Methodology & Sources

First Steps

The discography had a humble beginning – albums that included performances of Allegri’s Miserere were grouped together in the Curator’s collection of choral recordings. It was a reasonable number, and worthy of committing to a list to avoid duplication. The nature of an incomplete list contributed to the decision to research and document all published recordings. Then, as detailed information about certain recordings was sparse, the most appropriate way to find it became to obtain the recordings themselves to have access to the data included on traycards and liner notes. This justified the acquisition of vinyl with all the associated equipment and paraphernalia, which acted as an extra distraction from the COVID-19 lockdown that had recently been imposed. Today the physical archive represents around 90% of the total number of entries listed, and that number is creeping up slowly, although it will never reach 100% due to the rarity of some early materials.

A more detailed background to the creation of the discography and miserere.org is available here.

Early Data Gathering

The listings were expanded by reviewing all the recordings available via Amazon, Presto Music, and a variety of music streaming services such as Spotify, Primephonic, Qobuz and Idagio. This was simple enough, although the volume of reissues became increasingly evident, so the need to identify the first, original recording separately from the reissues became apparent. Most popular commercial recordings not already to hand in the “archive” were easily located, and the structure of the listings began to take shape.

Widening the Net

A weekend foraging through Discogs and Musicbrainz brought more recordings to light, including many that were out of print. Searching eBay for items available world-wide increased the coverage again, and items have been shipped from the US, Europe, Japan and Australia. As relatively few albums lead with their inclusion of Allegri’s Miserere in the title, a degree of wildcard searching and ‘searching within descriptions’ was required to locate relevant compilations. It was at this point the Curator became intimately familiar with the fame associated with the ‘Miserere Scene’ from Verdi’s Il Trovatore, whose original recordings begin with wax cylinders, the quantity of recordings by the excellent Allegri String Quartet, and the popularity of the album Miserere by Italian singer/songwriter ‘Zucchero’ Fornaciari. In order to scour every possible corner of the web’s resources, it would be necessary to accept or work around thousands of false positives from these three alone, before even contemplating the challenges posed by other composers’ settings of Psalm 51 or the inclusion of the word “miserere” in the titles of other works.

Deepest Searches

A number of “deeper” and oblique searches are used to identify material, particularly where a recording of the Miserere is included in a compilation. These include regular eBay searches for vinyl recordings by choirs worldwide (including church, chapel, abbey, cathedral, school, college, university, choral society, chorale, glee club etc) as these may reveal Miserere performances via the notes on the album cover that aren’t included in any searchable text. Similar techniques are used across all searchable resources and continue to reveal new examples, albeit on a less regular basis as the discography has expanded. A similar approach is used with Discogs, focussed on both new inclusions as well as edits to existing contributions.

Summary of Sources

The sources used to generate the discography have been very varied, some primary examples are shown below:

Recordings made before 1963

The release in 1964 of the album Evensong for Ash Wednesday by The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge was a fundamental milestone for the overall discography of Allegri’s Miserere. It was a defining moment, as the exposure for the work generated by this combination of performance, choir and label was unprecedented. It established the “Traditional Miserere” with the erroneous “High C” as the way forward for many years, and despite the availability of newer performing scores better aligned to performance practices in the Sistine Chapel, this model has remained the most widely performed and recorded.

miserere.org is particularly interested in those recordings and performances prior to 1963, and this will be a major area of focus for our research.

The Search Continues…

The bulk of the discography was compiled from 2020 – 2022. Although the rate of discoveries has slowed down, new recordings come to light all the time, and reveal more material. Recently newspapers.com has proven helpful in clarifying when recordings were first released and identifying choirs that included the Miserere in their concert repertoire – which might in turn have been recorded. A couple of column inches in a local paper is all it takes to set the trail going.

As miserere.org and the discography go online, we hope that more recordings will come to light with their associated history, and we look forward to alerting you to new finds via our blog. Any contribution you might be able to make will be welcomed, and credited within the relevant discography entry. Please get in touch if you can help in any way.

Page last updated: 2 March 2025