This composition came about as a result of an unusual musical competition. William Glock, Controller of Music at the BBC, commissioned a work each by three composers for a concert in the 1968 Henry Wood Promenade series. Known to musical history as the "ballot concert," the first half of the concert comprised three new works from Don Banks, Thea Musgrave, and the twenty-four-year-old Tavener, who was at least twenty years their junior. The idea was that the audience would vote during the intimation for their choice to have one of the pieces repeated after the break. Tavener knew that the usual style of the other two composers was to write serious "angst-ridden" twelve-tone pieces, so he decided to do something completely different.

His work was for high soprano, strings, piano, grand organ, Hammond organ, bells, and gongs, and a four-track tape with loudspeakers in the corners of Royal Albert Hall. The text is by the French visionary poet Charles PŽguy (a favorite of Rev. Cameron Joyce, minister of St. John's Presbyterian Church in Kensington, where Tavener had been chief organist since he was seventeen). Tavener also interpolated some lines from the motet text Spem in alium, whence the title.

In the first section the soprano sings live to the rotating taped sounds of children at play, a harmonium, a hymn sung by a children's choir, and romantic piano music. The second movement was a bit scandalous: Clearly modeled on Messiaen's "Sleep of the Garden of Love" (a movement of his symphony "Turangalila"), the soprano sings a high, very sweet melody over lush string and Hammond organ accompaniment. Meanwhile, there is an amplified assortment of kissing sounds and heavy breathing.

The third section is pre-recorded by the soprano, who produces six-pat chords emergeing from the speakers antiphonally, making an effect like pealing church bells. The final section has, a sixteen-part canon by the soprano, one voice live, the others pre-taped. Also on the tape are the voices of four children saying their prayers in Latin, French, German, and English, and gradually falling asleep as they do so. (The little three-year old French girl really did fall asleep before the microphones installed in her bedroom; the others pretended.)

The whole concert was jeopardized when conductor Normal Del Mar took an extreme dislike to the work and refused to conduct it. David Atherton, therefore, led the Tavener work. During the thirty-minute-long intermission (where the votes were counted) Del Mar was seen packing up his bags to leave, correctly anticipating that In Alium would be the winner. The critics also hailed Tavener's ability to handle sound in large spaces.

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