Autor: Breno Vitoriano | Publicado: 2013-01-03T07:58:00-08:00




Miserere, full name "Miserere mei, Deus" 
(Latin: "Have mercy on me, O God") by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri,
 is a setting of Psalm 51 (50) composed during the reign of Pope Urban 
VIII, probably during the 1630s, for use
 in the Sistine Chapel during matins, as part of the exclusive Tenebrae 
service on Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week. The service would start 
usually around 3AM, and during the ritual, candles would be 
extinguished, one by one, until one remained alight and hidden. Allegri 
composed his setting of the Miserere for the final act within the first 
lesson of the Tenebrae service.  It was the last of twelve 
falsobordone Miserere settings composed and chanted at the service since
 1514 and the most popular: at some point, it became forbidden to 
transcribe the music and it was allowed to be performed only at those 
particular services, adding to the mystery surrounding it. Writing it 
down or performing it elsewhere was punishable by excommunication. The 
setting that escaped from the Vatican is actually a conflation of verses
 set by Gregorio Allegri around 1638 and Tommaso Bai (also spelled 
"Baj"; 1650–1718) in 1714.  The Miserere is written for two 
choirs, one of five and one of four voices, and is an example of 
Renaissance polyphony surviving to the present day. One of the choirs 
sings a simple version of the original Miserere chant; the other, 
spatially separated, sings an ornamented "commentary" on this. The piece
 is an example of the stile antico or prima pratica; however, its 
constant use of the dominant seventh chord and its emphasis on 
polychoral techniques certainly put it out of the range of prima 
pratica; a more accurate comparison would be to the works of Giovanni 
Gabrieli.  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. According to the popular story (backed 
up by family letters), the fourteen-year-old Mozart was visiting Rome, 
when he first heard the piece during the Wednesday service. Later that 
day, he wrote it down entirely from memory, returning to the Chapel that
 Friday to make minor corrections. Some time during his travels, he met 
the British historian Dr Charles Burney, who obtained the piece from him
 and took it to London, where it was published in 1771. Once the piece 
was published, the ban was lifted; Mozart was summoned to Rome by the 
Pope, only instead of excommunicating the boy, the Pope showered praises
 on him for his feat of musical genius. The work was also transcribed by
 Felix Mendelssohn in 1831 and Franz Liszt, and various other 18th and 
19th century sources survive. Since the lifting of the ban, Allegri's 
Miserere has become one of the most popular a cappella choral works now 
performed.  Burney's edition did not include the ornamentation 
that made the work famous. The original ornamentations were Renaissance 
techniques that preceded the composition itself, and it was these 
techniques that were closely guarded by the Vatican. Few written sources
 (not even Burney's) showed the ornamentation, and it was this that 
created the legend of the work's mystery. However, the Roman priest 
Pietro Alfieri published an edition in 1840 with the intent of 
preserving the performance practice of the Sistine choir in the Allegri 
and Bai compositions, including ornamentation.