CE St John's College, Cambridge Wed, 13th Feb 2013

[Miles Coverdale]

One of the most obvious ways in which a modern performance differs from what might have been heard in the 17th century is that the solo verses are now all essentially the same. The Taverner Choir recorded a version some years ago which incorporated some of the original manuscript abbellimenti. It makes for an interesting listen, and can be found here.

[DracoM]

Thanks, Miles Coverdale.
Much more affectingly complex, and thoughtful a version.
Loved the almost guttural plainchant.
Q: If boys sang the top parts, would you trust them with decorations as elaborate as that, I wonder? Or do we assume that boys would be thoroughly familiar with the notion? Or maybe not boys on top lines at all?

[Simon]

Boys did, as a matter of course, sing the top parts. Some boys in those days, just as today, would have no problems at all with such decoration.

[Miles Coverdale]

Boys did, as a matter of course, sing the top parts. Some boys in those days, just as today, would have no problems at all with such decoration.

Not so, Simon. In Allegri's time, membership of the Sistine choir was limited to adults (don't forget that the Miserere was the exclusive property of that choir for many years), and the top parts would have been sung by castrati. It was not until the mid 19th century that boys were really trained in Italy. To quote from Nick Clapton's excellent biography of Alessandro Moreschi: ‘At this time the received wisdom in Italy and many other countries was still that boys could not be trained to high standards of singing – what an erroneous contrast to the Anglican tradition!’

[DracoM]

Trained, yes, but trained in and allowed to formulate decoration as eloquent and apt as in that T-Players CD?
I'd love to think lads could, but I sure as heck wouldn't be the DoM who nodded to young Bill and said 'go for it, son!'
Could castrati do top C? Or do we suppose it was transposed into a key suitable for them?
Gosh, can of worms here.................!!

[Miles Coverdale]

Trained, yes, but trained in and allowed to formulate decoration as eloquent and apt as in that T-Players CD?

Difficult to say. Perhaps they would not have been up to such feats. After all, it would appear that boys' singing in Italy was starting from a fairly low base. The quote from the Moreschi biography is in realtion to the founding in 1868 of a schola puerorum at the express wish of Pius IX. But, as I say, it would have been castrati singing in the Sistine choir at the time.

Could castrati do top C? Or do we suppose it was transposed into a key suitable for them?

There is no reason to suppose that they couldn't. Moreschi sings a top B in one of the pieces he recorded in 1904.

However, the top C in the Allegri is a later confabulation. It results from an abbellimento written out by Mendelssohn in 1831 (which went up to G and was used with the first half of the verse) being printed in the 1880 edition of Grove's dictionary up a fourth and used with the second half of the verse. (This is why there is a sudden lurch from G minor to C minor at this point in the version is use today.) To quote from Ben Byram-Wigfield's article on it: ‘The result is strangely beautiful, and probably here to stay. It is, after all, one of the most popular pieces of sacred music. However, it is neither a representation of the performance practice of the Sistine Chapel choir, nor a true reflection of how the piece was ever sung there.’

[Wolsey]

Could castrati do top C? Or do we suppose it was transposed into a key suitable for them?

The top C in the four-voiced verses are not to be found in any performing edition until Haas's of 1932; the top C which has become attached to this work was not heard in the Sistine Chapel.
Apologies, Miles C: you beat me to it with your fuller post above.

[Simon]

Not so, Simon. In Allegri's time, membership of the Sistine choir was limited to adults (don't forget that the Miserere was the exclusive property of that choir for many years), and the top parts would have been sung by castrati.

Yes, MC - that's a given as regards the Sistine and in Italy in general, but as we all know that I assume that Draco's question was not Allegri-specific

I still maintain that there would have been gifted trebles, capable of virtuoso singing and decoration just as there are today (though, certainly, not as many, as health, diet and welfare over the past 100 years or so has obviouslty made a difference).

I know that there is some doubt as to exactly who would have sung the various upper parts in the late C17 and C18 in northern European musical circles - trebles or falsettists may well have been interchanged at times, depending on who was available and vocal condition. But the fact that the Schonungsgeld was set aside specifically to help develop and protect the voices of the best young (= boy) choral singers, the fact that Bach was himself held to have been a superb boy treble and, last but not least, the fact that such demanding parts were, on occasion, written for the top lines in places where we know they were boys, would, I suggest, indicate the validity of my earlier comment.

That said, I'm not a scholar in these matters in the way that you have shown yourself to be in several past posts. I have merely collected bits of knowledge on my travels and through general reading. Choral singing was a major part of my childhood and the interest, as with many of us, remains, but I haven't had time for serious research. So I will willingly defer to you or anyone else of greater knowledge and better evidence, should they wish to disagree.

[Miles Coverdale]

Yes, MC - that's a given as regards the Sistine and in Italy in general, but as we all know that I assume that Draco's question was not Allegri-specific.

Well, I didn't assume that everybody did know that, and, as his question was in response to a link I posted to a recording of the Miserere, I thought it did relate specifically to that.

I know that there is some doubt as to exactly who would have sung the various upper parts in the late C17 and C18 in northern European musical circles - trebles or falsettists may well have been interchanged at times, depending on who was available and vocal condition. But the fact that the Schonungsgeld was set aside specifically to help develop and protect the voices of the best young (= boy) choral singers, the fact that Bach was himself held to have been a superb boy treble and, last but not least, the fact that such demanding parts were, on occasion, written for the top lines in places where we know they were boys, would, I suggest, indicate the validity of my earlier comment.

I don't think you're comparing like with like. Bach was working 100 years later than Allegri and in a different country, and the castrati were not as widely used in Germany as they were in Italy.

As to Schonungsgeld, as I understand it, this was money given to the better (boy) singers, often only a very few sopranos, as compensation for the fact that they did not take part in certain money-making activities during the winter months in order to protect their voices. There was not, as far as I'm aware, any training attached to it, nor does it say anyhing about the complexity of the music they were singing.

[Simon]

I don't think I'm comparing at all, really. I fully accept the differences between countries and times.

What I'm generally interested in is the quality and ability of choirs in times past - how they sang, how often, to what standard, etc. That's why I picked up Draco's comment. In one sense it's a fruitless endeavour, as beyond the early recordings we shall never know. Nonetheless, there are some fascinating hints in the libraries of our own cathedral foundations, going back centuries, and of course in the very music that was written so long ago.

Some years ago I was kicking my heels in Heidelberg, waiting for something or other. I sat in a square with a sandwich and a bottle of water, and got talking to two elderly Germans. One was a retired teacher and the other, it turned out, had been either Pastor or some other clergy member at the Gedachtniskirche in Speyer. I asked, as I often do, about the state of choral music in Germany at the time. They were, in turn, fascinated to hear that I had been a boy chorister in England.

We discussed the repertoire that we knew in common - many of their hymns are, of course, set to (Lutheran) tunes that any Anglican would instantly know - and they bemoaned the fact that the great boy choir traditions of the past, had, in their opinion, been allowed to disappear in Germany, with the exception of the obvious few. They appeared to believe that the quality of the singing in Bach's day had been second to none, certainly as good as anything in England. They provided no evidence for this, and I was certainly not minded to argue - but it made me think and I later read around the subject a bit, without, however, coming to any real conclusion except a general feeling as I mentioned above. All in all, a pleasant half-hour.

One day, if I retire with time on my hands, it might make a good PhD subject. It would certainly be an excuse to wander happily around the country's cathedrals and colleges...

[decantor]

I don't think I'm comparing at all, really. I fully accept the differences between countries and times.

..............

One day, if I retire with time on my hands, it might make a good PhD subject. It would certainly be an excuse to wander happily around the country's cathedrals and colleges...

A worthy aspiration, Simon: I trust you will make copies of your thesis widely available. But your own opening remark above hints at the problems of objectivity and criteria. After all, we rarely achieve unanimity in this forum over the quality and impact of a single broadcast CE - and that despite our convention of refraining from untoward criticism.

A relevant story, if I may. I am informed in another forum that last Saturday the Allegri was sung in King's College Chapel, Cambridge. My informant - himself a choir-trainer - was mightily impressed by the standard of execution in a space designed for its notes. After the service, however, it became clear this was a special occasion, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of the famous KCC Ash Wednesday LP. Willcocks and Goodman were both present, and were photographed with Cleobury and the day's young purveyor of top C. But the question that tormented my informant was - how did the two versions compare? Answer came there none, of course.

It is impossible to believe that Byrd or Bach or any other old master tolerated shoddy performance practice - tuning and ensemble, and probably blend too, would be of a 'high standard'. So what is left? Interpretation, choice of tempo, beauty of sound, degree of expressionism? None of these is really susceptible to objective assessment - music is not a science - but they are all open to local and temporal orthodoxies, the zeitgeist. Beethoven disapproved of Mozart's style at the keyboard ; how can we hope to evaluate past choral traditions? We do better, I think, to enjoy what we have now in all its variety, always with an eye on what advancing scholarship reveals, and to hope that long-dead composers are not too often troubled by our execution of their works. But why would they be troubled unless we take deliberate licence? We still perform their works because of the value we still attach to the music, not to their gone-for-ever original sound-worlds.

I have two personal problems with the Allegri. First, I have heard it too often - indeed, I heard Goodman sing it live in King's Chapel - and I'm disappointed that we hear liturgically only the version set in stone. Second, it has become a test for a single chorister's nerve - it may be evocative music, but in fact listeners are on tenterhooks over the high note: will the boy crack? He rarely does, of course, because choristers on their mettle generally don't, and the SJCC lad triumphed like so many before him, but will-the-kid-flunk? seems to me a dubious way of celebrating Ash Wednesday.

[ardcarp]

Decantor

but will-the-kid-flunk? seems to me a dubious way of celebrating Ash Wednesday.

This chimes in a bit with my post (somewhere) wondering why listening to broadcast CE live is better than the repeat or i-player. However, in my limited experience, choristers are anxious to be the the one chosen to do it. Maybe it's a rite of passage. The Allegri as we know it (sometimes still done with the English words) is very much part of the Anglican canon, so grumbling about how un-authentic it is is not really the point.

Miles C wrote:

However, the top C in the Allegri is a later confabulation.

This may well be true, but Sistine and Papal traditions tend to linger through the generations and I wonder if MC or anyone else is familiar with this:

http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/2898579/a/Miserere.htm

It's a CD entitled Miserere by the superb French William Byrd Ensemble directed by Graham O'Reilly. Have a listen if only to confound any prejudices that only Brits can do straight, superbly blended and tuned ensemble singing. But the first track casts the Allegri/Tommaso Bai Miserere in a new light, with changing abbellimenti, some of which result in a striking augmented fourth.

I quote from the sleeve notes:

What is sung is the genuine article in its early 19th century form, prepared from a long-overlooked and once secret manuscript in the Vatican library. [Not the Mendelssohn one!] It is a curious composite in which elements of two closely-linked Miserere settings intertwine: Allegri's, written during the first half of the 17th century, and a companion Miserere of 1714 by Tommasino Bai. Appointed Maestro of the Cappella Guilia (the choir of St Peter's Basilica) in his old age, Bai had just time to compose his Miserere and have it approved by the Papal Choir for use in perpetuity before he died, presumably a happy man. The most striking difference between the two versions is that whereas Allegri's falsibordone chants remain unchanged throughout the psalm, Bai's vary from verse to verse, mirroring the sense of the words. But his falsibordoni were cleverly designed to carry prercisely the same skein of filigree ornament (abbellimenti) with which the singers transformed those of Allegri into extravagant objects of wonder. To the public, any Sistine Miserere was 'the Allegri'. Only within the choir was Bai's name known and revered equally with Allegri's.

There ARE some top Cs (though transposed to top Bs on this CD). I was totally struck by this version and indeed by the rest of The William Byrd Ensemble's CD, including Misereres by Scarlatti (Francesco), Viadana and Leo. I hope it's still available. I can thoroughly recommend it.

[DracoM]

So this is not Gavin Turner's WB Choir? Or did O'Reilly take it over from GT?

[decantor]

Ardcarp, it is also my understanding that choristers compete to take on the top C, and we saw precisely that in the recent series from WAbbey. My point was that the listener's 'live' frisson centres on that solo voice - "Will he cope each time?"

Thank you for the link to the Byrd Ensemble - fascinating and excellent indeed! I believe it did have an outing on R3, quite some years ago. There is yet another version - only slightly less adventurous - of variable abbellimenti in a performance by Sei Voci on Youtube, here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKam7bF3k9U

I fantasize that one day a cathedral or college choir might offer some tiny variation on the usual set-in-stone version. For example, after the slide down from the C, the Treb1 voice might rest on F#, and adjust the resolving turn appropriately, just for a couple of verses. It would be no problem for the singer; it would be electrifying for an unsuspecting congregation, even if congregations are often resistant to unanticipated electrification.

[ardcarp]

I fantasize that one day a cathedral or college choir might offer some tiny variation on the usual set-in-stone version. For example, after the slide down from the C, the Treb1 voice might rest on F#, and adjust the resolving turn appropriately, just for a couple of verses. It would be no problem for the singer; it would be electrifying for an unsuspecting congregation, even if congregations are often resistant to unanticipated electrification.

Some places occasionally wreak a tiny variation by doing the plainsong verses to the Tonus Peregrinus instead of the usual.