Miserere nostri (Thomas Tallis)
Music files
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- CPDL #6605:
Finale-2002.
- Editor: Paul R. Marchesano (added 2004-01-30). Score information: Letter, 5 pages, 148 kbytes Copyright: Personal
- Edition notes:
General Information
Title: Miserere Nostri
Composer: Thomas Tallis
Number of voices: 7vv Voicing: SSTTTBB
Genre: Sacred, Motets
Language: Latin
Instruments: none, a cappella
Published:
Description: Note by Mick Swithinbank
Miserere nostri is an astoundingly ingenious canon. Most obvious is the canon between the two top voices (mentioned at the foot of page 1), which sing the same line throughout but half a bar apart. Meanwhile, however, a different and less audible canon is in progress between four of the five lower voices: all start singing the same melody at the same time but at four different speeds, two of them in inversion. By bar 6, the Second Bass has already sung the whole of the part assigned to the slowest singer, the First Bass. Amazingly, this fiendish process not only works but produces convincing harmonies which sound as if they are the very raison d’être of this understandably short piece. To enjoy them to the maximum, the music should be taken fairly slowly, so as not to skate over the passing dissonances.
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Template:Latin Miserere nostri Domine, miserere nostri.
English translation
Have mercy on us Lord, have mercy on us.