Benedictine nuns release Gregorian chants to help ease coronavirus isolation “… the recordings of clear unaccompanied voices are speckled with authentic sounds such as the creak of wooden benches, the occasional coughing or dropping of prayer books and bell chimes.”
“A bold idea that the American [founder] had during his music studies at Oxford. At that time he often visited his aunt, who lived as [a sister] at the monastery in Jouques, and experienced an atmosphere that all the theory at university could not convey: the mysteriously archaic, quiet and remote world of Gregorian chant. Today he wants to get the chant out of its sacred seclusion and bring it to everyone, so that they too can get to know the ‘basis of the western musical tradition’.”
“The nuns in the community, founded in 1967, hope that the revenue from the recording project will allow them to fund better their Abbey’s daughter-house in Africa, and [that the project will] give ‘peace, consolation, hope, and a sense of communion’ to those isolated by the coronavirus pandemic.”
