Saturday, May 03, 2008

Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkr

Jeffrey Tucker of NLM

It's impossible to keep up with the number of CD companies and monasteries that are recording chant for commercial ventures right now, but just looking through a page on Amazon shows this is entering another boom period, which is all to the good.

Among those who believe that there is something odd about monks selling their music like this, I would only respond that commerce and monastic life have been bound up with each other since the early middle ages, when monasteries led the way in capital development long before the industrialists of England got into the act. So long as a market for this material exists, it seems like a splendid thing that monasteries can develop a funding base by doing what they do best: sung prayer. Fantastic!

Here is the video of the Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkr that won these monks a contract, and, my goodness, they sound just great. It is interesting for me to hear the slight differences in the chants they sing as versus the typical parish use.

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