Miserere (Allegri)

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 falsobordone 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. The setting which escaped from the Vatican is actually a conflation of verses set by Gregorio Allegri around 1638 and Tommaso Bai (1650 - 1718, also spelt Baj) in 1714.

The Miserere is written for two choirs, the one of five and the other of four voices. One of the choirs sings a simple version of the original Miserere chant; the other choir, spatially separated, sings an ornamented "commentary" on the other choir. Many have cited this work as an example of the stile antico or prima prattica. However, its constant use of the dominant seventh chord and its emphasis on polychoral techniques certainly put it out of the range of prima prattica. A more accurate comparison would be to the works of Giovanni Gabrieli.

Although there were a handful of supposed transcriptions in various royal courts in Europe, none of them succeeded in capturing the beauty of the Miserere as performed annually in the Sistine Chapel. According to the popular story (backed up by family letters), the 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 to the Chapel that Friday to make minor corrections. Some time during his travels, he met the British historian Dr. Charles Burney, who obtained the piece from him and took it to London, where it was published in 1771. 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. The work was also transcribed by Felix Mendelssohn in 1831, and various other 18th and 19th century sources survive.

Burney's edition did not include the ornamentation that made the work famous. 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. However, the Roman priest Pietro Alfieri published in 1840 an edition with the intent of preserving the performance practice of the Sistine choir in the Allegri and Bai compositions, including ornamentation.

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. As a result the bass bass part leaps from F sharp to C, a progression forbidden by the rules of counterpoint at the time when Allegri was working. Sir Ivor Atkins, the choirmaster of Worcester Cathedral, copied the Rockstro verse from Grove's for his English language edition of 1951, and liked what he heard.

Authentic editions have been produced in the last few years using Alfieri's account of 1840, original Vatican source material and other manuscripts, but most modern listeners know only the garbled 20th century version which remains highly popular with conductors.

The Miserere is one of the most often-recorded examples of late Renaissance music, although it was actually written during the chronological confines of the Baroque era; in this regard it is representative of the music of the Roman School of composers, who were stylistically conservative.

Over the years many visitors to the Vatican during Holy Week have been disappointed when it was not an Allegri Service on their day.

Arguably the most famous recording of Allegri's Miserere was that made in March 1963 by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, conducted by Sir David Willcocks, which featured the then-treble Roy Goodman. This recording of the Miserere was originally part of a LP recording entitled 'Evensong for Ash Wednesday' but the Miserere has subsequently been re-released as part of various compilation discs.

Use in popular culture

This piece is used in the soundtrack of "Confessions", the second episode of the second season of BBC television drama Hustle.

A segment of the piece is used in the soundtrack of the movie "Face/Off" prior to the climactic battle.

It is also part of the Medieval soundtrack in Civilization IV

The Orb sampled the work in the song Into The Fourth Dimension on The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld.

Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misercordiam tuam. Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness.

[edit] Score

• From the Choral Public Domain Library

[edit] Sources

• Documents describing Mozart's transcription of the Allegri Miserere at WikiSource
• Ben Byram-Wigfield has produced a detailed discussion of the piece's authentic sources and manuscript history, and an authentic performing edition: see herefr:Miserere (Allegri)