Innovation in Software

With all the current hoo-haa about DRM (Digital Rights Management), you’d think controlling who could listen to music, where and when was a modern phenomena. You might be forgiven for thinking that it’s only since the rise of (the illegal version of) Napster a few years back that “the Establisment” has had to deal with uppity teenagers who don’t understand “the rules”.

Think again.

From Wikipedia:

Miserere by Gregorio Allegri is a piece of a cappella religious music (a setting of Psalm 50/51) composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII, probably during the 1630s, for use in the Sistine Chapel during matins on Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week. […] at some point, it became forbidden to transcribe the music and it was only allowed to be performed at those particular services, adding to the mystery surrounding it. Writing it down or performing it elsewhere was punisheable [sic] by excommunication.

[…]

Although there were a handful of supposed transcriptions in various royal courts in Europe, none of them succeeded in capturing the beauty of the Miserere as performed annually in the Sistine Chapel. According to the popular story (backed up by family letters), the fourteen-year-old Mozart was visiting Rome, when he first heard the piece during the Wednesday service. Later that day, he wrote it down entirely from memory, returning to the Chapel that Friday to make minor corrections. Some time during his travels, he met the British historian Dr. Charles Burney, who obtained the piece from him and took it to London, where it was published in 1771. Once it was published, the ban was lifted, and Allegri’s Miserere has since been one of the most popular a cappella choral works now performed.

[…]

Mozart was summoned to Rome by the Pope, only instead of excommunicating the boy the Pope showered praises on him for his feat of musical genius.

Thanks to the advent of technology, we’re all Mozart now…