Gregorio Allegri

Biography

It is uncertain when Gregorio Allegri was born, most likely in 1582. In 1607 he Allegri accepted a position as singer/composer in Fermo, an Italian city near the Adriatic coast, then part of the Papal States. Here he composed motets that in time brought him the attention and patronage of Pope Urban VIII. Allegri had joined the papal choir by 1629. He is remembered chiefly for his Miserere mei, Deus, (“Have mercy upon me, O God,”) a setting of Psalm 51 for nine voices. His setting, composed some time before 1638, quickly became so beloved by that and subsequent Popes that unauthorized transcriptions were forbidden – the proper notes became a closely held secret of the Vatican! They remained secret until the 1760s, when Leopold Mozart brought his son, Wolfgang Amadeus, with him to the Sistine Chapel on Good Friday. After one hearing of that mass, with Allegri’s Miserere, young Wolfgang had committed the score to memory. Later in his father’s room at an inn, the boy prepared a transcription.