I need a good Gregorian chant CD, ASAP

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Suggestions please? I prefer male voices to females.

And, I’d like a nice Advent/Christmas CD as well. No contemporary songs, no secular songs. Traditional Catholic hymns only. Again, I am not enamored of female voices, although I do like Danielle Rose.
 
Hey, I love chant too! To help you with your first query:

I’m not sure what your background is listening to chant, but there was a famous CD issued in the 90s by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos simply called “Chant” that is great, if you don’t already have it. Anything by them is very nice. I also suggest the monks of Solesmes, who have a large discography – Solesmes is where a lot of chant scholarship took place in the last 100 years or so, and they really know what they’re doing. Here’s a link for the Solesmes monks:

paracletepress.com/cds-gregorian-all.html

I know you said you weren’t as interested in female voices, but nonetheless I strongly recommend checking out the group Sequentia as well (they’re a mixed ensemble, and they have some recordings that are single-gender too), especially their recordings of Hildegard of Bingen and one called “Chant Wars.” Beautiful stuff! 🙂

Most of the above is Gregorian chant, which is hopefully what you’re looking for (there are other types of chant too, but not as much of it is recorded). Also, forgive me for mentioning this if there is no reason to, but some people I’ve talked to confuse chant with medieval music in general – if what you’re actually looking for is medieval polyphony, I can help too!
 
Okay, my favorite Gregorian chant cd is sung by the Dominican Friars of the Province of France, and simply titled “Gregorian Chant: Dominican Liturgy”. It is put out by Milano Records and is available through iTunes and Amazon.com. Hope that helps!👍
 
From Philips we have, “Gregorian Chant: Choralschola Der Wiener Hofburgkapelle”. It has chants from the different Masses at Christmastime ( a book of lyrics is included). We also have, “Gregorian Melodies”, from Gentle Spirit Music. It is instrumental but is sill rather nice, it’s good in the car for traffic jams. We also have, “Women in Chant”, it is from the nuns of at the Abbey of Regina Laudis, where the former Delores Hart now resides, from Sounds True Music. It’s focus is the mystries of the rosary. :highprayer:
 
marietherese4 said:
Hey, I love chant too! To help you with your first query:

I’m not sure what your background is listening to chant, but there was a famous CD issued in the 90s by the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos simply called “Chant” that is great, if you don’t already have it. Anything by them is very nice. I also suggest the monks of Solesmes, who have a large discography – Solesmes is where a lot of chant scholarship took place in the last 100 years or so, and they really know what they’re doing. Here’s a link for the Solesmes monks:

paracletepress.com/cds-gregorian-all.html

I know you said you weren’t as interested in female voices, but nonetheless I strongly recommend checking out the group Sequentia as well (they’re a mixed ensemble, and they have some recordings that are single-gender too), especially their recordings of Hildegard of Bingen and one called “Chant Wars.” Beautiful stuff! 🙂

Most of the above is Gregorian chant, which is hopefully what you’re looking for (there are other types of chant too, but not as much of it is recorded). Also, forgive me for mentioning this if there is no reason to, but some people I’ve talked to confuse chant with medieval music in general – if what you’re actually looking for is medieval polyphony, I can help too!
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Thank you very much! Yes, I do know the difference between chant and other medieval music. Feel free to recommend the polyphony CDs as well! I love medieval music in general.

Is that “Chant” CD the one with the side view of several monks walking? Kind of an orangey/brown color? I just saw that one today at a Catholic gift shop, but not knowing if it was any good, I didn’t buy it.

Do you have any ideas for Advent/Christmas music? I want songs such as “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming.” No “Jingle Bells,” or “Frosty the Snowman, please!”
 
Jeff616 said:
Okay, my favorite Gregorian chant cd is sung by the Dominican Friars of the Province of France, and simply titled “Gregorian Chant: Dominican Liturgy”. It is put out by Milano Records and is available through iTunes and Amazon.com. Hope that helps!👍
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Going to look for it now! I figure I can have several of them.

👍

Thanks!
 
TheRealJuliane said:
Is that “Chant” CD the one with the side view of several monks walking? Kind of an orangey/brown color? I just saw that one today at a Catholic gift shop, but not knowing if it was any good, I didn’t buy it.
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That’s the only Gregorian Chant cd I have and it’s really really good. At least I think so. Except it makes me fall asleep… I don’t know if that’s good or bad. xD
 
One of my favorites happens to be a Christmas recording:

amazon.com/In-Pragensi-Ecclesia/dp/B001KUH17O

This album is chant from manuscripts in the Cathedral in Prague, very well sung by a group of Czech chant specialists.

In addition to the ones already mentioned, Solesmes also puts out good chant CDs. I’m for their method, but unfortunately their style as heard on the CDs isn’t 100% to my taste. 😉
 
MarkosC said:
One of my favorites happens to be a Christmas recording:

amazon.com/In-Pragensi-Ecclesia/dp/B001KUH17O

This album is chant from manuscripts in the Cathedral in Prague, very well sung by a group of Czech chant specialists.

In addition to the ones already mentioned, Solesmes also puts out good chant CDs. I’m for their method, but unfortunately their style as heard on the CDs isn’t 100% to my taste. 😉
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👍:clapping::yeah_me:

And…We have a winner!!! Listening to the clips on Amazon, I can tell from the first 2 that I like this album a lot. And I didn’t care much for Solesmes, but I couldn’t say exactly why. I don’t know anything about Gregorian chant other than listening to it and if it resonates in my soul, then I know it’s right.

Thanks a ton, and Merry Christmas!

Edited to add; 😦 The CD is only available as an import for $42.97, and I have no MP3 player…wah!

:bighanky:
 
TheRealJuliane said:
That’s pretty good - another poster recommended it up the thread. I don’t like it as much as the Prague chanters, but…I can’t get myself to pay $42.99 for a CD, so…
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Agreed on the 43 dollars. If you have someone you know with a CD burner, you could always buy the MP3 files and burn them as well.
 
jwinch2 said:
Agreed on the 43 dollars. If you have someone you know with a CD burner, you could always buy the MP3 files and burn them as well.
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Yeah that’s a good idea, my kids could probably do that for me.

They rip and burn all the time…lol
 
TheRealJuliane said:
Yeah that’s a good idea, my kids could probably do that for me.

They rip and burn all the time…lol
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One thing to be concerned about is that sound quality will definitely suffer a bit going that route. Just so you know…
 
😦
TheRealJuliane said:
👍:clapping::yeah_me:

And…We have a winner!!! Listening to the clips on Amazon, I can tell from the first 2 that I like this album a lot. And I didn’t care much for Solesmes, but I couldn’t say exactly why. I don’t know anything about Gregorian chant other than listening to it and if it resonates in my soul, then I know it’s right.

Thanks a ton, and Merry Christmas!

Edited to add; 😦 The CD is only available as an import for $42.97, and I have no MP3 player…wah!

:bighanky:
Click to expand...
$43!!! Supraphon, the record company, is a budget label in Europe. I paid around $10 for mine, but that was in Prague, back when you could buy Supraphon CDs at my local US Tower Records, a category of store extinct in the US. But then, obviously there’s no longer a US distributor.

You can download the MP3s and burn them to a CD. It’s easy in iTunes, and should also be easy with Windows Media Player.

ETA : Sorry, I missed the last three posts. BTW the claim that sound quality will be worse is controversial and the opponents would bring audio engineering arguments. I think you could hear it, but to the average listener using general consumer audio equipment it won’t make a significant difference.
 
MarkosC said:
I think you could hear it, but to the average listener using general consumer audio equipment it won’t make a significant difference.
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It will make a difference with chant, particularly if you use iTunes. There isn’t anything else going on with chant to hide behind. If you were dealing with pop, rock etc. it wouldn’t be as much of an issue but with chant, issues will stand out.
 
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