly can’t say enough about the King’s Singers – their harmony and pitch is so utterly impeccable that they get all sorts of richness and resonances and harmonics that I’ve just never heard anywhere else.\u00a0 It’s amazing stuff.\u00a0 I have no idea what I think about Spem in Alium, except that it was just what I was in the mood for, and therefore just what you get.\u00a0 I would, I think, like to hear a version with 40 individual singers, because I suspect a lot of the interest comes from the different colours of the voices.\u00a0 (Aha!\u00a0 And I’ve found one here, and it is indeed gorgeous and sounds quite different – less precisely perfect, but brighter or fuller somehow – the King’s Singers version is music for meditation, but this keeps waking me up and making me pay attention.)<\/p>\n The text is, as I’ve said, is not wholly Adventy, but I feel that it can be justified, because it does seem to cover some of the same ground as the Magnificat (which of course I maintain is about as Adventish as one can get), or at least have some of the same feeling to it.<\/p>\n Or maybe not.\u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 I have no excuse, really.\u00a0 It feels like an Advent piece to me, and it’s beautiful music, excellently sung.\u00a0 Can anyone really ask more?<\/p>\n\n