I really love the baroque stories that surround Allegri's Miserere. That it was for performance ONLY in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel during set times on the Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week. That, over the course of the performance, every candle in the chapel (apart from one that remained unseen) was extinguished, one by one. That anyone who transcribed or stole it would be excommunicated. That apparently Mozart heard it once, and DID transcribe it - all sixteen vocal lines - but did return on the Friday to make minor corrections. That the ban on publication was lifted thereafter, since the fourteen-year-old genius had ruined its exclusivity.
But most importantly, I love this piece because it is so arcane and yet so very movingly human. The gorgeous lyrics, both in Latin and in an English translation, are available in Wikipedia and need not trouble us here.
But here's a nice recording of it, which I hope you'll love.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh31j6L95Ok
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