Miserere (Allegri)

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:This article or section should related material from Gregorio Allegri.

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Miserere by Gregorio Allegri is a piece of a cappella religious music (a setting of Psalm 50/51) composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII, probably during the 1630s, for use in the Sistine Chapel during matins on Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week. It was the last of twelve fauxbordon Miserere settings composed and chanted at the service since 1514 and the most popular: at some point, it became forbidden to transcribe the music and it was only allowed to be performed at those particular services, adding to the mystery surrounding it. Writing it down or performing it elsewhere would be punished by excommunication.

Related Topics:
Gregorio Allegri - A cappella - Psalm 50/51 - Pope Urban VIII - Sistine Chapel - Matins - Holy Week - 1514 - Excommunication

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Although there were a handful of supposed transcriptions in various royal courts in Europe, none of them ever succeeded in capturing the beauty of the Miserere as performed annually in the Sistine Chapel. According to the popular story, a fourteen-year-old Mozart was visiting Rome, when he first heard the piece during the Wednesday service. Later that day, he wrote it down entirely from memory, returning with it to the Chapel that Friday to make some minor corrections. Some time during his travels, he ran into the British historian Dr. Charles Burney, who got the piece from him and took it to London, where it was published. Once it was published, the ban was lifted, and Allegri's Miserere has since been one of the most popular a cappella choral works now performed.

Related Topics:
Mozart - Rome - British - Charles Burney - London

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However, Burney's edition did not include the ornamentation that made the work famous. The piece as it is sung today, with a top C, is not authentic. It is the result of an error in the first edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music of 1880, in an article on ornamentation by the musicologist WS Rockstro. In it, he wrote out the first half of the verse out twice, but transposed the second half up a fourth, as recorded by Felix Mendelssohn when he transcribed it. Ivor Atkins copied it out from Grove's for his English language edition of 1951, and liked what he heard.

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The original ornamentations were Renaissance techniques that preceded the composition itself, and it was these techniques that were closely guarded by the Vatican. Few written sources, not even that of Burney, showed the ornamentation, and it was this that created the legend of the work's mystery. Authentic editions have been produced in the last few years from Alfieri's account of 1840, but most people prefer to hear the strangely beautiful mistake.

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