Gregorio Allegri
Composer from Italy- 1652, February 17th in Rome, Italy
On 6 December 1629 he was admitted as a contralto to the papal choir of the Sistine Chapel, where he remained until his death in Rome on 17 February 1652. He was the brother of the composer Domenico Allegri.
His published works include two books of concerti for five voices (1618 and 1619) and two books of motets for six voices (1621); he also left five masses, two settings of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, many motets that remained in manuscript, and a four-part sinfonia sometimes cited as an early ancestor of the string quartet. His Miserere mei, Deus, a setting of Psalm 50 (51) for two choirs of five and four voices, was sung every year during Holy Week in the Sistine Chapel, and its ornamented performance tradition was jealously guarded by the papal choir. The fourteen-year-old Mozart famously wrote it down from memory after hearing it in 1770, and Charles Burney published a version in London in 1771, after which the work spread throughout Europe. Source: Rondo DB
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