{"id":207,"date":"2015-04-04T02:35:59","date_gmt":"2015-04-04T02:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/?p=207"},"modified":"2016-06-10T02:47:22","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T02:47:22","slug":"allegris-miserere-mei-sung-by-the-tallis-scholars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/2015\/04\/04\/allegris-miserere-mei-sung-by-the-tallis-scholars\/","title":{"rendered":"Allegri&#8217;s &#8220;Miserere Mei&#8221; sung by the Tallis Scholars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><body>In honor of Holy Week:<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"720\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nKj1iK2WKS8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>This beautiful piece was composed by Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652), for performance in the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week. \u00a0For a time, according to the oft-told mythical story, the song was the well guarded secret of the Vatican, which forbade its publication, until a 14 year old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visited on Good Friday\u00a01770 and later transcribed the entire piece from memory. \u00a0This is probably not true, but makes a great story (for a full debunking, read Ben Byram-Wigfield\u2019s 1996 essay, \u201cMISERERE MEI, DEUS, GREGORIO ALLEGRI: A Quest for the Holy Grail?\u201d, pg 16, online <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ancientgroove.co.uk\/essays\/AllegriBook.pdf\">here<\/a>). \u00a0There was certainly a mystique about the music that led such as person\u00a0as Mary Shelley to gush:<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><em>But a thousand times over I would go to listen to the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel ; that spot made sacred by the most sublime works of Michael Angelo \u2026 The music, not only of the Miserere, but of the Lamentations, is solemn, pathetic, religious \u2013 the soul is rapt \u2013 carried away into another state of being. Strange that grief, and laments, and the humble petition of repentance, should fill us with delight \u2013 a delight that wakens these very emotions in the heart \u2013 and calls tears into the eyes, and yet is dearer than any pleasure.<\/em><br \/>\n(From Mary Shelley: <em>Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843<\/em>.\u00a0Vol 2. London, Edward Moxon, 1844), Vol 2, 230\u201331; as cited in Graham Kelly\u2019s essay for the University of York Dept of Music, \u201cA unique singers\u2019 manuscript from the 19th century: Domenico Mustafa\u2019s version of the Miserere of Tommaso Bai and Gregorio Allegri\u201d, which can be found online <a href=\"http:\/\/www.york.ac.uk\/music\/conferences\/nema\/oreilly\/\">here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>The version heard commonly today is not likely what a guest to the vatican would have heard in Mozart\u2019s time. \u00a0The \u201ctop C\u201d version we all know and love turns out to have been\u00a0the happy result of an error. \u00a0For you musicologists out there, the Wigfield essay mentioned above explains this in detail: \u00a0\u00a0<em>The received version, as it is widely held today, is a mix of Burney\u2019s first choir with a bizarre second choir, congealed into life in the first edition of Grove\u2019s Dictionary of Music &amp; Musicians in 1880. As an illustrated example, W.S. Rockstro showed the first half of the four-part verse as indicated by Alfieri, but then sticks Mendelssohn\u2019s 1831 record of the first half \u2014up a fourth\u2014 on the second half of the verse. Ivor Atkins, for his edition of 1951, took Burney\u2019s first choir and final verse, adding this second choir from Grove\u2019s. The problem is that the Mendelssohn abbellimenti is also a record of the first half, apparently sung a fourth higher than written at the time of his visit. It is this that causes musicologists to squirm with the bass jumping from an F# up to a C, followed by the swift gear change into C minor. This error has been repeated in two subsequent editions, produced by respected academics. The result is strangely beautiful, and probably here to stay. It is, after all, one of the most popular pieces of sacred music. However, it is neither a representation of the performance practice of the Sistine Chapel choir, nor a true reflection of how the piece was ever sung there.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A theological point can be made here, and perhaps I\u2019ll embellish it down the road: Sometimes God uses our mistakes to His greater glory.<\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In honor of Holy Week: This beautiful piece was composed by Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652), for performance in the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week. \u00a0For a time, according to the oft-told mythical story, the song was the well guarded secret of the Vatican, which forbade its publication, until a 14 year old [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,66],"tags":[121,125,119,124,122,117,120,118,123],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-whispers-of-heaven","tag-burney","tag-good-friday","tag-gregorio-allegri","tag-holy-week","tag-mendelssohn","tag-miserere-mei","tag-mozart","tag-psalm-51","tag-sistine-chapel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1043,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions\/1043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}