Gregorian chant has, for millennia, haunted listeners throughout the world, drawing many into a deeper encounter with their own interior life and the reality of the eternal and divine.
If there could be a sound for stillness, Gregorian chant would be it—and, in fact, seems to be a true close relative of silence. One could even say it is born out of silence. It does not distract one from the inner life but instead assists one in coming into contact with it, out of the habitual noise we all suffer from both outside in the world and inside our minds and hearts.
Rooted deeply in the ancient monastic life of the Christian faith, Gregorian chant, sung in the Latin language, has a characteristic ethereal sound that only gently functions outside of the norms of rhythmic music. It grew organically from a life of contemplative, prayer, and silence as a result of this monastic life, becoming an outpouring in an exquisite language of the deepest heart.
It is peaceful, lacking dissonance and musical tension, and normatively without harmony or accompaniment—except the organ in certain contexts. The melody lines flow naturally, and especially when sung in churches or monasteries where the acoustics provide natural reverb, the sounds layer onto each other, forming an other-worldly experience.
Profoundly and importantly, while certain chants do veer toward either sorrow or joy, depending on their liturgical context, what we find in these sounds is something that is fundamentally neither one emotion or another, but instead something above human emotion.
Gregorian chant is an invitation to transcend some of the fray we experience every day, where we often feel like pilgrims covered in dirt and muck as we make our way through life.
I have seen this to be true in my own experience, but also in observing many others.
I had a strange experience in recording Gregorian chant myself, intuiting, in the midst of the heights of the virus shut downs in the summer of 2020, that people were desperate for beauty and peace in the chaos everyone was experiencing. The response to the demos was extraordinary and even felt disproportionate, and we successfully crowdfunded four albums.
Without any previous plan to pursue a Catholic project (I had always comfortably been in the poetic folk category, and had only just started experimenting with meta-narrative pop), I launched Cassia & Myrrh. I started with the promised release of a Gregorian chant album, comprised of an organized catalogue of simply the most familiar, common, and well-known chants as a kind of primer:
I continue to give this album away for free, including a PDF guide, and millions have listened to the album on Spotify.
It has been a humbling and beautiful experience to step into this long tradition of haunting beauty, contributing my voice as a vehicle for others to encounter these profound sounds.
While Annie Spratt’s contemplative photography formed the aesthetic foundation for the project, the support of many individuals made the recording and release of it all possible.
And so, together, we find ourselves part of a long line of awed singers and listeners who continue to be transformed in an encounter with this ancient and striking form of music and worship.
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