68 Minutes playing time: 34 tracks

Includes booklet with full text, translations and commentary.

Download the booklet as a free PDF.

Also available on iTunes, Amazon digital and direct from Ffin Records.

The Season of Advent - Reviews

"The new CD released by the monks of Pluscarden is a musical and liturgical goldmine. The singing of the main chants of the Mass and the Divine Office for the season of Advent is of a very high standard, reflecting profound appreciation of both text and music. The booklet of 31 pages, without going into small print, provides the Latin texts for all 34 tracks, together with full translation and notes on each item. The care that has gone into the production of the CD is evident also in the quality of the sound editing.
One of the most attractive features of the recording is the way it evokes the four-week structure of Advent, moving from a distant glimpse of light and joy to chants thrilling with expectation on the threshold of Christmas. Section II is particularly lovely: listen to the lifting of the tonic accents in the antiphon Ecce Dominus noster (track 8), and the opening of the high walls and gates in the next antiphon, Urbs fortitudinis; the Alleluia, Laetatus sum (11) flows forward in youthful joy, whilst in the Communion chant, Ierusalem surge (12), we sense we are standing on tiptoe.

There are many other glorious moments. An extra-liturgical favourite of many monastic communities, Rorate caeli (4), is evidently loved by the monks of Pluscarden. The Alleluia of the third Sunday of Advent, Excita Domine (19), dances with joy as it invites the Lord to come, veni, and save us.

The singing is underpinned by an understanding of the neums that give expressive sense to the music in the earliest manuscripts. The treatment in the introit Gaudete (17) of the torculus and porrectus, as of the bivirga on nihil, is masterly. At the opening of the offertory Ave Maria (28), the articulation of the torculus resupinus prepares the rising gracious acclamation of Maria. Marian chants are intrinsic to the atmosphere and mystery of Advent, and the two final items make a fitting climax to the recording: Ecce Virgo, the ecstatic Communion chant sung on Sunday IV of Advent (33), together with the loveliest of pieces, the solemn version of the Alma Redemptoris Mater.

This CD succeeds in conveying the beauty of the sung liturgy and its potential to transform us. Time stands still, to allow glimpses of eternity to enter our lives."
Sr. Margaret Truran OSB, Choir mistress, Santa Cecilia Abbey, Rome, also foundress of the Chant School "Cantantibus Organis"

This CD fills a glaring gap in the available repertoire of Gregorian Chant recordings, and we should thank the monks for remedying the lacuna. With it they offer the public a counterbalance to the overwhelming secularization of this ancient and rich liturgical season of the Christian year.

The selection made presents a varied and balanced overview of the chant repertoire for this season in the monastic Liturgy of the Hours and the Roman Mass. It is divided into four sections, one covering each of the four weeks of Advent, and concludes with the solemn tone of the Alma Redemptoris, traditionally sung at this season. Each section offers some examples of Office antiphons and Mass chants sung during that week, to which is sometimes added some extra heterogenous items, such as a hymn, a responsory or a devotional chant like the Rorate Cӕli. Section four also includes the Second Preface for Advent as well as Sanctus and Agnus Dei 17, usually sung on Sundays in Advent. The CD is accompanied by an excellent booklet giving the Latin text and a translation for each item, and, in the case of the Mass chants, a brief but pertinent commentary on its musical, historical, or spiritual significance.

The singing is of high quality, entirely unaccompanied, respecting the tradition of the organ’s silence during Advent. The pitch is near perfect. The general ensemble of voices is very unified, the enunciation faultless with no final consonants falling by the wayside (as so often happens). Repercussions are performed with subtlety, and in chants of the Mass in particular (Tollite porta, Qui sedes…) some melodic lines are impressive in their sweep. In general, the attention to detail and expression creates a nuanced interpretation that results in something beyond mere correctness, something truly beautiful that emanates spiritual longing and hope, joy, and genuine devotion.

Congratulations to the monks for this new addition to their recorded repertoire.
Sr. Bernadette Byrne OSB, Choir Mistress, St. Cecilia’s Abbey, Ryde - to be expanded later

"The Pluscarden Advent CD is very good, in my opinion: very pleasant to listen to! JohnHardyMusic has done tremendous mastering work on the overall sound. You can barely distinguish between pieces recorded in sessions 4 years apart. Amazing!"
Dr. Giedrius Gapsys, Musicologist, Professor of École de Chant Grégorien de Paris.

“A CD from Pluscarden Abbey is obviously something anyone with some interest in Gregorian Chant will receive with gratitude and listen to with great attention. 
The CD is well presented with a rather austere cover and accompanied by an informative booklet in which one finds all the texts with an English translation, a short introduction and limited but useful comments on the most important pieces.
The programme is remarkably clear. It follows the four weeks of Advent. Each time, the tone is set by two or three antiphons from the liturgy of the hours with their psalmody. One cannot express more clearly the way the Chant as a whole is rooted in psalmody. The sublime and more elaborate melodies of the Proper of the Mass have no other origin and can be understood fully only against the background of the constant murmur of psalmody. Monastic choirs are probably the only places where the way Chant issues from the continual prayer of the Psalms can be experienced.
Hence the place of the community. It is very apposite to hear at times the sound of the whole community – with its qualities and also, unsurprisingly, its weaknesses – and at other times the better voices of the schola. We are given to experience a real community singing, not a chemically pure performance by selected artists. This is essential to the meaning of the CD: it is about joining with the prayer of a community, much more than looking for an aesthetic pleasure.
The monks of Pluscarden sing reasonably well together. They are excellent at sharing their enthusiasm with us. One can feel a deep understanding of the pieces, indeed that sort of complicity with pieces which have been sung for years and have become like good old friends. We are never far from the hearts of the singers, from their faith and devotion, and this is very inspiring, even, at times, moving.
The Offertory Ad te levavi is a good example of a piece which is perfectly assimilated and rendered with a very balanced interpretation. The manuscripts are followed with intelligence and suppleness. No exaggerated contrast between longer and shorter values provides for regularity in the pace. There is a real feeling for the musical phrase. Moreover, the piece as a whole is mastered from the beginning to the end with a sense of direction and great surety of mood. This is the best that we can expect from any monastic interpretation.
You find the same quality in other pieces such as the Introit Gaudete, the Communion Dicite, pusillanimes, the Antiphon O Sapientia, the Introit Rorate, the Offertory Ave Maria, or the Responsory Iudea with its quasi-perfect verses. In other pieces, maybe more difficult, such as, for instance, Universi, Qui sedes, or Tollite portas, the balance between the attention to the details of the neumes and the general phrasing has not been reached to the same point, even if great qualities of togetherness remain strikingly present. The short Antiphons are unequal: quite a few feel a bit heavy, others are just right. This does not come as a surprise: any monastic choir has pieces which they sing better than others. The Sanctus and the Agnus Dei XVII are superb.
On the whole, this is an important CD for it offers a real overview of Advent as it can be lived and prayed by a fervent monastic community. It gives you a direct access to the Church at prayer in one of the most loved and important seasons of the liturgical year. We can only be thankful and… ask for more.

Rt Revd Dom Xavier Perrin OSB, Abbot of Quarr