Chanticleer - Mysteria: Gregorian Chants (1995)

From the first notes of the Lenten antiphon "Immutemur," you feel a soothing, reassuring calm from Chanticleer's sensuous, lyrical legato style and perfect unison expression and phrasing. This is first class singing, no matter what the repertoire. But this just happens to be chant, which requires a particular sensitivity to syllabic emphasis and to the rise and fall of phrasing, all of which is determined as much by tradition as by sense of the text. Since there is no existing notation that clearly indicates rhythm or meter for the earliest body of chant repertoire, and there is no unbroken line of chant singing that goes back to the first and second centuries, singers have to rely on a certain accepted scholarship and a tradition that's only a couple of hundred years old. Chanticleer's performing decisions here are articulate, musicologically sensible, and above all musically satisfying, taking this music to its proper level of exalted simplicity. The program includes some of the gems of Gregorian chant, such as "Pange lingua, Crux fidelis" and "Victimae paschali laudes." --David Vernier