Hey, buddy! Wanna sell a million records? Join a monastery–or better yet, start your own, get your fellow monks together, and make a disc of Gregorian chant; call it “Meditation”, or “Mirabilis”, or–“Benedicta”. For some reason that no one has ever been able to explain, in the bizarre world of classical music (subset choral, sacred), this formula seems to work every time.
For the first 1,000-plus years of its history, the chant repertoire known as Gregorian belonged exclusively to the Roman church’s celebrations of the Mass and Divine Office. Sometime in the early 1990s someone at Angel records must have taken a look at the ongoing popularity of “new-age” and so-called “world” music (this was also in the days when the record industry itself was still booming) and had the idea to re-issue an old LP called Chant, recorded in the pre-digital era by Spanish Benedictine monks, and market it anew as a truly authentic accompaniment to meditative bliss, or spiritual awareness–or simply as ideal relaxing, stress-reducing mood music. Whatever the intent, and aside from the fact that the singing isn’t really that great, sales of the recording are claimed to be in the multi-millions.
Certainly chant recordings are nothing new–there were many before those Spanish monks came along–but the trend to super sales seemed to come from nowhere, and the phenomenon is still present: this newest disc apparently ascended to the top of the charts in its first week. For sure, these singers are concerned about actual quality of the singing–they are making a commercial recording, after all; or perhaps they are just lucky to have a very compatible group of voices that together create a sound that at once proclaims a gentle, warm resonance, melifluous, assonant, and unobtrusive–just the right character and atmosphere for music intended for meditative, devotional purpose, music designed not to call attention to itself, music made for specific use in a particular place in a church service. But not exactly designed to be linked in an hour-long concert program.
It’s commendable that these monks, who have literally resurrected a monastery located at the birthplace of Saint Benedict in Umbria, Italy, gave careful thought to the choice of repertoire, choosing chants specific to Mary and, going a step further, selecting those “less common, in order to offer listeners something special, something unique.” The fact is, unless you are an expert, your ability to recognize and identify particular chants–except perhaps for common ones such as “Victimae paschali laudes”, “Veni Sancte Spiritus”, or “Hodie Christus natus est” (none of which is on this disc)–is not such that you will appreciate these selections for their “uniqueness”.
However, if you just listen to these 32 antiphons, responsories, and hymns as one extended meditative musical rumination, apart from any particular liturgical context, you will certainly enjoy the sound, the singing ( a carefully measured style that relates short notes to precise divisions of longer ones), and the intimate, unmannered expression of this well-rehearsed, congenial choir. If this is your thing, you won’t go wrong with this fine production (apparently the monks of Norcia also have created a most excellent beer, a resource that’s become at least as popular as their chant singing!), which assumes a place among the best recordings of its kind.
