Allegri – Miserere mei, Deus (c.1638)

There’s a great deal of story around this work.

What do we know?

It’s a setting of Psalm 51 (‘Have mercy on me, O God’), composed for the exclusive use of the Sistine Chapel during the Tenebrae (‘darkness’) services during Holy Week, where one by one candles are snuffed out until the place is in darkness.

We know it was composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII, most probably in 1638 or at the least during the 1630s, by the Italian composer Gregorio Allegri, who had been a chorister in Rome at San Luigi dei Francesi, and then appointed as an alto to the Sistine Chapel Choir.

We know that it is composed for two choirs – one of five voices based on the plainsong chant called ‘Tonus Peregrinus’ which combines the ‘old style’ and the Venetian/Gabrieli polychoral techniques, and another more soloistic choir of four voices who elaborate the music – the ornaments are called ‘abbellimenti’.

What are the stories?

In order to keep a sense of mystery around the work, the Vatican threatened anyone publishing or copying the work with excommunication (removal from the Church, damning your soul to Hell).

Three copies were made – highly simplified – one for the Holy Roman Emperor, one for the King of Portugal, and one for ‘an eminent music scholar’.

Sometime before 1714, Tommaso Bai included a version (at the Sistine Chapel) with extra elaborations

In 1770, Mozart (aged 14) transcribed it from memory, although it’s possible that he’d seen or heard black market copies before his visit, such as in London in 1764/5.

The English music historian and traveller Charles Burney obtained a copy of Mozart’s copy and published it, without the second choir’s printed elaborations.

In 1831, Mendelssohn made his own transcription, and through some form of confusion around pitches and clefs, in 1880 when Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians was first published, this error was included, resulting in the second half of the second choir’s elaborations being a fourth higher, resulting in not a top G, but a top C, for which the piece is now famous.

There are two detailed histories of the work:

https://www.ancientgroove.co.uk/essays/allegri.html

https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781783274871/allegris-miserere-in-the-sistine-chapel/

Here is the now-familiar version with the top Cs:

Here is a version which takes the listener through different editions as the piece progresses: