A Boy’s Memory

At Rome, part of the service sung in the Pope’s chapel was guarded like a state secret. The famed Miserere by Allegri was kept in the chapel archives; any singer caught copying it or passing even a note to an outsider risked excommunication.

Only three authorized copies were ever sent out: one to Emperor Leopold, one to the King of Portugal, and one to the renowned musician Padre Martini.

Yet a fourth copy appeared—made without papal permission, and not by anyone in the choir. When young Wolfgang Mozart visited Rome with his father, they attended the service at St. Peter’s. The father could barely pull the boy away when it ended.

That night, after Leopold Mozart fell asleep, the child quietly got up and, by the bright Italian moon, wrote out the entire Miserere from memory. Locks, bars, and threats of excommunication were no defense against a mind like Mozart’s.