Chants de l’Église de Rome: Période byzantine
Ensemble Organum; Marcel Pérès, director
Harmonia Mundi HMC 901218
This remarkable recording sounds nothing like the smooth, disembodied Gregorian chant once marketed as relaxation music. Ensemble Organum restores something more physical and unsettling: powerful male voices, resonant bass tones, pungent ornamentation and long melodic lines whose unmistakably Eastern coloring reminds us how closely early Rome remained connected to the Byzantine world.
The program draws principally on Easter chants in Latin, interspersed with Greek Alleluia verses. Under Marcel Pérès, the singers approach them not as museum pieces but as living acts of proclamation. The opening Alleluia immediately establishes the recording’s dark sonority; the Resurrexi unfolds with solemn restraint, while the gradual Hec dies and the expansive offertory Terra tremuit attain an almost architectural grandeur. Individual voices remain clearly human—grainy, forceful and occasionally raw—yet they combine into a sound of extraordinary authority.
Listeners accustomed to the refined serenity of conventional Gregorian chant may initially find this performance severe. Its intensity is precisely what makes it so compelling. Pérès and Ensemble Organum offer not merely a beautiful chant recording, but a persuasive glimpse of a vanished Roman sound world: austere, richly ornamented and spiritually charged. Essential listening for anyone interested in medieval sacred music.
