Spem in alium
musical composition by Thomas Tallis
Spem in alium (Latin for "Hope in any other") is a 40-part Renaissance motet by Thomas Tallis, composed in c. 1570 for eight choirs of five voices each. It is considered by some critics to be the greatest piece of English early music. H. B. Collins described it in 1929 as Tallis's "crowning achievement", along with his Lamentations.
History
The work's early history is obscure, though there are some clues as to where it may have been first performed. It is listed in a catalogue of the library at Nonsuch Palace, a royal palace sold in the 1550s to the Earl of Arundel before returning to the crown in the 1590s. The listing, from 1596, describes it as "a song of fortie partes, made by Mr. Tallys". The earliest surviving manuscripts are those prepared in 1610 for the investiture as Prince of Wales of Henry Frederick, the son of James I.
A 1611 commonplace book by the law student Thomas Wateridge contains the following anecdote:
In Queen Elizabeths time þere was à songe sen[t] into England in 30 p[art]s (whence þe Italians obteyned þe name to be called þe Apices of þe world) wch beeinge Songe mad[e] a heavenly Harmony. The Duke of — bearinge à great love to Musicke asked whether none of our English men could sett as good à songe, and Tallice beeinge very skilfull was felt to try whether he would undertake þe matter, wch he did & made one of 40 p[ar]tes wch was songe in the longe gallery at Arundell house, wch so farre surpassed þe other that the Duke, hearinge þt songe, tooke his chayne of Gold fro[m] his necke & putt yt about Tallice his necke & gave yt him (wch songe was againe songe at þe Princes coronation).
“Spem in alium” enters the record as musical composition by Thomas Tallis. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Spem, alium and musical can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1583387. VIAF identifies the subject as 182071236. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1570, 1929, 1596 and 1610.
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This entry incorporates text from “Spem in alium” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.