The last Daily Blog post focused on the ancient institution of the human family.

This one deals with something not quite so ancient, but still a venerable and honored tradition: Gregorian chant.

But it’s not just your grandfather’s Gregorian chant.

“Gregorian chant holds a place in popular imagination as the province of hooded monks intoning monotonous melodies along dim stone corridors,” according to this article published by McClatchey Newspapers. “It’s not like that.”

“At St. Stephen’s Catholic Church in Sacramento, the ancient musical form is sung by children and young men and women, a multiethnic choir of multicolored voices,” the article reports. “Teens sing wearing Vans or boots poking out from beneath cassocks. They sing at Masses where toddlers babble and babies wail and adults walk in and out during services.”

Another sign of chant’s increasing popularity is the Youtube video posted at the start of this entry. Universal Music signed a recording contract with the Cistercian monks at the Heiligenkreuz monastery in Austria, after they posted the video on the Internet as an entry in a contest organized by the music studio.

The McClatchey Newspapers article notes that use of Gregorian chant is experiencing a resurgence in the Mass, after a period following the Second Vatican Council when some liturgical reformers erroneously concluded it no longer held pride of place as a form of liturgical music.

“Gregorian chant should have the first place in musical liturgy,” William Mahrt, the president of the Church Music Association of America, told McClatchey Newspapers. “[It’s] the fundamental music, the basic music.”

Father Robert Novokowsky, the pastor of St. Stephen’s Church, comments in the article about the meditative and mystical dimensions that chant draws forth at Mass:

“During the liturgy, the chant is meditative,” he said. It’s one thing to have a short psalm read. It’s quite another to experience it sung.

“It takes four minutes to sing that one line,” Novokowsky said.

“It’s a way of experiencing the mystery of God.”

— Tom McFeely