'Allegri's Miserere' in the Sistine Chapel
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A01=Graham O`reilly
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Allegri's Miserere
Author_Graham O'Reilly
Author_Graham O`reilly
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AVGC
Category=AVGC3
Category=AVLA
choral music
COP=United Kingdom
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early Baroque music
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Gregorio Allegri
Holy Week
Italian composer
Language_English
late Renaissance
liturgical music
music history
musical adaptation
musical performance
PA=Available
Papal Choir
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
Sistine Chapel
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781783274871
- Weight: 846g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 29 May 2020
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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The Miserere by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652) is one of the most popular, oft performed and recorded choral pieces of late Renaissance/early Baroque music. Yet the piece known today bears little resemblanceto Allegri's original or to the piece as it was performed before 1870.
The Miserere attributed to the Italian composer Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652) is one of the most popular, often performed and recorded choral pieces of late Renaissance/early Baroque music. It was composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII in the 1630s, for the exclusive use of the Papal Choir in the Sistine Chapel during Holy Week, the last of thirteen surviving Misereres sung at the services of Tenebræ since 1514. When the young Mozart visited Rome, so the story goes, he transcribed it from memory, risking excommunication but helping posterity to reclaim the piece. Yet the Miserere known today bears little resemblance to Allegri's original or to its method of performance before 1900.
This book is the first detailed account of this iconic work's performance history in the Sistine Chapel, in particular focussing on its heyday in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rather than looking at the Miserere as a work on paper, the key to its genesis - as this book reveals - can only be found in a performance context. The book includes consideration both of the implications of that context in recreating it for performance, and of the history and practice of the "English Miserere" - the version commonly heard today. Appendices present key source transcriptions and two performance editions.
GRAHAM O'REILLY is founder and conductor of the French-based Ensemble William Byrd, which recorded the Miserere from a late Vatican manuscript in 2000.
