James Davy finds respect and equality in the interplay between piano and plainsong in a new disc from Pluscarden Abbey.
Plainchant has an astonishing capacity to endure: sung over and over in the liturgy, treated in numerous ways, reworked and manipulated like clay into new shapes, its sinuous and swirling lines pinned up and repackaged into four-square (or occasionally lilting triple-time) hymnody, or stretched beyond its spirit by over-anxious performers.
Too often plainchant is put on a pedestal but performed without the life that has ensured its survival over centuries as the most economical and universally accessible form of sacred music. Admittedly some chants are best left to those who work with this sometimes-forbidding material regularly; for the best chant and ravishing accompaniments, head to Westminster Cathedral – but I digress.
Composers have done all sorts of things with this most pliable – and still unbreakable – material, hiding in the middle of elaborate polyphonic works, using it as a reflective foil opposite more involved freely-composed music, or simply interleaving it within homophonic hymn settings.
More recent composers and arrangers have been drawn to the melodic shapes or to the timbre of the chant and the voices of those who sing it – liturgical composers remain drawn to material that can offer a contextual value that grounds their work in a timeless sacred place; composers of “pure” music find the regularity of plainsong tones useful as building materials and melodic material that is open to manipulation and representation rather as tone rows are in serial compositions; in the secular world of popular music the Engima albums MCMXC a.D. and Le Roi est Mort, Vive le Roi, use sampled chant in collage-type album tracks.
The embrace of chant in albums by choral groups like Anonymous 4, Pro Cantione Antiqua and others, alongside recordings of chant sung by daily practitioners, brought it to a far wider audience in the 1990s as people searched for something to listen to that resonated with a new-found spirituality, or as a more direct and simple soundtrack for a busier world; coupled with a massive leap forward for music technology that allowed music to be listened to on the go and shared by means of sitting very close to someone and using bent-out-of-shape headphones, the revitalised plainsong hit a global audience in cultural, rather than purely religious, terms. In a transformational decade plainsong had refound its popularity, with recordings including the double-platinum-selling Chant (re-released recordings of the monks of Santo Domingo de Silos in northern Spain) and just after the millennium Eternal Light (a chant-based album by the Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre at New Hall, Chelmsford). These were designed to reach a new audience beyond those who might hear the chants in context; St John Paul II has an impressive discography, too. In the hands of skilled practitioners, plainchant creates and inhabits a sublime world of apparently effortless melisma, curling up to heaven like smoke from the thurible; in the mouths of the faithful, or a children’s choir, it can have a totally different power: its simplicity touches us when banal music fails to find its mark.
A personal reaction is at the heart of Tom Donald’s new album, Pax Aeterna: he encountered chant in a recording and found an unwavering urge to improvise to it on the piano. Some 12 years later this became the basis for an album with Donald wanting live singers to perform with, for whom the chant was more than a musical exercise, and so the collaboration with the Benedictine monks of Pluscarden Abbey came about.
An equal partner to Donald’s piano and central to each track on the album, the chant is very much alive. The singing of the monks is part of the composition of the scheme of each piece: the chant pours forth from the brothers and the piano dances around it, responding rather than trying to capture and restrain it; for me this is what makes this album more a spiritual than a commercial exercise, and one that could have turned out very differently in less-careful hands.
Just as liturgical choral music flourishes in styles both traditional and newer (Will Todd’s Jazz Missa Brevis is just one of many examples), the simplicity of the chant presents an inviting canvas to Donald’s beautifully-wrought playing in varying genres. Accompaniment isn’t the right word; there’s a respect and equality in the relationship between the chant and a piano: the latter mostly restrained but when it has its head it’s a joyful release of bubbling energy while never stealing the scene from the monks.
The tracks vary in emotion too: the deep Nos qui vivimus has slow arpeggiated piano figures rising from the piano around the tonus peregrinus, in a definite nod to lovers of ambient music; the following, jazz-based Parce Domine makes cameos for the cantor rather cleverly, framing the solos with harmony that give the melody an unexpected blue-note twist. Here Donald’s playing is given freer rein, and rightly so – it’s a joy to hear in its well-judged coloratura flourishes.
This album will certainly appeal to the curious and open-minded and those who enjoy “crossover” or “hybrid” albums; I’d urge everyone to give it a hearing and discover something that speaks to them, although whether the chant or piano purists will cope is less certain. It’s clear from the videos of the recordings that the monks are aware that they have a gift to share; that gift is held in respect as it is taken and becomes the stimulus for a genuinely interesting concept album. Donald’s music is more varied than many more familiar takes on plainchant and is refreshingly devoid of the faux naïve style of harmonisation and variation of which so many organists (and some commercial albums) are culpable; this is not liturgical composition or even concert improvisation, but a heartfelt response captured in the moment while the mellifluous voices of Pluscarden intone their familiar texts – this is clearly neither a chore nor indulgence of an outsider musician sampling music from captive performers. Let’s be clear – this isn’t a male version of Sister Act, but there is something joyful in the blending of the sacred and secular worlds. Musically, there are interesting and new ideas and this is refreshing; some tracks are based on fairly short chants and the repetitive forms perhaps outlast the creative responses, but when musicians are in a state of deep focus it is better, like sleepwalkers, not to disturb them and embrace the repeating cycles.
I hope that this album will win friends for both Tom Donald’s playing and improvisation, and the singing of the monks; there are solos that carry beautifully, and it must be a joy to participate in daily worship at Pluscarden. Bearing in mind the proverb qui bene cantat bis orat, this group of religious clearly prays twice.
James Davy is a freelance musician. For more, visit tomdonald.ffm.to/paxaeterna
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