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Alessandro Moreschi: The Last Castrato Complete Vatican Recordings
But this one I didn’t mange to buy early in its release; these recordings were made in 1902. Yes, cylinder technology hadn't yet been invented, and soft shellac discs were used; they ran at slightly unpredictable and inconsistent speed, which could sometimes affect the pitch on playback. And they were fragile, vulnerable and often not preserved. Exactly like this extraordinary music, then. The background mush and hiss and wow and flutter and vagueness and lack of quality threatens at every moment to overwhelm any music. So why this CD? My main reason isn’t to sit and listen to it, or even the sheer pleasure of owning it (as if it were a treasure or a collector’s item). No. My purpose here is to honour the man who sings; and to honour all who went before. None have ever come after, nor ever will. The barbarism that created his like has been outlawed. What meanest thou thus? you cry in confusion. I shall explain. One of the most sought-after sounds in music during the 17-19th centuries was that of the castrato: literally, a man who has been separated from his testicles before they could affect him or cause him to become mature. Obviously, the goal was to ensure that boys with good treble voices and an ear for music didn’t lose their sound by the onset of puberty. A side effect for these unfortunates, of course, was that they had no place in society except when singing; castrati were affected in different ways. Never going through puberty could mean no beard, reduced or unfocused sexual drive, no wisdom teeth, no loss of puppy fat, no hardening of the bone joints (resulting in unnatural tallness and size of rib-cage, which in turn meant good breath-capacity), and of course, flexible, unbroken vocal chords. In 1589, a papal edict commanded that there be castrati in the choir in the Sistine chapel; the practice was discontinued in 1878. Pope Benedict XIV planned to call a halt to it in 1748, but the sound of their music was so popular he decided it might lead to a decline in church attendance, so he did nothing. Meanwhile, thousands of good trebles were butchered, in the hopes of producing what turned out to be a very few good castrati. Any boy who didn’t work hard at learning his craft, and didn’t end up selected for a choir had been sacrificed for nothing.
Anyway, this recording is of Alessandro Moreschi (1858-1923), who was reckoned to be one of the also-rans in the Sistine Chapel choir, but he’s the only one of the castrati to have been recorded. There was a limit placed on where the sacred songs could be performed (only in the Chapel and a few other selected places), so it took a rebel to break the rule and perform in a recording studio – obviously there were no mobile units in those days. The tracks include a rendering of Liebach’s Pie Jesu as well as Bach’s Ave Maria. Each track is a live take, as there were no multi-track options. It’s not even in stereo. This is the review I posted at the Amazon site (8/8 said it was helpful, so far!): Despite the vast hiss and rumble which masks the man's voice, the sounds he manages to put across are full of religious passion and subtlety. There can be no more like this; the opera houses where the famous cry 'long live the knife!' used to resound at the end of performances will never again hear the fullvoice castrato sound. I found this music both alarming and fascinating. The wicked immorality, duplicity and hypocrisy which marbles through the history of the Sistine Chapel and its music is shocking, but the range of the Professor's voice is quite spectacular. His must have been a limited existence, so celebrate it with this disc.
This disc also contains a February 1903 recording of Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903), which makes him not only one of just a small number of elderly people to have been recorded, but almost certainly the earliest-born person ever to be recorded.
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It’s a shocking reality that for the listening pleasure of the senior leaders of the Catholic church, parents would cut their sons and take their chance. It must have been a privileged life to live in the Vatican, so it was a fast-track (I nearly wrote ‘short cut’) to wealth and perhaps even fame.
