Friday, April 10, 2009

Good Friday: Les Allegri Miserables

British conductor Peter Philips wonders why so many choirs attempt the Allegri Miserere:
Now that the Allegri Miserere season is fully launched — the text is suitable for Lent — it seems fitting to ask why every choir in the land thinks it incumbent on them to sing this piece of music, for 150 years only ever sung within the walls of the Sistine Chapel. It never used to be so. The local cathedral choir might periodically have had a go at it — and St John’s Cambridge always broadcast it on Ash Wednesday — but nowadays performances by secular and liturgical choirs alike have reached epidemic proportions, a kind of top C fever. This is all the stranger when one reflects that most of these choirs will sing much worse than usual in attempting it. Why bother?

The trouble is that five solo top Cs in 12 minutes is a test of nerves which very few people, especially children, are equal to. The result is often an embarrassment — the pitch sinking, the chant wretched — in which people nonetheless still manage to hear enough traces of a famed beauty to perpetuate the need to hear it again.

More here.

1 comment:

Darrell said...

I have heard an abridged version cut down to under 5 minutes which makes it more tolerable for the less musically inclined. I edited the sheet music accordingly to accomodate my choir but nonetheless, I realized that it was way too big for them.

It is a wonderful piece and I can't see any music director/choir who loves acappella choral music to not feel inspired to attempt it with their own choir.

I agree, however. If it's going to be done, it better be done right!