The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 29 (2023) No. 1

‘Allegri’s Miserere’ in the Sistine Chapel. By Graham O’Reilly. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2020. [xvi, 372 pp. ISBN 978-1-78327-478-1.]

Reviewed by Thomas Hochradner*

1. Introduction

2. Allegri’s Miserere in Networks of Transmission

3. Looking to the Future

Acknowledgment

References

1. Introduction

1.1 A mystical veil surrounds Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere. Indeed, almost no work is more difficult to grasp than this one because its simple falsobordone construction was subjected to one mutation after another, and it survived in many different places and diverse guises. Over the course of time, it shed more and more of its original form; already in the late eighteenth century—and despite all the precautions taken at the papal court to preserve its unique status—its wide dissemination had deprived it of the non-notated performance practices essential for its realization in its original location, the Cappella Sistina. Despite these developments outside Rome, Allegri’s Miserere nevertheless retained its magic in the Eternal City and gradually became a special tourist attraction.^[1] In the nineteenth century, a veritable “Miserere mania” broke out. Not all visitors managed to be allowed inside the chapel, but even those who only listened from the outside wrote in their travel books about the tremendous impression that the performance of this piece was able to evoke by means of varied ornamentation. A large part of this prominent effect was due to the decidedly theatrical manner in which the liturgy of Tenebrae was performed in the Cappella Sistina, involving a complete darkening of the space and a contemplative staging that contrasted Baroque festivity with the monumental aesthetic prevalent in the nineteenth century in a highly effective counterpoint.^[2]

1.2 Measured against the long-lived importance of Allegri’s Miserere, scholarly discussion of both the work and its historical influence has for a long time remained surprisingly sparse in the musicological literature. However, a few articles—mainly in German^[3] and occasionally in English^[4]—are worthy of mention because they succeeded in expanding and deepening existing knowledge. A foundation was provided by Julius Amann’s study, “Allegris Miserere und die Aufführungspraxis in der Sixtina nach Reiseberichten und Musikhandschriften,” approved as a dissertation at the University of Freiburg (Switzerland) in 1935.^[5] Amann’s discussion, which was exemplary for the time, is based on careful source study and presents the reception of Allegri’s Miserere in such an insightful and conclusive manner that—apart from incidental additions—his explanations were not subjected to re-evaluation until recently. However, there has long been reason to do so, as such a study from the time before World War II based in large part on manuscript tradition would no longer have been topical even in the 1950s. At the same time, the fact that it took so long to establish a new fundamental synthetic analysis—combining an evaluation of the sources and an examination of the work’s posterity and place in music history—is not only due to the quality of Amann’s publication but particularly because of an almost impenetrable tangle of versions, transmission paths, and open questions for which only hypothetical answers can sometimes be found. Now, however, with Graham O’Reilly’s Allegri’s ‘Miserere’ in the Sistine Chapel, the focus of the legend—namely the appearance of the work in the performances of the Cappella Sistina—is placed on a new solid and valid foundation through extensive research.

2. Allegri’s Miserere in Networks of Transmission

2.1 While the basic narrative framework developed via musicological studies to date proves to be quite sustainable, Graham O’Reilly has been able to uncover an incredible abundance of developments, details, and inferences that fill in the gaps between the girders of this framework. Open questions receive answers, which in turn lead to new questions that must perhaps remain unanswered. Indeed, it is this basic attitude—to remain cautious of hypotheses, to admit where something cannot yet be clarified—that brings the author so close to the intangibility of his subject. Did the portamento practice of the Papal Chapel derive from the Baroque, or was it merely witnessed by the late nineteenth-century copyist, chapel master Domenico Mustafà? How unusual was the interpretation of Allegri’s Miserere in the Sistine Chapel over the ages: was it a remnant of an early Baroque ornamental practice that became entrenched in tradition? In O’Reilly’s study, these and other considerations emerge not from mere speculation but from a comprehensive and careful examination of the available sources; all this is documented by an impressive density of evidence in the footnotes.

2.2 In the course of O’Reilly’s presentation, the extremely multifarious character of Allegri’s Miserere becomes clear. In principle, one can speak of a never-ending series of variants, leaving aside the original that had already fallen out of use in the early eighteenth century. Thus, the work’s longevity, both in the Papal Chapel and beyond, depended not so much on its original form but rather on a process of continual mutation legitimized through its ties to tradition. Nevertheless, in the course of these developments there arose moments of special significance for the history of the work’s reception. In particular, there is Giovanni Biordi’s 1731 revision of the five-part setting of the odd verses, and also the 1771 print of the entire piece by Charles Burney,^[6] who, however, did not consult a complete copy from the Vatican Archives but apparently relied on an excerpted version by Padre Martini that included only two falsobordoni for the odd verses (the first five-part and the first four-part ones) and the final nine-part section, omitting all the particular details of the other sections. Since the reception of Allegri’s Miserere outside Rome was essentially based on Burney’s publication, two axes of transmission emerged, both subject to continual change. In Rome, important Papal Chapel masters—above all Giuseppe Baini at the beginning of the nineteenth century—provided the work a new guise; elsewhere there were various independently undertaken reconstructive efforts, at times guided by source studies, that attempted to present a convincing solution for the performance of the work. An example of this is the detailed account of the fate of the “English Miserere,” to which O’Reilly devotes its own chapter.

2.3 O’Reilly’s study attentively follows the path of Allegri’s Miserere through the ages. His review of its almost uninterrupted but variable annual performance by the papal choir is embedded in an illuminating discussion of the acoustics and layout of the Cappella Sistina, and of the economic circumstances of the singers. This demonstrates that a full understanding of musical performance practice—both in manner of execution and in terms of its quality— remains incomplete without an examination of its socio-cultural environment; indeed, for example, the Papel Chapel did not often have access to the best singers because of its less-than-average pay. Moreover, O’Reilly’s study treats not only questions concerning the different versions of the work, and even problematic mixtures, but a variety of other issues: differences in text underlay, the pitch level in the Papal Chapel (which gradually rose by a third to a fourth over time), and the choice of mode for the Gregorian chant sung in the even verses. Several musical examples illustrate the arguments; however, it would have helped somewhat if more explanatory diagrams had been integrated into the presentation.

3. Looking to the Future

3.1 O’Reilly’s book focuses on the tradition of the work’s transmission in the Papal Chapel together with all the changes triggered after Burney’s first printing by further transcriptions from the same (Vatican) provenance but from different sources. This focus means that another print of Allegri’s Miserere—which was published by Giovanni Maria Giussani in Milan probably shortly before 1800 and transmitted the version of 1731^[7]—was not taken into account. Like Burney’s edition, this version contains only the five- and four-part movements and the nine-part final section. However, it inserted a measure in the four-part section^[8] and subsequently, in Central Europe, the setting of the verses was also altered—namely from an alternation of odd verses set in polyphony and even verses set as chant to a sequence that alternated settings in five parts, four parts, and then chant—and thus created a further chain of transmission and reception whose historical relevance has yet to be examined in detail.

3.2 As an experienced ensemble leader, Graham O’Reilly is particularly interested in ensuring coherent performances of the Miserere. His review of various recordings makes it clear that he is by no means proposing a single “correct” solution to the problems of the work but rather is concerned with practical performance decisions. It is precisely this open and yet historically anchored attitude of the author that makes his approach so valuable and his book so worth reading.

Acknowledgment

Many thanks to Don Fader for his copious assistance as I translated my German text into English.