|
YouTube, e-mail help seal deal
30/03/2008 13:45 - (SA)
Simon Morgan
Vienna - All it took was an e-mail, and a group of 15 monks from a 12th-century Austrian monastery secured a recording contract with Universal Music, the label for pop stars such as Amy Winehouse and Eminem.
The monks - from the Cistercian monastery of Heiligenkreuz (The Holy Cross) in the Vienna woods - were notified by a friend in London that Universal was on the look-out for a so-called Choralschola, a group that sings Gregorian Chant.
"We didn't have much hope of securing a deal", a spokesperson for the monks, Father Philipp-Neri Gschanes, told AFP.
"But we applied via an e-mail containing links to our website and to a YouTube video that one of our brothers had made for us," he explained.
Universal executive Tom Lewis said the company had detected an upsurge in interest in Gregorian chant - one of the oldest forms of western music dating as far back as the 4th century - thanks to a best-selling computer game, Halo, which features plainchant in its soundtrack.
All sorts of entries
So Universal put an advert in various religious publications in Britain in February - and received more than 100 entries from all over the world.
There were entries "from monks, nuns, academics, amateur choirs, school choirs and even a pop act who do pop covers in a Gregorian style."
But recording executives were bowled over by the Heiligenkreuz monks, whose compound is 15km outside the Austrian capital.
"Quite simply, their sound was more beautiful than anyone else's. It's both immediately calming and deeply moving," Lewis said.
Father Philipp-Neri suggested that the Pope may have played a role, too.
Pope Benedict XVI visited the monastery, which was built by Saint Leopold in 1133 and is second-oldest Cistercian monastery in the world, in September last year and was reportedly impressed by the monks' singing.
The monks are set to go into the recording studio in early April, with the release date set for the summer, said Lewis at Universal.
He refused to say whether any follow-up albums were planned.
Gregorian Chant is named after Pope Gregory who died in 604 and is a monodic form of singing with free rhythm. Originally based on ancient Greek and Jewish melody, it developed in the Middle Ages into a system of eight Church "modes" or keys.
Gregorian Chant hit the pop charts briefly back in the 1990s when it was sampled by the band Enigma.
No pop feel
However, unlike then, the Heiligenkreuz monks' voices would not be set to a poppier backing, Lewis insisted.
"We will be recording it as it is sung (no over-production). We feel it is at its most powerful when it is also presented in its simplest possible form," he said.
"Gregorian Chant has an incredibly distinctive, immediate sound. My feeling is that when people hear it, in whatever context, they react immediately. This music is incredibly calming and spiritual, and people do tend to listen to it more in times of heightened anxiety (as we are all feeling right now)."
The monks' album will appear on Universal's Classics and Jazz (UCJ) label, home to artists such as jazz pianist Jamie Cullum, former boy chorister Aled Jones and violinist Nicola Benedetti.
"We have some Gregorian Chant CDs in our back catalogue of which we are very proud. However, we felt the time had come to make a new album using the most up-to-date classical recording techniques," Lewis said.
The monks would decide what was recorded.
"We are taking their lead on the repertoire that will feature on the album. The record must accurately communicate to the listener the atmosphere and the sincerity of the monks," Lewis said.
Father Philipp-Neri suggested that parts of the Requiem mass would be sung "as well as other psalms and antiphons from our liturgy of the dead. They are some of the most beautiful parts of Gregorian Chant."
The monks had not yet decided what to do with the profits from the CD, said Father Philipp-Neri said.
"But we'll put them to good use. We currently have a monastery project in Sri Lanka and a number of monasteries in Vietnam which all need financial support," he said.
|
