Biography
Composed by Allegri, "Miserere Mei, Deus" comprises nine sections scored for five-part a cappella choir in the falsobordone manner, with four of the lines delivering elaborate ornamental passages that the original singers devised through improvisation before the embellishments were later transcribed for preservation. Allegri himself likely supplied nothing beyond the underlying chant. Since its completion the work has been performed each year in the Sistine Chapel throughout Holy Week, its ornamental details withheld from public knowledge until the historian Charles Burney located the original manuscript and reconstructed the full score. The same composition is the one Mozart famously notated from memory at the age of fourteen, an achievement long celebrated in music history.