Today is Ash Wednesday, so the 46-day (40 if you don’t count Sundays) season of Lent begins today. And especially to Catholics, that means one thing is back: one of the pieces of music with the most urban legends around it. Most of these urban legends have to do with Mozart, the Pope at the time, a visit to the Sistine Chapel, this piece, and a supposed prohibition on ever writing down the score outside the Chapel. They’re just myths, but they do have a point: Mozart’s memory for music—even up-to-9-part Renaissance polyphony that lasts 12 minutes—was incredible.
The piece has three basic ideas, and three ensembles in one, with one idea per ensemble. The first idea (belonging to Choir 1) is a setting of the first half of Psalm 51:3. Choir 1 has (in modern times) 2 sopranos, and one each alto, tenor, and bass; and in the original, one soprano, one alto, 2 tenors, and one bass.
That same melody will be (slightly) altered each time this idea returns. What strikes me most about Idea 1, each time I hear it, is just how beautifully Allegri manages to move between so many related keys—G minor, B-flat major, F major, C minor, and D major—while keeping our proverbial eyes glued to G minor (seeing everything else in relation to it), going to those other keys, but never taking us out of the context of G. Even the final cadence of the idea, to D, fits that context, since D remains the V of G minor.
The second idea is the simplest. Off-stage, or off-screen, a single man—a tenor—chants a very simple phrase that hardly ever leaves a D, except to cadence. Because it is so simple, there is very little to be said about this, in terms of analysis, except to observe the similarity of the style of these ideas with the style in which a priest or deacon may chant certain parts of the Mass in modern times, if they so choose.
The third idea is the most famous—and the reason that sopranos might curl into balls and cry when this piece is programmed. This third idea has so much fame (and sopranos are so scared of it) not because of how it was written originally in the 1650s, but, funny enough, because of an error made more than a century later when an English guy was copying down the music to use in a textbook to explain this style, called “falsobordone” in Italian sources (or “fauxbourdon” if from French sources). It applies very simple harmonization to otherwise plainchant melodies, changing harmonies very infrequently, creating (the illusion of a) drone; this is where the “false drone” (that is what “falsobordone” means in Italian) name comes from. For some reason, while copying it down, the author transposed all the rest of the idea given to Choir 2 up by a fourth and thus was born the infamous high C.
The liturgical context in which this piece was (and still is) performed is worth examining as well. The Catholic custom is to use a 15-candle candelabra on evenings of the last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings before Easter. The candelabra starts each service completely lit, and after one Psalm is sung and a prayer is said, one of them is turned off, working from the outside (bottom) toward the center (top). After the last (top, center) candle is extinguished, there is a loud noise, then it is relit, another prayer is said, and the candle is extinguished again, and the service is over. Which Psalms are used, in which order, is generally well-established, without much choice or leeway, and, traditionally, Ps 51 is always last—meaning the Tenebrae often ends with this work.
As you listen, pay attention to how the 3 different groups (the two choirs and the off-stage tenor) interact, passing verses and melodies between them, and to how the texture changes between falsobordone plainchant and very rich polyphony.
Here's an excellent recording to get started with:
Happy listening!
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