I’ve sung with my choir a version of Gregorio Alberti’s “Miserere” edited by John Rutter, who includes a rather lengthy and somewhat technical commentary about how the current version of this piece came about. Rutter does not include the most famous story about how the piece became available to the general public, though, a tale about the child prodigy Mozart and his ability to write down music from memory, even music that he had heard only once. I’ll get to that story in a minute. (Don’t you just hate it when writers do that?)
Let me first fill in a little background, enough so that the Mozart story is put in context. Gregorio Allegri, who lived from 1582-1652, was a singer, composer, and priest, who lived all of his life in Rome and was a member of the papal choir from 1629 until his death. He is known for this one work, which is a Latin setting taken from Psalm 51, which in turn is an expression of King David’s repentance after committing adultery and murder. (It’s a pretty hair-raising story; if you’re not familiar with it, you can read the original version here in a modern translation. The end of the chapter has these ominous words: “But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.”) Allegri composed the work during the reign of Pope Urban VIII for use in the Sistine Chapel as part of the Tenebrae service on Holy Wednesday and Good Friday of Holy Week. “Tenebrae” means “shadow” or “darkness” in Latin; both of these days relate specifically to the death of Jesus, with Wednesday being the traditional day on which Judas made his decision to betray Jesus and Friday being the day of Christ’s crucifixion. (It’s only fair to note that these days are not spelled out in the Gospels; they are later traditions.) The Tenebrae services would take place at dusk, with the candles being extinguished one by one as the service progressed until only one was left, and that one would be hidden, I assume as a symbol of Christ’s death and coming resurrection. It sounds very beautiful!
On to the Mozart connection. I find that the Wikipedia article is perfectly clear about the story, so here it is:
At some point, it became forbidden to transcribe the music and it was allowed to be performed only at those particular services at the Sistine Chapel, thus adding to the mystery surrounding it.
Three authorized copies of the work were distributed prior to 1770: to the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I; to the King of Portugal; and to Padre (Giovanni Battista) Martini. However, none of them succeeded in capturing the beauty of the Miserere as performed annually in the Sistine Chapel. [This lack of beauty probably stemmed from the fact that these authorized copies did not include the Sistine Choir’s ornamentation.]
According to the popular story (backed up by family letters), fourteen-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was visiting Rome when he first heard the piece during the Wednesday service. (Add 14 to his date of birth in 1756 and you get 1770.) Later that day, he wrote it down entirely from memory, returning to the Chapel that Friday to make minor corrections. Less than three months after hearing the song and transcribing it, Mozart had gained fame for the work and was summoned to Rome by Pope Clement XIV, who showered praise on him for his feat of musical genius and awarded him the Chivalric Order of the Golden Spur. Some time during his travels, he met the British historian Charles Burney, who obtained the piece from him and took it to London, where it was published in 1771. The Mozart story therefore fits in with this historical fact.
One question that occurred to me, and probably occurred to you as you read this, is, Why on earth was Pope Clement not totally ticked off with Mozart for transcribing the piece? Why, instead of giving him the “Golden Spur,” didn’t he, like, threaten to excommunicate him or something? The wording of the article is a little unclear on this aspect of the story. Maybe Pope Clement was so impressed with Mozart that he just ignored the whole issue of the boy’s banned behavior. Who knows? It seems to be the case that at this point the ban was lifted.
One last note: If you’re anything like me and therefore not much of a Latin scholar, you may have thought that “miserere” means “misery.” That’s what it sounds like to me, anyway. But the actual title of our piece, taken directly from the opening Latin words of the psalm itself, is “Have mercy upon me, Oh God” (Miserere mei, Deus). When I took a look at a couple of online dictionaries, however, I found that the two words are indeed related. You pray for mercy when you are in misery, as it were. A “miserere” is a lamentation as well as a plea for compassion and pity.
In the course of googling “mercy vs. misery,” I found this gem from a book on Psalm 51 by none other than Girolamo Savonarola, the Roman Catholic priest who was burned at the stake in 1498 for his railings against corruption in the Church. He wrote this while he was in prison awaiting his execution:
“Deep calleth unto deep. The deep of misery calleth unto the deep of mercy. The deep of transgressions calleth unto the deep of grace. Greater is the deep of mercy than the deep of misery.”
Aren’t those rather amazing statements coming from a man facing a horrible death?
If you’re wondering about the illustration for this post, by the way, it’s something that popped up when I searched for “mercy” with the online image service I use. It isn’t exactly relevant to our piece but is so beautiful that I went ahead and used it, and it does fit perfectly into the whole “mercy/misery” idea, since it’s an illustration of the Good Samaritan, who had mercy on the miserable man who’d been robbed, beaten, and left at the side of the road. We forget sometimes that stained-glass windows were intended to tell stories and not just look pretty!
Here’s a gorgeous, gorgeous performance (note the name of the choir)–I can understand why it’s had over 10 million views:
And, because I grab at any chance to post scenes from Amadeus, my favorite movie ever, here’s a clip where Mozart plays a Salieri piece after hearing it just once (plus a lot of other stuff, all great)–
© Debi Simons
