During Easter 1770 a 14-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his father Leopold attended Holy Week services at the Sistine chapel in the Vatican. There he heard a setting of Psalm 51, Miserere Mei by Gregorio Allegri which was considered so precious by the Vatican that it forbade the making of copies and threatened any publication or attempted copy with excommunication. Mozart heard it twice and transcribed it faithfully from memory, thus creating the first known unauthorised copy, now lost. To this day musicians try to reconstruct what Mozart heard. But how different is Allegri’s original from these versions and what has happened over the years to transform the work. Brian McIvor travels to Rome with author Fr.Michael Collins and unravels the mystery with the help of conductor Roy Goodman, singer and scholar Sally Dunkely, of the Sixteen, broadcaster Tim Thurston and others. (First broadcast December 2014)
RTÉ lyric fm, Friday 3rd April, 7pm-8pm