I have been thinking a lot since I started this blog about my musical memories, both as a performer and as a listener.
Over the coming days and weeks I will be trying to recall some of my most memorable musical experiences.
I start my list of performances in which I have been involved in a musical genre that has generally never been of much interest to me as a performer or listener - Renaissance polyphony. But there is one exception.
In my first year at University - on 23 February 1975 to be precise - I took part in a performance of Tallis's 40 part motet Spem in Alium conducted by Professor Denis Arnold, renowned Monteverdi Scholar in his last term as Professor of Music at Nottingham University.
We performed in the distinctly secular surroundings of Cripps dining hall, where the scent was not so much of incense but more of boiled cabbage - but the room was very resonant and provided a surprisingly fitting acoustic for this extraordinary composition.
Being in the middle of the texture was something which I will never forget (I think that I was singing bass in choir seven): the effect of that intricate counterpoint was quite overwhelming. Yet the most memorable moments were those where Tallis brings the music to a temporary stop and then brings in the voices together in block harmony. It is an extraordinary effect and of course bring with it high tension - because if even one of those 40 parts in is the wrong place and keeps going during the silence..........
But there were no such problems in our performance and we brought it off splendidly - a great farewell present to a professor who did so much to create the character of the music department.
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