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
- 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
Allegri’s Miserere
The circumstances of performance of falsobordone psalms by the Papal Choir – always unaccompanied (like all its performances) and with few rhythmic imperatives apart from those deriving from the text – made them uniquely apt for the application of decoration in performance, particularly at the cadences. Towards the end of the sixteenth century several treatises appeared showing ways of ornamenting falsobordoni. Among the earliest was the Breve et facile maniera d’essercitarsi … a far passaggi (1593) by the Papal Chapel singer Luca Conforti, who followed up with three volumes of Salmi passaggiati in 1601–03. In 1615 another papal singer, Francesco Severi, published a similar volume with the same title. It may be that this ornamentation was primarily intended for solo singers, with a bass line supplied ‘for singing with organ or with other instruments’, although it also provided models for different singers within a group to improvise against the accompaniment of the others.
Perhaps more relevant to the singers of the Chapel were the publications of G.-B. Bovicelli (Regole, Passaggi di Musica of 1594) and Lodovico Viadana (Cento concerti ecclesiastici of 1602), which give many examples of short cadential flourishes. But the most interesting evidence may be Luigi Zenobi’s description, in a letter dating from around 1600, of the art of a good singer.
He must know when to make esclamationi and not apply them indiscriminately nor crudely, as many do. He must know how to ascend with the voice and how to descend with grace, at times holding over part of the preceding note and sounding it anew if the consonance requires and admits it; he must know how to give rise to dissonances (durezze and false) where the composer has not touched or made them, but left them to the singer’s judgement. He must blend and accord with the other voices; he must at times render the notes with a certain neglect [con disprezzo], sometimes so as to drag them, sometimes with sprightly motion; he must have a rich repertoire of passaggi and good judgement as to how to use them; he must know which are the good ones, starting with those that are made with the greatest artifice of one note, of two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.
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- Allegri's Miserere in the Sistine Chapel , pp. 37 - 52Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2020