Divine Voices: How Art and Religion Intersect in Janet Cardiff’s ‘Forty Part Motet’

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.

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 speakers and not people. Then a voice sings out, then two and more and more. Closing my eyes, I feel like the choir is surrounding me. The old stones make even silence echo in this perfectly resonant space. “I am interested in how sound may physically construct a space in a sculptural way,” Cardiff goes on, “and how a viewer may choose a path through this physical yet virtual space.” In this case, the paths open to us are between sitting, standing and walking to each speaker or doing all the above.

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I first experienced The Forty Part Motet in late September, when the trees were still summer-green, and the Hungarian Pastry shop across the street was a magnet for students on their laptops. In 2019, the cathedral suffered a fire and renovations are ongoing—the Great Organ, the largest of the six cathedral organs, was in its final stages of repair, set to be played that week for the first time in five years. I caught a glimpse of some of its disjointed pipes spread out on the floor in another corner of the cathedral, which is full of surprises throughout: Glory by Elizabeth Catlett; Keith Haring’s The Life of Christ (1990), a bronze and white-gold triptych altarpiece that was one of the last works he ever made; Edwina Sandys’ controversial Christa.

As I bathed in the choir’s sparkling sound in the North Transept, I started to think of time collapsing in front of me. Here I was today, listening to a piece of music recorded in 2001 by a choir now twenty-three years older, singing a piece originally composed more than 400 years ago. I couldn’t quite place the structure of the song, and perhaps this is what drew Cardiff to record this specific piece. The melody is hard to pinpoint, making it hard to remember, and creates the necessity for another listen. You could seemingly listen on repeat, forever.

Something about Spem in alium feels timeless—it could have been composed today, though it’s intriguing to imagine Thomas Tallis at work and what life would have been like when he composed the piece. In the late 16th Century in Europe, the Renaissance was in full swing, the witch trials were beginning in England, the Mona Lisa had already been painted and Galileo had just been born. In the midst of all this, Tallis was trying to entertain the British royalty with music—likely the only job a composer would have had back then.

Spem in alium is thought to have been presented at court on the occasion of Elizabeth I’s 40th birthday (hence the forty voices), but the piece inspires contemporary artists to this day. Kronos Quartet recorded a beautiful string-instrument version. Musician and artist Holly Herndon, whose work was in the 2024 Whitney Biennial, called the piece “experimental” for its time, naming it in a Pitchfork video as the one song she wishes she wrote. “I think it’s important because it’s pretty adventuresome in terms of its performance,” she says. “There’s this weirdo in 1570 who’s actually experimenting but within these very rigid frameworks. He has the queen and the church and all of these pressures. I think it’s undeniably a moving piece of music. It makes the hair stand up on your arms.”

But there is something extra special about Cardiff’s surround sound installation that brings Tallis’ composition back to its original form as a surround sound piece meant to be experienced spatially and makes the experience immersive in a way that feels necessary. The coughs and whispers of the choir at the beginning add personality, and as I sat in the church, I started to look forward to returning to the beginning, as if I was on a looping sonic rollercoaster.

What does it mean to install contemporary art in a church? It’s no surprise that the Rothko Chapel exists—or Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin or even James Turrell’s Meeting—art can move us spiritually as readily as any sermon. Yet there is no denying that art and religion combined can create disaccord. Kali Malone, whose work is inspired by late Middle Ages and early Renaissance music, was forced to cancel a 2023 performance in a small French town when a far-right Catholic group protested the playing of contemporary music inside a sacred space. But Malone plays the organ, an instrument most commonly found in churches, so performing it elsewhere presents challenges.

In the case of The Forty Part Motet echoing in the North Transept, there is a religious precedent for its placement: polyphonic motets are usually based on a sacred Latin text, and the Latin phrase ‘Spem in alium’ translates to “Hope in any other.” The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine recognizes the significance of exhibiting the piece in their space—acting as the bridge between the worlds of art and the divide. Laura Bosley, executive director of cathedral programming, told Observer that she chose the piece because “it often seems that we, as a culture, have lost our ability to listen to each other” and that Cardiff’s piece “epitomizes the value of listening carefully and with intention.”

The next time I visited The Forty Part Motet was on a cold Sunday in November. I thought I had an hour, but upon entering, I was told I only had fourteen minutes to experience it. I arrived in the room, comforted by the sounds of the coughs and whispers of its beginning, relieved that I would be able to hear it one last time in its entirety. In that warm and resonant sanctuary, the voices drown out the sounds of the city, inspiring sacred feelings of comfort—exactly what one ought to feel in a religious space. And when the piece had run its course, everyone in the room basked in the silence that still echoed. “That’s it, ladies and gentlemen,” said a security guard when no one stood to leave. His voice brought me back to the present moment, but the piece felt like it had moved me for an eternity.

Janet Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet is on view at New York City’s Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine through December 31.