Hearing: Janet Cardiff’s The Forty Part Motet

How does the sense of hearing trigger our imagination? And what role does that play in art?

In pursuit of some answers, we traveled to rural British Columbia to visit artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. Partners in art and life, they seek to transport their audiences through installations, objects, and interactive works that center sound, including the powerful The Forty Part Motet (A reworking of “Spem in Alium,” by Thomas Tallis 1556), originally created in 2001.

When Cardiff first heard a recording of one of the most complex pieces of choral music, Spem in alium nunquam habui (“In No Other Is My Hope”), by the Renaissance composer Thomas Tallis, she knew immediately that she wanted to create an installation in the round, in which the recording would play from 40 speakers, with each transmitting an individual voice. Viewers would experience a performance in an unexpectedly intimate, physical way, choosing to listen closely to a single singer or tracing the ambitious composition in harmony as they move around the space.

In this latest episode of our Art and the Senses series, the artists and MoMA media conservator Peter Oleksik describe how installing the piece in different settings over two decades has led to discoveries about how sound interacts with space, and unleashed an unexpected emotional resonance. “I got a note yesterday from somebody who had to stop the car on the way home after hearing Forty Part Motet because he said he started crying. He started thinking about joy, and how he didn’t have enough joy in his life,” explained Cardiff. “I think that’s the power of sound working.”