We hear the bells ringing, the creaking benches, a crumpled page. You can almost imagine the tunic of the sisters brushing against the tiles. At the Notre-Dame-de-Fidélité Abbey in Jouques, near Aix-en-Provence, 45 Benedictines are making the longest musical recording in history as we speak. . An integral of Gregorian chants, which punctuate their monastic life. A project that will last 8000 hours come to an end. Almost 300 days.
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Thirty years after a first disc burned by Naxos, the nuns are again recorded in the abbey church, where they meet seven times a day, from lauds to accomplices. An ocher-colored building from the 1960s. Eight microphones, says our colleague from Aleteia , have been arranged since March 2019 by an American sound engineer, John Anderson, at the origin of the project. The man, who also manages a record company dedicated to jazz and classical, discovered the beauty of Gregorian chant thanks to his aunt, a member of the community. "There is something beyond our individuality ," he told British radio Classic FM. It is music that immediately guides you to eternity and spirituality. ”
The sisters must therefore think about launching the microphones before and after each service. Their noises, a rustling of leaves or a creaking door, make listening even more lively. Thanks to the 4G installed for the occasion at the abbey, the nuns send the audio file to technicians every evening. “These women spend half their day in the church , marvels John Anderson . And this, every day of the year, for their entire life. They sing like one long melody. ” The rest of the day, they work, as is the rule of Saint-Benoît, with their hands. In the vegetable patch or between the vines.
The liturgical song par excellence
Main liturgical song recognized by the Vatican, the Gregorian, which dates back to the 4th and 5th centuries, is characterized by its monody, that is to say the use of one and the same tone. It is sung a cappella. Its melody, supposed to magnify the sacred texts, is shaped by the accents of the Latin language and the spiritual importance of the words. After a long oral tradition, these songs were codified as neumes, square and black notes which indicate the variations of the voice.
It is from this notation that the site - and soon also the application - Neumz takes its name, which will host 8000 hours of music. To which will be added the score and the translation of the texts. The recording of the sisters will end in 2022, at the end of the liturgical cycle, three years which include the reading of all the Gospels. But several long videos are already available on YouTube. They are a reminder of how well the female voices match Gregorian chant, a genre more often associated with monks, like those of the sublime Solesmes Abbey.