Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- List of music examples
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the text
- Introduction: myth and reality
- Part One The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
- Part Two The Eighteenth Century
- Part Three The Nineteenth Century
- Part Four Performing the Miserere in the Twentieth Century
- Part Five Appendices, Editions and Notes
- List of appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
14 - Introduction to the editions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of tables
- List of music examples
- Acknowledgments
- Note on the text
- Introduction: myth and reality
- Part One The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
- Part Two The Eighteenth Century
- Part Three The Nineteenth Century
- Part Four Performing the Miserere in the Twentieth Century
- Part Five Appendices, Editions and Notes
- List of appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Many editions of Allegri’s Miserere have been made and published, all of them, with the exception of the Paris publication of 1838 (and, to a certain extent, Alfieri’s of 1840), misleading insofar as they pretend to represent the work as performed in the Sistine Chapel by the Papal Choir. The editions published in Appendix 13, and also available separately, propose solutions for a director who wishes to perform the work in the style which made it famous, used in the Chapel between the mid-eighteenth century (or earlier) and the end of the nineteenth. At the same time, for the interested listener, they offer a window into some of the more surprising techniques of the Papal Choir: paper representations of a style of performance which has almost entirely disappeared.
Edition 1 is a transcription of Mustafà’s manuscript of 1892 (M) described in Chapter 12, which sought to include everything necessary to performing ‘the Allegri’. As noted there, most of the music in it is in fact Bai’s Miserere – a measure of the extent to which it had become the singers’ ‘Allegri Miserere’ of choice or, as they might have put it, the Miserere della nostra Cappella. It is so complete that it would be superfluous to add any editorial input, so the only change which has been made is to transpose it a fourth higher, as instructed on the first page. A detailed textual commentary will be found after the score in Appendix 13.
Edition 2 is based on what is thought of today as Allegri’s music, with the ornaments taken largely from the series of manuscripts dating from the 1820s described in Chapter 9, labelled collectively Source A. As these give only a limited number of performance indications, many more have been added following the example of M. The readings of the Manchester (Man), Paris (P) and Milan (Mil) manuscripts, which show that much of the tradition demonstrated by Mustafà stretched back at least a hundred years, have also been taken into account, as have the various abbellimenti performed by the lead soprano of the time Mariano Padroni, and transcribed by Mendelssohn and Nicolai, among others. The edition has also been transposed up a fourth, to conform to the custom of the Papal Choir. All other necessary information will be found after the edition in Appendix 13.
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- Allegri's Miserere in the Sistine Chapel , pp. 215 - 216Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2020