At a
INTERESTING ARTICLE on the new CD by the nuns of Notre.. Lady of the Annunciation, I came yesterday to the website of the Swiss "Berner Zeitung", when I was on Google search. The article itself is noted not much. It is the usual conglomerate journalistic punditry, the audience just Verquassung and circulation-promoting cliché recovery. How else to explain that the Benedictine Although characterized as a "cloistered" be, only to marvel at their highly practical activity?
Mère Abbesse and sisters living under the strict rules of St. Benedict in the 6th century. What they eat, they produce themselves what is to repair broken it with his own hand. There is a mechanic in the Community, an electrician, a dental assistant. They work in their orchards, vineyards and lavender fields. They cook jam, cut from self-woven silk vestments. And they pray and sing in honor of God - six times a day, once at night. Now they have been chosen - from a record company, which intends to write a success story.
I confess to a number of activities listed here were I not able to. And I'm not "out of this world" under the Benedictines. But that should not even go.
The article consists in an aside a criticism that I think is quite worthy of consideration, albeit for perhaps different reasons:
your [the sisters, note] album "Voices - Chant from Avignon" gathered 20 Gregorian chants, to the sounds of the monastery bells of Le Barroux. No instruments are heard there, and no papal plush carpet of sound, just the pure angelic voices of the nuns. Whether the plans have?
The trouble is obvious: How to market a religious community that has renounced the vile world and wants to know nothing of the medial fuss? Of course, you can the album as tranquilizers for stress and noise-ridden contemporaries praise, as does the record company, gained as Gregorian chant to chill out so to speak, from a "secret world of peace and tranquility." And of course you can the nuns, a camera through the bars of rich, as did the record company, intending to load another YouTube hit.
From PR potential of the Cistercians with their busy father Charles, who posed for tabloid magazines and "Wetten, dass?" Gottschalk honored, the nuns of Le Barroux but far away.
I will now turn to the CD not be praiseworthy of the Holy Cross here on. Nor, in my eyes as to some borderline marketing the same through the abbey and its monks. After all, Holy Cross good feed, and to a flourishing monastery in wider public attention sanctify, to this end, perhaps means that you can not otherwise better used. In my opinion, mind you. But there are exceptions to the rules. But it is
really so bad that the French nuns sing a CD, and then deny the commercial exploitation of Benedictine with serenity? Hardly.
I mean, there's reason to thank: First
for this new opportunity for the spread of Gregorian chant. For gaining new interest groups. Therefore, even the Holy Mother Church once again draw attention to remind you that it Gregorian chant still there (yes, here is the author of these lines a strong hint installed with the fence. Just as a hint to those that it should have overlooked anyway. ..).
On the other monks of the Holy Cross, which have shown that such a project may well accompany a contemplative monastery open-minded and creative.
But the French Benedictine, which show that it need not do so. That they continue to go their own way. And that the Gregorian chant his grant of the liturgy the thing you bought statement and be trusted: easy to speak for themselves. Without accessories. Unaccompanied. Or media marketing.
Naked, pure word. Word of God. Wrapped in sound. Thank you also for this, even if it should not be as commercially successful ...
