Keepers of the chant

by June Chua

Solesmes Monastery

I have never been terribly spiritual but when one of the students at the French language school I was attending suggested a weekend trip to listen to some authentic Gregorian chanting by monks, I was first to sign up.

On the anointed weekend, four of us took a train to the northwestern town of Sable-sur-Sarthe, 250 kilometres west of Paris, and then a peaceful three-kilometre walk to the village of Solesmes (pronounced: sew - LEMM), past cow fields and grassy meadows.

The village is no more than one street inhabited by a small epicerie (grocery store), one patisserie and a boulangerie. The woman who suggested this outing arranged for us to stay in a small house run by the local nuns for female "pilgrims." It's free or you can give as you like. Apparently, the monks at Solesmes also run a similar service for men.

We decided to visit the austere but impressive abbey at Solesmes alongside the river Sarthe. It would be our introduction to history of the chant and besides, what were we to do on a Saturday afternoon in the village?

Founded in the 11th Century, the abbey had been rebuilt and renovated a number of times. Visitors are only allowed into the small church and museum, not the abbey itself.

The church's carved stone work inside was an eerie dream world of laughing faces and mischievous creatures. A one-room museum displays ancient manuscripts including the first ever piece of written music - square notes dancing on a four-line grid with Latin verse underneath.

I discover that the Gregorian chant is a melodic ritual song, possibly influenced by the music of the Jewish synagogue. During the Sixth Century, Pope Gregory instituted a standard melody to follow that lasted until the Middle Ages, when it lost its form.

Around the 19th Century, the monks at Solesmes began collecting and transcribing Gregorian chants and restored it to its original melody. In 1903, Pope Pius X entrusted these monks with preparing the official Vatican version of the chant.

In the early 1990s, the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo De Silos in Northern Spain reinvigorated interest in Gregorian chanting through a CD that sold in excess of five million world wide. If it weren't for the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes, the Spanish monks might have hummed a different tune.

Armed with new knowledge, I was keen for Sunday morning's service.

After a quick breakfast of croissants and hot chocolate, we meander into the cold grey church and much like a scene from a movie, shafts of morning light pierced the gloom.

The monks file in swiftly and quietly with their brown hoods over their heads. It's not so much macabre as otherworldly. More than 50 monks assemble, facing each other in rows of three. They let down their hoods. You could see how different each one looked: fat ones, skinny ones, short, tall and all nationalities. They began chanting.

The profane gathering of churchgoers and sightseers was separated from the sacred ground of the monks by a low wood railing. I close my eyes as the monks' low, rhythmical hum fills the gothic crevices of the church. The soothing sound and the repetition lull me into a serene state. The chanting lasts almost an hour.

Their mantra murmurings are transformative.

I feel humbled by the sight of these monks in their stripped-down spirituality answering to God's call with their voices.

We file out of the church and into the sunny courtyard. There is nothing to say. We start walking along the riverside and then proceed into the village, where we buy two long sticks of bread from the boulangerie, taking them back to our pilgrim's house for a light snack.

Sitting down, we exchange our sentiments about the performance and munch on the bread and butter. It is, utterly, the best bread I have ever tasted. No bread has ever tasted as good since then. It is at Solesmes that I realize what a perfect day is. Simply, divine.