Sistine Chapel Choir

For centuries the Sistine Chapel Choir has ranked among the Western world's most celebrated vocal ensembles. Josquin Desprez belonged to its ranks in the 1460s and is said to have etched his name into the chapel wall during that period. Long regarded as an emblem of Catholic musical heritage, the ensemble continued to assign treble lines to castrati until 1903. Despite this storied past, its discography remained notably thin.

The choir's origins lie in the early Christian era, when a "schola cantorum" of singers who resided and performed together came into being under papal auspices. Its present structure took shape after Pope Sixtus VI renovated the Cappella Maggiore, originally constructed in the mid-14th century, during the 1470s. The chapel, adorned with works by Botticelli and later by Michelangelo, bears Sixtus's name. In the 1480s its roster was set at twenty-four singers, six to a part, with castrati supplying the upper voices. That numerical standard, like the ensemble's core repertory, has endured; although Lorenzo Perosi, who served for decades as "maestro perpetuo" from 1872 to 1956, introduced new compositions, and although chant fell from use in the nineteenth century, the Renaissance stile antico of Palestrina and his contemporaries has persisted without interruption.

Only in the twenty-first century did the recording revolution reach the Sistine Chapel itself. Performances inside the chapel had long been off-limits to microphones, yet a handful of live documents emerged, among them the 2013 release Habemus papam, which captured outdoor and indoor masses sung during the conclave that elevated Francis I. Under Massimo Palombella, appointed director in 2010 after Giuseppe Liberto—an opponent of the liturgical reforms enacted by the Second Vatican Council—the restrictions eased. In 2015 the choir issued Cantate Domino, its first album recorded within the chapel, on the Deutsche Grammophon label; by order of Francis, all proceeds were directed to charitable causes. The following year an all-Palestrina program appeared, highlighted by a fresh reading of the Missa Papae Marcelli that employed unconventional tempos.