Allegri: Miserere mei, Deus

Now, in its 13th year, The Choral Pilgrimage stands as testament to Harry Christophers’ ongoing mission to bring a wide variety of sacred music back to the kind of buildings for which it was written.

Allegri’s Miserere is the single most famous piece of sacred music ever written. Although it is instantly recognisable with its haunting tones, mythology surrounds it. This year’s Choral Pilgrimage allows Harry Christophers to explore its evolution and enduring appeal. This new version of the Allegri Miserere entitled ‘Its Evolution’ as performed on the Pilgrimage has been recorded and appears on this disc.

James MacMillan dedicated his powerful and emotional setting of the Miserere to Harry Christohers and The Sixteen who premiered the work in 2010 and recorded it shortly afterwards. Alongside Allegri, MacMillan is one of the few composer to ever set the full Miserere to music. His exquisite version is one of the highlights of this year’s programme.

Arguably the greatest composer of liturgical music of all time Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina is often billed as ‘The Prince of Music’ and by some ‘The Saviour of Church Music’. The 2013 tour includes some of his wonderful music for Easter including the Stabat Mater a8 and excerpts from the Missa Regina caeli.

An exuberant period of rebirth, emerging from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance brought an artistic flowering exemplified in the glories of Italy: painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music.

The splendid choral works of Palestrina and Allegri, composing in Rome and Gabrieli and Monteverdi, active in Venice, are noble and intricate, serene and exhilarating.

While Allegri’s soaring Miserere was composed for the Sistine Chapel, Monteverdi’s epically conceived Vespers evoke the grandeur of the domed basilica of St Mark’s.

This disc features some of the best-loved works of the 16th and 17th centuries, sung by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge. The choir has a rich and long-standing tradition of singing this repertoire, and these recordings also present distinguished soloists who began their musical career as King’s choral scholars, such as Charles Brett, Robert Tear, Martyn Hill and Gerald Finley.

Roy Goodman’s recording of the Allegri Miserere (in David Willcocks’s edition, sung in English) was its first, made in March 1963. Although reissued countless times, the complete Argo recording from which it emanates – Evensong for Ash Wednesday – has never before been released complete. Consisting of hymns, psalms and readings, this is a regular event in the King’s College calendar. Roy Goodman – now a famous conductor, then a gifted treble – sang with the choir at the time and in the booklet note provides delightful reminiscences of his time with the choir and working with Sir David Willcocks. He recounts how the boy treble chosen to sing the solo part in the Allegri was appointed on the spot, as it were, and how he charged into the chapel after a game of rugby and was selected to record the treble solo. Goodman has also provided photographs of himself from that time for the cover and booklet of this release.

The Cardinall’s Musick finished 2010 in a blaze of glory with their Gramophone Recording of the Year award for the last volume of their Byrd Edition. Only the second time in thirty years that an Early Music recording has received this prestigious accolade, it is a fitting tribute to the soaring artistry of the group and their director, Andrew Carwood.

Their eagerly-awaited next disc features music from late sixteenth-century Rome and ranges from Allegri’s Miserere, surely the best-known and best-loved work of this period, to a rarely-performed or recorded oddity. Seven Roman musicians came together (or were brought together) to write a Mass-setting where they each contributed different sections. The resulting work, the twelve-voice Missa Cantantibus organis, is a tribute both to Cecilia (the patron saint of music) and to Palestrina. The seven composers each take themes found in Palestrina’s motet of the same name and use them as the starting point for their new compositions. Palestrina himself is among the seven, with Giovanni Andrea Dragoni, Ruggiero Giovannelli, Curzio Mancini, Prospero Santini, Francesco Soriano and Annibale Stabile being the other six. All seven composers were prominent maestri in Rome and most appear to have had contact with Palestrina either as choristers or pupils.

This 2-CD set contains an extremely wide range of music for boys' choirs, from the early polyphony of Allegri's Miserere to the present-day popular songs of Prince and Enya. Also included are some interesting works by some great 20th-century composers such as Copland, Britten and Ned Rorem.

The featured choirs are some of the world's most notable boys' choirs, from the Vienna Boys' Choir and the American Boychoir to, perhaps the best-known of them all, the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. The most recent of the choirs here is Libera, formed by their conductor, Robert Prizeman, from school boys from around south London.

So, for those who already find the freshness and youthfulness of boys' voices uniquely appealing here is the perfect compilation. For those who have yet to make the discovery this set should prove a delightful musical journey.