The
Norbertine Fathers of St. Michael's Abbey are based out of Orange County in California, near Los Angeles. Their order was started in 1957 by Hungarian refugees escaping the rise of Communism in their native land, and owing to steady and considerable growth in 1984 they were upgraded to the status of an Abbey. Anthology is the title of their second release on Jade, and judging from its packaging and title, Jade apparently still thinks the chant craze of the mid-'90s is still on in 2009. It is an "anthology" as there is some polyphony on here by way of the inclusion of some Palestrina, and even one chant included is native to the
Norbertine Fathers and not part of the greater corpus of Western Christian chant. Otherwise, the disc consists of selections favored by this choir, but not presented in any particular liturgical context, and while all of the texts are included in a handsome booklet, there are no clues given as to where these chants come from. The unison singing is pretty good, brimming with character and earthiness, but the polyphonic singing -- one to a part in the Palestrina -- is either similarly characterized or unacceptably variable in pitch, depending on where your tastes lie in chant. During one track, there sounds like an ambient automobile or aircraft motor rumbling away in the background, but ultimately one realizes it's an off-pitch drone from the choir that gradually slides into pitch; not good if one's tastes in chant are based in performances by professional or even semi-professional choirs.
Jade is known for traveling to the scene of the crime in terms of collecting recordings of the world's indigenous choirs, and in some cases its efforts bear fruit with some measure of blemish. This is not always a bad thing; the modest resources of the Cuban chorus that recorded Jade's two discs of music of Cuban Baroque composer Esteban Salas was one of the attributes that made those releases so charming and personable. However, sometimes it merely gets away with things that come across as substandard, and this seems like it belongs in the latter category, though the chant singing in the middle of the disc is acceptable. For those who have visited St. Michael's Abbey, this may well serve as a decent souvenir of the choir, and for those interested in hearing newly minted chant. However, Jade's Anthology is not going to give the
Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos a run for their money anytime soon, or for that matter, later.