Miserere (Allegri)
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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 ever 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), 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 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.
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. Sir Ivor Atkins, the choirmaster of Worcester Cathedral, copied it out from Grove's for his English language edition of 1951, and liked what he heard.
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.
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.
Sources
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