The Pontifical Musical Chapel, that is, the schola cantorum of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, has had a permanent choir for five hundred years. Some original pieces have been composed for it. The most famous is the one that begins with the words Miserere mei, Deus (God, have mercy on me), popularly known as Miserere, composed around 1630 by the Italian priest and composer Gregorio Allegri to be performed during Holy Week. Regarded by the Vatican as the exclusive property of the papal choir, its copying and distribution were punishable by excommunication. What no one expected was that an attentive auditor would be able to learn the piece by heart and transcribe it to paper.
The attentive auditor
As part of their first trip to Italy, after visiting Milan and Verona and being entertained and celebrated there, Leopold Mozart and his son Wolfgang Amadeus arrived in Rome in high spirits for Holy Week in 1770.
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| Gregorio Allegri (c.1582 - 1652) |
On his return to his lodgings, the little fourteen-year-old Mozart transcribed onto ruled paper those inaccessible twelve minutes of polyphonic music sung a capella by... two choirs of four and five voices!
On Good Friday, when the piece was to be repeated, father and son returned to the chapel to check the accuracy of the transcription, which needed only a few minor corrections.
A legend?
Undoubtedly, the story has all the characteristics to resemble one of many legends about the superhuman musical abilities of the young Mozart. But unless Leopold was in the habit of falsely impressing his own wife and daughter, the following words sent by Leopold to Salzburg cannot but make the veracity of the anecdote undeniable:
"You have often heard of the famous Miserere in Rome, which is so greatly prized that the performers in the chapel are forbidden on pain of ex communication to take away a single part of it, to copy it or to give it to anyone. But we have it already. Wolfgang has written it down and we would have sent it to Salzburg in this letter, if it were not necessary for us to be there to perform it. But the manner of performance contributes more to its effect than the composition itself. So we shall bring it home with us."
One might think that the Mozart family was not pious and obedient enough but, truth be told, the papal prohibition was never so strict. Allegri's work could be requested by high officials of the church or political power and, although rare, such requests were welcomed and authorized. And in Mozart's case, when Pope Clement XIV learned of the piece's copying, not only did he not excommunicate the child prodigy, but he called him to the Holy See to salute his art by naming him Knight of the Order of the Golden Spur.
In the rendition by the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, the masterwork of Allegri, being asked in loan by little Mozart, in 1770.
