We are standing in front of a small door somewhere in
France. The clouds are beautiful; we feel the heat and the scent of lavender.
The building is big, even gigantic, I would say. The church is far from the
city, it is placed in the wilderness. The small door is talking about the
average height of the people of the early times. The façade is enormous, the
walls are high, the church is arching towards the sky.
Despite all efforts to find the main entrance, this is the
only door we can find. We are looking for the outside windows, but there are
none. It seems that someone inside is not interested in the outside world.
Inside everything is plain; there are no decorations, frescos or painted
windows. The pews are placed in the church in a later century. Everything is
made of brick or stone.
The cloister is gorgeous; this is source of the light that
comes into the church. We keep thinking: well, this is France. The churches
have been literally emptied after the revolution. In the church-fortress of Avignon we
cannot find more than 2 wall carpets and five hundred tourists wearing shorts
and taking photos. But here the emptiness of the church is about something
completely different.
The Rule of Saint Benedict has gotten few cracks during its
first 500 years. The spirituality that came to being around 530 on Monte
Cassino and was a cornerstone of Western monasticism was several times shaken
by donation-covered interventions. Robert, a French abbey made his original
monastery wealthy within a few years and then was unable to break out from
materialism. Therefore with 20 fellow monks they founded the “New Monastery”
that has come to be known as the Cistercium.
As a matter of fact, they did nothing else but returned to
the apostolic faith and took the Rules very seriously. They managed to balance
work with prayer. They kept building their monasteries at faraway places, made
their own living, refused tithe and other donations. They wished neither for an
audience nor for followers They neither provided any kind of service nor
demanded anything in return. They were simply doing their job. Their prayers,
hymns and their whole lifestyle were aimed at serving the glory of God.
What a really clear, straightforward direction.
And this clarity has expanded rapidly, members with great
knowledge and high spirituality rushed to the Cistercium. During the Middle
Ages more than 700 monasteries were built. The Church was shining again.
So, can we then say that it was a closed “think tank” with
spiritual goals? Not really, as it did not have the “objective”. There was no
rush, planning, organisation, or desire for the goods, not even for the
spiritual ones. It was rather a state of synchrony, the new harmony of human
and divine, a beautiful attempt to regain the original state. The actual
realization of Sol sub Nube.
And here we gradually arrive to the music. Thanks to codex
copies, several scores were preserved from that era. The Ensemble Organum has
compiled a fabulous disc from those works. Their director, Marcel Peres
provides the frame for that work since 1982.
In their case it is also true that this music was not made
for an audience. There are no gates. There are no windows towards the outside
world. This music was supposed to accompany the internal liturgy, to create
harmony between the upper and the lower worlds. Therefore it is something that
exists ab ovo, it was neither created nor remembered. If it plays, it is good,
if it doesn’t, that is also good. It is similar to the expansion of light. The
main point here is not reaching the destination but taking the appropriate
waveform and vibration. Once the colour is created, it doesn’t really matter
who is sitting in front of the detector.
Then what are we, the audience, doing here? All sensible
people could consider this intrusion a form of indiscretion. Indeed, it is
indiscretion. But now, like in many similar cases in Early Music, meteorology
can help us.
This feeling is exactly like the one when we look up on the
sky. Clouds are not there for us to tide them up with our categorical thinking
and then rate them on a scale of 1-100 and divide them into subgroups. They
rather just exist as a natural phenomenon.
We can decide whether we like them or not, we can be afraid
of a storm cloud, but even so, this kind of music doesn’t give the impression
of being man-made as much as the later compositions do. This music is rather a
melodic part of prayer that settles down on the prayer just like a cloud on the
mountain. It is like a medium material that helps the vertical movements.
Obviously, there is text and function for these pieces. They can relate to the
daily part of the scripture or to the life of a Saint, based on the time of the
year. We shouldn’t forget that then, just like now, each day was bearing the
memory and the name of a Saint, with all his real or associated healing power.
The performance is mesmerising. There is no portal when we
enter, but the aisles, the mystical angles, the ratios of the arches, the shape
of the internal windows, all the forgotten skill and mastery of cathedral
building provides such an incredible acoustic system, that there, in France
when a monk started to sing I was unable to tell the place where the sound came
from. For 2-3 or sometimes 5 seconds you can hear the interference of the
non-existent harmonic sound as it accompanies the original voice. And then you
realize that the voice you considered the original was actually the echo…
In a smaller extent this effect can be heard on the
recording as well. We can call it an artificial atmosphere, a miracle, or maybe
a strange physiological effect. The way we name it doesn’t change anything. It
brings things into harmony, slows down the speed, it elevates you to a different
level. It is neither ugly nor beautiful, it is neither short, nor long, you can
get involved or detached, whichever you wish.
Gregorian chant is like the flow of clear water. It has a
source somewhere far. The source is always a bit different, while it is the
same thing all the time. It is a living phenomenon, but it is the embodiment of
a clearly spiritual thing.
And if it is water, then it is in a cloud form, there, high
above. It is that high, that the Sun shines below it.
This phenomenon was called Sol Sub Nube - Sun under the
clouds.
Don’t try to find it in books about meteorology.
It is there on this disc, you just have to listen.
* * *
Translated by Szirmay Katalin
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Thank you for the images:
