Well, why on earth would you want a CD called “chant wars”, anyway?
What do I care what it’s called?
Check out the Missa Papae Marcelli by Palestrina and Allegri’s Miserere. Especially the Gloria from the first… it’s so strikingly beautiful!! Just look these up on Youtube so you know what you’re ordering. You won’t regret these
They used to be kept secret and used only at Papal Masses. I think it was Mozart… anyway, that musical genius went home after going to a Papal Mass and wrote it all down! The Holy Father of the time was stunned, and rather than be upset let it go. So now this beautiful Mass setting belongs to the world
That story is told of Allegri’s
Miserere, which was only used at Holy Week liturgies in the Sistine Chapel. It could not be copied, on pain of excommunication. It used to be a typical tourist thing to go to hear it (I think you needed tickets), and it’s believed, although I think not confirmed, that Mozart went once, wrote down the score afterwards, then went again to touch up his errors. His score is not extant, however, and the music eventually trickled out in other ways, not because of Mozart.
As to
Missa Papae Marcelli, the story (although now believed to be mostly apocryphal) is that Palestrina was fearful that the Council of Trent, musical Luddites that they were, were preparing to throw out and ban
all sacred polyphony, because of its decadent musical textures and because, since the text of many polyphonic pieces is decidedly indiscernible, it does not serve the original liturgical function of communicating text but instead fills the rather non-liturgical role of “pretty music.” So Palestrina abandoned the complex, intricately woven, multi-layered polyphonic style prevalent in his day for a simpler compositional style intended to allow the words to be heard. Hearing this Mass, the story goes, the Council decided that polyphony could be permitted after all.
