Arts
Music and movement
Peter Phillips
The return of Holy Week puts me in mind of Allegri's Miserere — that famous setting of Psalm LI which for 150 years the papacy jealously guarded as if it were little less than a miracle. In the Anglican Church it is customarily sung on Ash Wednesday; but in the Sistine Chapel it might be sung on any day of Holy Week, and especially on Good Friday. The history of it has always contained a large amount of mystery, as does the music itself, but there is more to it than I ever imagined when in 1980 I made my own edition of it for a recording with the Tallis Scholars.
The traditional story is that Gregorio Allegri composed the music some time between 1629 and 1652 'for the Sistine Chapel Choir, which created such an effect on every listener that the Pope came to forbid any copies of it to be circulated outside the Chapel under threat of excom- munication. This ban was finally broken when the young Mozart (aged 14) went to hear it and was able to write it out afterwards from memory. After that it was widely copied and printed throughout Europe, never failing to impress its many different audiences with the same sublime power. This force is supposed to proceed in large part from the high C (two octaves above middle C) which the treble soloist must sing five times in all, and from the embellishments which surround that note.
This account is essentially true, though it should be amended in two respects, one important, the other not. The latter is that when Mozart made his transcription, the piece was already known outside the Vati- can, which did not prevent Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang's father, from writing home to his wife to say that the deed had been done, but that he couldn't send the manuscript to her because if it fell into the wrong hands he would incur the censure of the Church. By that time (1770) the Pope had already given Charles Burney, the English traveller and historian, three copies, and it was Burney who made the first ever publication of it, in London in 1771. Up until the time of that gift to Burney the only known copy outside Rome was made, by Papal authority, for the King 'Walt Disney's running the place now.' of Portugal. Mozart's feat in transcribing the music by ear is remarkable, but not as spectacular as at first might be supposed because the setting is in fact highly repeti- tive, and half of it is straightforward chant, which he could have found in any psalter. The difficult part would have been writing down the embellishments, and herein lies the mystery. It is certain that the ones he heard were not the same as those we are familiar with now — they may have been quite simple on that particular occasion, there may not even have been any to speak of at all. The high C was first mentioned only in the 19th century, by another notable composer, Felix Mendelssohn.
Embellishments are traditionally impro- vised according to the taste and discretion of the performers. Allegri's Miserere has always been sung by two choirs in alterna- tion, one scored for four voices and the other for five. The practice today is that the four-voice group is sung by soloists, who carry the more spectacular embellish- ments; but it is clear that in the past both choirs contributed equally to this process. And they were done on the spur of the moment, with different types of ornament becoming popular in different decades as the leading singer or singers in the choir changed. For instance, in 1792 and again in 1839 there could have been no question of a high C -being sung in the position it occurs now, because witnesses report that the piece was sung in B flat minor, although it was written in G minor. (One account goes on to say that during the performance it sank one and a half tones in pitch — a great deal — so that it did in fact end up where it was written.)
The people who commented on the piece, especially in its earlier history, rarely talk about the embellishments, but refer to such things as 'purity of harmony, refinement of vocal sounds and delicacy of expression' (Burney 1771). Even as late as Mendelssohn's visit in 1831 the talking- point was still the way the music was sung: 'they sing it with the greatest variety, from the softest piano to the full strength of the voice: it is no wonder that everyone is struck by it'. Indirectly this makes the point that the remainder of the piece has an expressive power of its own, for all its simplicity. Evidently this power may be greatly increased if the work is heard in the building and on the occasion for which it was written. King Leopold of Austria discovered this when, early in 1770, he asked the Pope to send him a copy with his most accomplished singer, to recreate the experience in the Imperial Chapel in Vien- na. According to Burney it sounded so bad that the Emperor, was convinced he had been deliberately sent the wrong piece. The Pope, who knew nothing of music, could not understand how the same notes could sound so different in different places, but agreed to send this time several singers to Vienna to try again. A new war with Turkey prevented their journey from tak- ing place.
For us, outside the Sistine Chapel, it is the decorations which characterise the piece, and it is evident that they have little or nothing to do with Allegri. They have alvyays been, and still should be, a living. and changing way of making music within the confines which Allegri set — probably not much more than a series of chords. Once the music escaped from the Vatican the number of singers who contributed to this process greatly increased, and the result has been about 70 different pub- lished versions. I do not suppose any two are exactly the same, and they all have a certain claim to authenticity. The edition most common in England first appeared in the early years of this century, with embel- lishments close to those Mendelssohn re- corded, and most subsequent ones have copied it; my own, for example, did so but restored the Latin text. It is as well to remember that this is not what Allegri wrote, and furthermore these versions are trying to fix precisely something which, by the experience of generations, should not be fixed.
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