The soft porn bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey has an erotic episode in it, apparently, featuring Thomas Tallis’s haunting Spem in Alium as backdrop.
The 40-part motet is one of the spiritual masterpieces of the English Renaissance. How it crept between the covers of a smutty paperback is neither here nor there (did the author, perhaps, subliminally insert an extra consonant in Spem?). We shall investigate no further.
Be that as it may, the music industry has leaped into the squirming mass with an opportunistic single of the Tallis Scholars singing Spem. It has shot up the charts to number 7.
Peter Phillips, Tallis Scholars director, said: “I haven’t read 50 Shades of Grey but I am most grateful to the author for introducing so many new listeners to the musical sensation that is Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium. Written during the reign of the first Queen Elizabeth it features 40 individual voices singing in Latin that combine to a thrilling climax for the words “respice humilitatem nostram” (be mindful of our humiliation).”
Or, we could ask, “Should illiterate smut exploit classical music?”. Some of the filthiest scenes from ‘Caligula’ employ Prokofiev rather effectively…apparently, and the more offensive 1980s ‘I Spit on your Grave’ uses “Sola Perduta Abandonnato” from Manon Lescaut in a particularly gruesome scene. I’m not sure what, if anything, it says about the music or the context in which it is used, but it certainly pricks up your ears..as it were.
And if you asked that, what would the answer be? If you don’t want “smut” and classical music associated, then you’ll need to erase rather a lot of opera for a start…
As reported on Superconductor, EMI Classics didn’t hesitate to get in on the soft-core exploitation with their “50 Shades of Classical” playlist. Report on Superconductor
http://super-conductor.blogspot.com/2012/07/classical-music-unleashed.html
complete with pulled quotes from E.L. James’ literary epic, mostly added for comic effect. Quotes like “Do you like cheese?”
But classical music lovers can be so negligent as well about what they love. The person who put the track on youtube did not care to mention the performers.
Through the lousy speakers on my laptop it seems like a fairly acceptable performance with boy soprano’s, probably done by one of the renowned English cathedral choirs.
One of the most illustrious performances still is the sumtuous first recording by the Tallis Scholars, where female sopranos in style replace the boys, and with the female members of the ensemble still in their early prime, that performance overcomes the insecurities of boy soprano’s while trying to convey the sound quality.
A recording by the Tallis people performing a different piece by Tallis if I remember well was used in I think it was A room with view filmed by Merchant/Ivory, who knew what they were doing.
I dont mind using excellent music in a film with disputable content, and I don’t think that Caligula in its time tried to be a bad movie. The poignant use of good music in films like Clockwork Orange and Apocalypse where the director uses the music to contrast with the disputable content picture has become legendary.
It gets worse: the novel and its two sequels) apparently have a “soundtrack”:
http://www.eljamesauthor.com/music/fifty-shades-of-grey-soundtrack
This is an interesting juxtaposition between a Christian text and a pornographic scene. One wonders if the author actually knew what the Latin text says…
This is a ridiculous issue. Tallis lived and died centuries ago. He no longer gets a say in what happens to his music. Just because you’ve spent more time listening to Tallis than the target audience of Fifty Shades of Gray, doesn’t mean that you have any more ownership of his music than anybody else.
Moreover, what difference does it make that this music is mentioned in a book? What difference does the content of that book make? The allusion to Tallis in a book, no matter the surrounding content, has absolutely no impact on your enjoyment (or lack thereof) of Tallis. I fail to see why this is even worth mentioning.