When in 1930 Solesmes, under Dom Gajard, produced their album of 12 records of Gregorian chant, it was a historic moment. They were making the first major contribution to the documentation of an art having its roots well back in the first millennium, an art underlying much of the subsequent development of Western music. Pearl have remastered the collection, reducing its bulk to two CDs. This is very much the authentic sound of the Solesmes choir as I remember it in the 1930s. Dom Cardine once told me that no selection of voices was ever made: any monk who happened to be free could come along to the recording sessions. So the remarkable unity and flow of the chant was surely due to the fact that they were all singing this music day in, day out, and an occasional portamento, or lack of ensemble was a normal, understandable part of the package.
This is a sound of youthful vigour, with all the hallmarks of the familiar Solesmes style already there, well in place: the soaring phrases with their softened peaks and quiet final syllables; the firm enunciation of first syllables; the lifted accents on short notes; the quaint interpretation of the salicus; but over it all, its own special, innate quality, which combines unmistakable spirituality with robust everyday living. That quality, and a certain quiet confidence, are present in this singing to a degree rarely attained by any other monastic choir.
The remastering, naturally, has not succeeded in totally eliminating all the needle hiss. One hardly notices this, by the way, such is the selective power of the human ear! In addition, there is sometimes what sounds like a trace of a crack, which could probably have been avoided by searching for an undamaged record as a replacement. But these defects are outweighed by the interest and value of the contents. This collection is really Everyman's basic anthology of Gregorian chant. It ranges from well-known hymns and pieces of the Ordinary, through gems from the Temporale and the Common of Saints, to some of the greatest masterpieces of the repertoire, including the Good Friday responsory Tenebrae factae sunt and the splendid first mode offertory Jubilate Deo for the second Sunday after Epiphany. It also contains some items one rarely hears nowadays, such as the powerfully moving Media vita – ''In the midst of life we are in death''. Here is a set that deserves a place on every musician's shelves. R1 '9507001'