A Startling New Sound

I know this isn't supposed to be a blog about well-known classical music, but bear with me.

One of the most famous works of religious choral music from the Italian Renaissance is the penitential psalm Miserere as set to music by Gregorio Allegri.  Almost as famous as the music itself is the back story: how it was composed to be sung in the Sistine Chapel, how the papacy treasured it so dearly that no copies were allowed to be made, nor was it allowed to be sung anywhere else, and how Mozart heard it sung in the Sistine Chapel and copied it out from memory afterwards.

It's an undoubted masterpiece, with a small echo quartet alternating with the main body of singers, and with the echo soprano repeatedly singing a refrain that includes a soaring high C.  Indeed, you will seldom read a review of a recording which doesn't discuss the soprano's ability to nail that high C over and over again.

So why am I writing about it on my rare music blog?  I've just acquired a copy of a truly historic recording which is also a brand-new release.  For the first time ever, the Holy See has permitted a recording company to record the Sistine Chapel choir in the chapel itself, and singing a repertoire of music composed for the choir through several centuries.  Unsurprisingly, such a recording inevitably includes Allegri's Miserere -- but not the Miserere as we have known it.  The recorded performance works from the manuscript in the Vatican library, and the music comes out sounding like a distant cousin of the version we have always heard until now.

I've listened to it several times already, and it's fascinating to hear the differences -- there are many -- and the relatively few moments when something familiar comes to the ear for a few seconds.  The basic structure is similar, a verse and response form, with verse separated from response by two brief phrases of Gregorian chant each time.  Each reiteration of the verse uses the same basic chord structure with the choir chanting the text on the same chords -- likewise the echo responses.  What's startling is the fact that the verse and response do not at all resemble the music we have heard until now.  There's a good deal more melodic and harmonic movement than we're accustomed to, and there's no soaring high C anywhere. 

This fascinating new "original" version is an equally treasurable musical composition but definitely not the piece we've always heard and sung until now!

We do know that the first version to "escape" from the Vatican, years before Mozart's time, was a conflation of Allegri's work with verses by Tommaso Bai.  Other versions also circulated before the ban was finally lifted.  But the boy Mozart's achievement was no less remarkable for that, and we know that the Pope rewarded him with a papal knighthood for his musical skill.  The first edition published from within the Vatican, in 1841, included notes on the ornamentation practices then current in the Papal Choir, which may actually have been the real secret that was so jealously guarded for so long!  At any rate, the Allegri Miserere hitherto known has been effectively the combination of Allegri with Bai.  Hence the fascination of being able to hear, for the first time, the original composer's own handiwork. 

Aside from the Allegri, the remainder of the music on the recording is truly lovely.  It includes several selections of Gregorian chant, as well as choral compositions by Victoria, Lassus, Anerio, and above all, Palestrina.  The choir, as one would expect of the "house choir" of the Papacy, is first-rate.  It's a larger body than we usually hear in this repertoire nowadays.  A picture in the booklet shows a group of some sixty boys and men, although smaller numbers may have been used in some works.  Director Massimo Palombella has provided a detailed program note in which he describes the changes which have been made in the performing style to keep this music as a living tradition -- a most laudable objective.

Scarcely less fascinating than the singing is the rich, resonant acoustic of the Sistine Chapel itself.  As soon as the choir sang the opening notes of the first piece, I was transported back in time to 1971, the year when this eager young high school history student set foot in that remarkable place for the first time.  How clearly I can recall the echoes of the hundreds of visitors' voices all around me!  Although I can easily recall the visual impact of the famous frescoes, I had forgotten that auditory detail until this beautiful and remarkable recording so quickly refreshed my memory!  The accompanying booklet specifies one particular detail of the Chapel's role in the enterprise: it states that the Miserere attempts to reconstruct the original sound of the work by having the echo group singing through from the adjacent Sala Regia.  And indeed, the echo group is sufficiently distant that you have to listen carefully for their clearly enunciated words.

This DGG recording is a landmark that should be on the shopping list of anyone who enjoys the unaccompanied choral masterpieces of the Renaissance.