Mysteria: Gregorian Chants
From the first notes of the Lenten antiphon "Immutemur," you feel a  soothing, reassuring calm from Chanticleer's sensuous, lyrical legato style and perfect unison  expression and phrasing. This is first class singing, no matter what the repertoire. But this just  happens to be chant, which requires a particular sensitivity to syllabic emphasis and to the rise and  fall of phrasing, all of which is determined as much by tradition as by sense of the text. Since there  is no existing notation that clearly indicates rhythm or meter for the earliest body of chant  repertoire, and there is no unbroken line of chant singing that goes back to the first and second  centuries, singers have to rely on a certain accepted scholarship and a tradition that's only a couple  of hundred years old. Chanticleer's performing decisions here are articulate, musicologically  sensible, and above all musically satisfying, taking this music to its proper level of exalted  simplicity. The program includes some of the gems of Gregorian chant, such as "Pange  lingua, Crux fidelis" and "Victimae paschali laudes."--David Vernier