(Lat.: ‘have mercy’).
The first word of Psalms l, lv and lvi, as well as of a number of liturgical texts. Of the former, Psalm l (li in the Hebrew numbering followed in the Authorized Version and Prayer Book translations) is the most important in the history of polyphonic composition. In the Roman rite it is sung at Lauds in the Office for the Dead and at Tenebrae, and it is also one of the seven penitential psalms. Its first verse and Gloria Patri are also sung with the antiphon Asperges me at the principal Mass on Sundays, except during Eastertide: four anonymous polyphonic settings occur in an English source of the mid-16th century (GB-Lbl 17802–5). Polyphonic settings of the complete psalm for use at Tenebrae (when the Gloria Patri is not sung) are usually in simple falsobordone style, alternating with the plainchant, a tradition that may have been initiated under Pope Leo X in 1514. A pair of manuscripts in the Vatican (I-Rvat C.S.205–6) includes a set of 12 such works for alternating choirs of four and five voices (the choirs themselves alternating with the plainchant) by Fabrizio Dentice, Palestrina, Gagari, G.F. Anerio and his brother Felice, Domenico Nanino, Giovannelli and anonymous composers, ending with the celebrated work by Gregorio Allegri. (The attribution by some modern authors of the first work in this set to Costanzo Festa, with the date 1517, appears to be unjustified.) Palestrina's work in this source is compounded of a four-part setting, published with his Lamentations (1588) and also included as the first of a set of three in Guidetti’s Cantus ecclesiasticus officii maioris hebdomadae (1587), and a five-part work printed as the second of Guidetti’s set. Nine-part settings were evidently popular: one by Lassus and numerous examples by minor composers are in the library of the Cappella Sistina. Other noteworthy settings in a simple style are those of Victoria (1581) and Gesualdo (1611), printed in their collections of Holy Week music. There are more elaborate and very beautiful works by Lassus (Psalmi Davidis poenitentiales, 1584) and Giovanni Gabrieli (a setting of the first four verses in Sacrae symphoniae, 1597). Tye’s Miserere is a setting of Psalm lv. Josquin’s extended setting of Psalm l (425 bars) is particularly noteworthy. The refrain ‘Miserere mei Deus’, heard after each verse, is based on a short phrase in the second tenor sung on successive degrees of the scale in turn: from e' to e in part i, from e to e' in part ii and from e' to a in part iii. The tonality of the work thus strongly suggests the E-modes, though it comes to rest on a chord of A minor.
Several texts from the Roman psalter or other old Latin versions begin with the words ‘Miserere mihi Domine’; these are taken not only from the psalms mentioned above, but from verses of Psalms iv, vi, xxx and lxxxv. In the English tradition the most important is the short compline antiphon which continues and concludes with the words ‘et exaudi orationem meam’ (from Psalm iv, second part of v.2, in the Roman psalter). The plainchant is a simple two-phrase melody in the 8th mode. This gave rise to vocal settings (e.g. anonymous liturgical settings in GB-Cmc Pepys 1236, a liturgical setting by John Norman in GB-Lbl Add.5665 and an elaborate non-liturgical canon by Byrd in his Cantiones, 1575, perhaps written in rivalry to Tallis’s canonic Miserere nostri in the same publication) as well as to a whole repertory of instrumental works. 18 liturgical settings of the plainchant for the organ survive by Kyrton, John Redford, Philip ap Rhys, William Shelbye, E. Strowger and ‘Wodson’ (possibly Thomas Woodson). After the Reformation the genre attracted such composers as Bull, Byrd, Benjamin Cosyn, John Lugge, Tomkins and Thomas Woodson. In these compositions liturgical conventions are subordinated to increasing virtuosity, the possibility of stating the cantus firmus more than once (resulting in a miniature set of variations) and canonic treatment. The 20 surviving settings, out of a supposed 40, by Thomas Woodson, illustrate canonic technique; and Tomkins’s eight works, all probably dating from the late 1640s and early 1650s, are a remarkable testimony to the resilience of the form in the hands of a master of the traditional style.
There are a few settings of the plainchant for lute by such composers as Alfonso Ferrabosco (ii), and ensemble settings by Tye, Byrd and others. According to Morley, Byrd and Alfonso Ferrabosco (i) each wrote 40 canonic settings in friendly rivalry. They were apparently printed in 1603 under the title Medulla Musicke (i.e. musicae), of which no copy survives; but the 19 canonic works of Byrd which survive in manuscript may represent part of his contribution. Morley also mentioned that George Waterhouse had composed 1000 or more settings, and R.A. Harman (in his edition of Morley’s Plaine and Easie Introduction) referred to ‘1163 strict canons on the “Miserere” plainsong in the manuscripts at Oxford and Cambridge’. Some of the six-part canons that follow keyboard works by Bull and others in A-Wn 17771 are based on the ‘Miserere’ plainsong, but the printed collections of canons by John Farmer (i) (1591) and Elway Bevin (1631) are based on other plainchants.
E.H. Meyer: English Chamber Music (London, 1946/R, rev. 3/1982 by D. Poulton as Early English Chamber Music)
J. Noble: ‘Le répertoire instrumental anglais (1550–1585)’, La musique instrumentale de la Renaissance: Paris 1954, 91–114
G. Reese: Music in the Renaissance (New York, 1954, 2/1959)
W. Boetticher: Orlando di Lasso und seine Zeit (Kassel, 1958)
F.Ll. Harrison: Music in Medieval Britain (London, 1958, 2/1963)
K. Jeppesen: ‘ Palestriniana’, Miscelánea en homenaje a Monseñor Higinio Anglés, i (Barcelona, 1958), 417–30
J.M. Llorens: Capellae Sixtinae codices musicis notis instructi sive manu scripti sive praelo excussi (Vatican City, 1960)
J. Caldwell: ‘ Keyboard Plainsong Settings in England, 1500–1660’, MD, xix (1965), 129–53
J. Caldwell: English Keyboard Music before the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1973)
O. Neighbour: The Consort and Keyboard Music of William Byrd (London, 1978)
JOHN CALDWELL