The Two Kinds of Decay

Allegri

I sang in a choir and took good care of my throat, and when I caught a head cold in February 1995, during my junior year of college, I took tea and herbal lozenges.

I liked that our British choirmaster didn’t accept a head cold as a valid excuse for missing a rehearsal.

We took our duties seriously, for in serving our duties to the Memorial Church we might achieve excellence, which many of us valued above the other virtues.

I sang second soprano and I wasn’t fearless, so I chose only a few solo auditions per year. I sang the second soprano solo in Gregorio Allegri’s “Miserere,” a setting of Psalms 50 and 51.

The piece was composed in the 1630s and has nine parts and is sung by three choirs standing in different parts of the church. When we sang it, the plainsong choir stood in the balcony, the solo choir stood behind the choir screen, and the rest of the choir stood before the congregation.

At some point in the seventeenth century, it became forbidden to transcribe the music. The piece was allowed to be performed only in the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week. Writing it down or performing it elsewhere was punishable by excommunication.

For more than a hundred years, legend has it, the piece was performed only at those two services.

In 1771, the fourteen-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart visited Allegri’s church. He had a notoriously accurate ear and was a quick transcriber. Later that day, he wrote the piece down entirely from memory, and that was the end of the secret “Miserere.”

I nursed a cold for weeks, trying to stay well enough that I could perform the piece in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Sunday, March 5, 1995.

Our choirmaster gave us his notes on Tuesday. He said the solo choir had performed very well, especially the second soprano, for singing a part which is quite difficult to keep in tune and which holds the group together. I wrote that down.

I’d kept the virus hidden in my blood for weeks. The next day I let myself get sick and prepared to let the head cold run its course.