The Anthem

The Anthem was a sound installation exhibited in Handel’s Room in the Foundling Museum in October 2016. It was a recording of a children’s choir learning, repeating, and singing Handel’s ‘Foundling Hospital Anthem’.

The children’s voices provided a critical voice alongside Handel’s objects, such as his Last Will and Testimony, disrupting the order of power in the museum display. Sound cannot be held in one place; it permeates and moves through the museum. The speakers were placed high up in the room and the source of the sound could not be seen. When entering the museum, visitors could hear the singing coming from the top floor; it echoed down the stairwell, alluding to the ‘innocent’ child that was at the heart of the Victorian imagery of Foundling Hospital. Like enclosures built in churches, where nuns would sing hidden behind screens, it could be thought of as the voices of angels. The Anthem teases the listener to walk up the stairs in the museum, searching for where the sound originates.

Listen to the sound piece: https://soundcloud.com/rachelemilytaylor/the-foundling-anthem

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