Vol. 1: September 7 - QuietTunes I: Transcendence
Now that I’m officially out of US quarantine, I’ve decided to celebrate by changing the counter from days to volumes! (Exciting, I know)
Today, we also start a series on ‘Quiet Music,’ in which I’ll take longer looks at fewer pieces, one or two a day, focusing solely on music whose softness asks more of us as listeners.. Our first piece isn’t necessarily a piece, but a context: Carthusian Chant
Carthusian Chant
The Carthusians are an order of the Catholic Church, like the Jesuits or the Franciscans. As the Jesuits are devoted to learning and the Franciscans to poverty, the Carthusians seek God through silent meditation and works. They live like hermits, cloistered in charterhouses built like fortresses, with only yearly visits allowed from family. Their days are quiet and studious, voluntarily locked in a small cell, reflecting on the liturgy according to a strict timetable. They observe the Divine Office or the ‘Liturgy of the Hours’ (a daily regimen of prayers and readings) alone in their cells. They only greet each on Sundays and for feast days, and then only to dine. They do not own belongings or property, wear coarse shirts made from animal hair, and fast regularly. The pressure is intense. Candidates have to be recommended and then there is a month-long trial period before they are fully committed to the order. Many do not pass on. This obedience, denial, and isolation is all so they can focus on the Word and the liturgy.
They do, however, sing together. Three times a day, they leave their cells to chant the Vigils and the Vespers. In the middle of the night, they wake after only four hours of sleep to chant the Office of the Vigils, a reflection on salvation history. In the morning, they rise again to chant the Conventual Mass, or Community Mass, a Mass meant for priests and brothers/sisters. Then, they begin their day of solitary meditation and observance of the Divine Office. In the afternoon, they meet for the Vespers, an evening prayer focused on asking God’s intercession for the needs of the world. The only other sound in the charterhouse is the bell which tolls incessantly the hours of the day.
You can imagine what these moments must be like; that shock of incredibly human sound, of ragged voices, unused to being used, struggling in worship amidst the silence of midnight. And what must it feel like to sing after so much quiet, the embodied sound? Carthusian monks live inside their head; the physicality of your own voice resonating through your bones would sure wake you up! (Or is it like greeting co-workers in the morning, a straggled, procedural ‘Hello’ to God?) These are men, men from various and sometimes troubled backgrounds, who have left their lives and loved ones behind to think solely upon their Father and this is their shared communion.
When I was young, we went to a large Church. We were Creasters, people who came only for Christmas and Easter, so it was always a chore for me. I didn’t care for the sermons (though one time the pastor said Hell not as the place, which blew my 8-year old mind) or for the post church stampede. However, it was an acoustical marvel. If you sat in the back (as we did because we arrived late), then you were in an aural sweet spot. You could pretty easily pick out individual voices from the throng: the chipper devoted shouting In Christ Alone, the reluctant husband mumbling through How Great Thou Art, the croaks of the faithful smoker finding peace in Abide With Me. It was a mass of sound filled with deep, flawed humanity, just as is here.
That the one communal activity shared by these hermits is singing speaks volumes to the social nature of music. Their time is precious, which is why so much of it is regimented. They live their lives in devotion to reflection on the nature of God, not wasting a second on trifling mundanity like filing taxes, grocery shopping, or speaking to any other human being. Like salt, these acts enrich them and focus them, on their bodies, on their community, and on their God. Lifting their voices, together, in praise is vital to their isolated, reflective faith.
The recording I chose is from within a charterhouse in the Grand Chartreuse in the French Alps, the first charterhouse founded by the founder of the order, Saint Bruno. It’s from a fascinating documentary, which can be found here. What I love most about the recording is the authenticity and it’s sense of space. The long spans of environmental sounds invite you to contemplate like the Carthusians. You hear their life: the crackling of fires, the squeaks of chair, coughs from the monks. And you hear them in their worship, in their routine, in their chapel (which has a lovely reverb). These additions both show the quiet of their surroundings, but also the appreciative quiet of domesticity, of life. It’s a very human recording.
Musically, these are chants are from the Liber Usualis, the traditional chants used by the Catholic Church. There is nothing inherently special about the music which the monks sing. A cantor leads the monks who sing a responsorial, just like the faithful do every Sunday. What is special, though, is the context. Much like my childhood church, this recording shows the humanity of the monks, who despite their superhuman piety, still get tired, annoyed, sick. These are people striving for something higher against time, aging, themselves in a moment of deep devotion.
The humanity is in the nuances: the coughs, the cacophony of chair noise at the beginning of Matins as everyone sits up for the responsorial, the feeble vibrato on the cantor in The beginner accepts his robe (an incredibly important moment of initiation), the sounds of rustling throughout. These are the quiet details, not notated in scores and transcriptions, but present in all music.
There is a structural quiet in their music, the modal chants with their long, repeated notes, as if stuck on a loop. Change is loud. This music is spare so as to illuminate the Word. Imagine if these were written like a Strauss opera or a Mariah Carey song. The Word would lose out to the vocal acrobatics. This music, like their life, is focused on the Word.
The Carthusians are severe in their silence, in their vigilance, and in their discipline, but that is not to say they’re not fun. I’ll end with a video of some Irish Carthusians showing off to a visiting Cardinal: