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Miserere K. 85
One of the many popular stories attached to Mozart’s life is that of his visit to the Sistine Chapel in Rome, in April 1770, where he is said to have heard Allegri’s soaring setting of Psalm 51 in the chapel for which it was written. The highly-famed music was a closely guarded secret at the time, but Mozart is said to have written it out, from memory, after the performance – a manuscript that is now lost. Two or three months later in Bologna he wrote his own setting of the Miserere text: like Allegri, it is set for alternatim performance (every other verse is sung to plainchant), but the young Mozart shunned the show-stopping exhibitionism of Allegri’s work in favour of the comparatively austere sound-world of altos, tenors, basses and organ (here arranged for strings), achieving a similarly meditative poise through different musical means. It is one of a series of works (including Cibavit eos K. 44 and Quaerite primum regnum Dei K. 86) which show Mozart employing contrapuntal methods, under the influence of Padre Martini.
Mozart: Miserere K. 85
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