There’s nothing wrong with getting into Thomas Tallis on the back of Fifty Shades of Grey

Great works of art may have a strange afterlife. Deracinated from the world that created them they are at the mercy of what people think is important centuries later. Nothing shows this more clearly than the contribution that Tallis’s ‘Spem in alium’ has made to Fifty Shades of Grey.

In case you are none the wiser, ‘Spem in alium’ is probably the most complex piece of music to come from the 16th century, and just possibly from any century. Written for 40 independent voices, it is unlikely to be sung with every note in place, though any sort of approximation shows just how majestic it is. Whether this was in the mind of E.L. James when she had her lovers do what they liked to do while listening to it, I cannot say; but its title is mentioned in the book, and the Tallis Scholars’ recording did very nicely on the back of it.