Spotify and Wikipedia: The perfect combination for music lovers

One of the selling points of Spotify is the ease with which you can discover new music, either completely new tracks or different versions of the same piece. I've found that this is only really true if you know what you are looking for as the Related Artists page often requires quite a bit of time to give of its best. One solution I've found is to use Wikipedia as well.

For example. I was watching a documentary about Palestrina and how his work introduced the concept of using two choirs at the same time. This technique reached its peak with a piece called Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis that was written for a mind boggling forty voices.

The introduction of this Wikipedia article includes a reference to a similar piece called Miserere by Gregorio Allegri. So it was back to Spotify to find out what all the fuss is about. There's a particulary good version by The Sixteen (a choir who can always be relied upon to perfect a piece) on Spotify here.

I went back to Wikipedia to find out more about Miserere and found a link at the bottom of the article to the musical score of Miserere on the International Music Score Library Project. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the score.

So I've found some wonderful choral pieces to work by, the music so I can work out what's going on and enough information to hold up my end of the conversation when talking to more experienced singers. It's amazing how quick and easy this is with the internet.