Miserere (Allegri)

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Miserere (Allegri)

Miserere by Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
composer Gregorio Allegri

Gregorio Allegri

Gregorio Allegri was an Italy composer and priest of the Roman School of composers. He mainly lived in Rome, and died there....
(also called "Miserere mei, Deus" - English "Have mercy on me, O God") is a setting of Psalm 51 (50)

Psalm 51

Psalm 51 , traditionally referred to as the Miserere, its Latin incipit, is one of the penitential psalms. It begins: Have mercy on me, O God....
composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII

Pope Urban VIII

Pope Urban VIII , born Maffeo Barberini, was Pope from 1623 to 1644. He was the last Pope to expand the papal territory by force of arms, and was a prominent patron of the arts and reformer of Church missions....
, probably during the 1630s, for use in the Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel

Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. Its fame rests on its architecture, evocative of Solomon's Temple of the Old Testament and on its decoration which has been frescoed throughout by the greatest Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Raphael, Bernini, and...
during matins

Matins

Matins is the early morning or night prayer service in the Roman Catholic Church, Anglicanism, Lutheran and Eastern Orthodoxy liturgy of the canonical hours....
on Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week

Holy Week

Holy Week in Christianity is the last week of Lent and the week before Easter. It includes the religious holidays of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and lasts from Palm Sunday until but not including Easter Sunday, as Easter Sunday is the first day of the new season of Pentecostarion....
. It was the last of twelve falsobordone

Falsobordone

Falsobordone is a style of Reciting tone found in music from the 15th to the 18th centuries. Most often associated with the harmonization of Gregorian chant psalm tones, it is based on root position triad and is first known to have appeared appeared in southern Europe in the 1480s....
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.

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Miserere by Italian

Italy

Gregorio Allegri

Psalm 51

Psalm 51 , traditionally referred to as the Miserere, its Latin incipit, is one of the penitential psalms. It begins: Have mercy on me, O God....
composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII

Pope Urban VIII

Sistine Chapel

Matins

Holy Week

Falsobordone

Excommunication

Excommunication is a religious censure used to deprive or suspend membership in a religious community. The word literally means putting [someone] out of full communion....
. The setting that escaped from the Vatican is actually a conflation of verses set by Gregorio Allegri

Gregorio Allegri

Gregorio Allegri was an Italy composer and priest of the Roman School of composers. He mainly lived in Rome, and died there....
around 1638 and Tommaso Bai (1650 - 1718, also spelled "Baj") in 1714.

The Miserere is written for two choirs, one of five and one of four voices. One of the choirs sings a simple version of the original Miserere chant; the other, spatially separated, sings an ornamented "commentary" on this. Many have cited this work as an example of the stile antico

Stile antico

Stile antico, literally 'ancient style', is a term describing music from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. It refers to a manner of composition which is historically-conscious, as opposed to stile moderno....
or prima pratica

Prima pratica

Prima pratica, literally "first practice", refers to early Baroque music which looks more to the style of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, or the style codified by Gioseffo Zarlino, than to more "modern" styles....
. However, its constant use of the dominant seventh chord

Dominant seventh chord

Of all the seventh chords, perhaps the most important to understand is the 'dominant seventh' , a Major chord with a minor seventh. It was the first seventh chord to appear regularly in Western music....
and its emphasis on polychoral techniques certainly put it out of the range of prima pratica. A more accurate comparison would be to the works of Giovanni Gabrieli

Giovanni Gabrieli

Giovanni Gabrieli was an Italian composer and organ . He was one of the most influential musicians of his time, and represents the culmination of the style of the Venetian School, at the time of the shift from Renaissance music to Baroque music idioms....
.

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

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty; at seventeen he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and traveled in search of a better position, always...
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

Charles Burney

Charles Burney was an England music history and father of author Frances Burney....
, who obtained the piece from him and took it to London, where it was published in 1771. Once published, the ban was lifted and Allegri's Miserere has since become one of the most popular a cappella choral works now performed. The work was also transcribed by Felix Mendelssohn

Felix Mendelssohn

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born, and generally known in English-speaking countries, as Felix Mendelssohn was a Germany composer, pianist, organist and conducting of the early Romantic music period....
in 1831 and Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt was a Kingdom of Hungary composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher.Liszt became renowned throughout Europe for his great skill as a performer during the 19th century....
, and various other 18th and 19th century sources survive.

Mozart was summoned to Rome by the Pope

Pope Clement XIV

Pope Clement XIV , born Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli, was Pope from 1769 to 1774. At the time of his election, he was the only Franciscan friar in the College of Cardinals....
, only instead of excommunicating the boy, the Pope showered praises on him for his feat of musical genius.

Burney's edition did not include the ornamentation

Ornament (music)

In music, ornaments are musical flourishes that are not necessary to carry the overall line of the melody , but serve instead to decorate or "ornament" that line....
or "abbellimenti" 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 Burney's) showed the ornamentation, and it was this that created the legend of the work's mystery. However, the Roman priest Pietro Alfieri

Pietro Alfieri

Pietro Alfieri was a Roman Catholic priest and at one time a Camaldolese monk, b. at Rome, June, 1801; d. there 12 June, 1863.For many years, Alfieri was the professor of singing at the English College in Rome....
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 Miserere is one of the most often-recorded examples of late Renaissance music. A famous, "celebrated" recording of Allegri's Miserere was that made in March 1963 by the Choir

Choir of King's College, Cambridge

The world-famous Choir of King's College, Cambridge is one of today's most accomplished and renowned representatives of the great British choral tradition....
of King's College, Cambridge

King's College, Cambridge

King's College, Cambridge is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and St. Nicholas in Cambridge, it is referred to as King's within the university....
, conducted by Sir David Willcocks, which featured the then-treble Roy Goodman

Roy Goodman

Roy Goodman is a conductor and violinist, specialising in the performance and direction of early music. He became internationally famous as the 12-year-old boy treble soloist in the March 1963 recording of Miserere with the Choir of King's College, Cambridge under David Willcocks....
. This recording of the Miserere was originally part of an LP

Gramophone record

A gramophone record is an analog signal sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed modulated spiral groove usually starting near the periphery and ending near the centre of the disc....
recording entitled 'Evensong for Ash Wednesday' but the Miserere has subsequently been re-released on various compilation discs.

Text

Original

The original is written in Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
:

English translation

This translation is from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer

Book of Common Prayer

The Book of Common Prayer is the common title of a number of prayer books of the Church of England and used throughout the Anglican Communion. The first book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI of England, was a product of the English Reformation following the break with Roman Catholic Church....
, and is used in Ivor Atkins

Ivor Atkins

Sir Ivor Algernon Atkins was the choirmaster and organist at Worcester Cathedral for over 50 years. He is best known for inserting the famous top-C part for the treble in Allegri's Miserere....
' English edition of the Miserere (published by Novello

Novello & Co

Novello & Co is a London-based printed music publishing company specializing in classical music, particularly choral repertoire.It was founded in 1811 by Vincent Novello, and is now owned by Music Sales....
):

Have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great goodness: according to the multitude of Thy mercies do away mine offences.

Wash me throughly from my wickedness: and cleanse me from my sin.

For I acknowledge my faults: and my sin is ever before me.

Against Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that Thou mightest be justified in Thy saying, and clear when Thou art judged.

Behold, I was shapen in wickedness: and in sin hath my mother conceived me.

But lo, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shalt make me to understand wisdom secretly.

Thou shalt purge me with hyssop

Hyssop

Hyssop is a genus of about 10-12 species of herbaceous or subshrub plants in the family Lamiaceae, native from the east Mediterranean to central Asia....
, and I shall be clean: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness: that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.

Turn Thy face from my sins: and put out all my misdeeds.

Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from Thy presence: and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.

O give me the comfort of Thy help again: and stablish me with Thy free Spirit.

Then shall I teach Thy ways unto the wicked: and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.

Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, Thou that art the God of my health: and my tongue shall sing of Thy righteousness.

Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord: and my mouth shall shew Thy praise.

For Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it Thee: but Thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.

The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt Thou not despise.

O be favourable and gracious unto Sion: build Thou the walls of Jerusalem.

Then shalt Thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with the burnt-offerings and oblations: then shall they offer young bullocks upon Thine altar.

Sources

External links

from the
from the Choral Public Domain Library
Choral Public Domain Library

The Choral Public Domain Library is a sheet music archive which focuses on choir and vocal music in the public domain....