Gregorio Allegri - Miserere mei, Deus [$35]
Grade IV

Program Note:

Gregorio Allegri was born in Rome in 1582 and died in Rome in 1652. He was an active Italian composer and singer, who got his start as a chorister and then a tenor at S Luigi dei Francesi. He studied with G.M. Nanino before working as a singer and composer for cathedrals at Fermo and Tivoli before becoming the maestro di capella in Sassia, Rome. Here, his music was written in a modern style for small-scale choirs, contrary to his later works which would be written for the papal choir. In 1629, Allegri joined the papal choir as an alto under Pope Urban VIII and was elected the group’s maestro di cappella in 1650. During his time with the group, he revised Palestrina’s hymns and was seen as a worthy successor to Palestrina. Allegri’s Miserere mei, Deus also stems from his time with the papal choir; it was written as a musical setting of Psalm 51 for holy week, and was intended to be a Vatican secret. However, Leopold Mozart visited Rome in 1770 with his son, Wolfgang, who supposedly heard the piece and went home and transcribed the entire thing (despite any transcriptions being illegal under penalty of excommunication). The first published version of the work was seen in 1771 in London by Burney, whom Mozart had given a copy of his transcription to. This version is different from what has been found in any original Vatican scores, perhaps partly due to the tradition of improvising embellishments, and partly due to an additional complementary version from 1713 by Bai that was often substituted for Allegri’s. Additionally, in 1831, Mendelssohn made his own transcription, which was based on a version he heard sung a fourth higher than the original. This Mendelssohn version was used as an illustration in the first edition of Grove Music, and that ended up being the accepted version. The version that is most commonly performed today was assembled by Sir Ivor Atkins in the 1950’s, as a synthesis of Burney’s 1771 version and another version from the 1930’s by Robert Haas.

This version for euphonium/tuba choir is similar to Burney’s version, though one interesting notable difference is the repeated notes, which would be the rhythm for vocal diction, are not written out in Burney’s version, instead being only represented by a breve, and leaving the rhythm of the words associated to the performers. Additionally, a few of the verses were cut from this version, as the music is somewhat strophic, and as the euphonium/tuba ensemble has no means of representing different words in each verse, the repetition would become boring. This version is in the key of G and features a tuba choir and a euphonium choir, to be placed on opposite sides of the performance venue. If an ensemble has the personnel, an additional antiphonal voice can be placed away from the two choirs to play solely the euphonium 1 solo recitative part. Otherwise, it should be known that this line has expressive freedom, like a solo psalm tone line in plain chant.