Within minutes of arriving at the monastery in the Vienna Forest, I see a clutch of men wearing lederhosen, while an oompah band tunes up for the May Day fair. I’m starting to suspect the record company of doing a deal with the Austrian tourist board. As first reported in The Times in March, the Stift Heiligenkreuz monastery is the home of Universal Classics’ latest unlikely stars: the Cistercian monks of the Holy Cross. Already favourites of Pope Benedict, the brothers are braced for wider fame as their CD of Gregorian plainsong, called Chant, appears this week.
Father Karl, “band” spokesman, meets us beside the monastery shop. Clad in a winter jacket over his habit, he is in his fifties with a grin so warm it embraces you. “We shall find a silent place,” he says, without a flicker of irony. We head to the refectory and over strong coffee and mini doughnuts (monastic preconception No 1 shattered; what happened to bread, water and denial?), discuss the extraordinary new chapter in the life of the 875-year-old monastery.
“We do not want to become a boy group,” begins Father Karl, refreshingly off-message. “First it’s only good news, then only bad; but for the record producers, they sell in any case. Look at Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears.” For a man who has lived in holy orders for 26 years, Father Karl has an astute take on fickle fame. He has also listened to PR advisers: “They tell us, ‘You are monks and now everybody will love you. But don’t get proud.’ ”
Humility isn’t a quality associated with the record industry and one wonders if Stift Heiligenkreuz hasn’t made a pact with the Devil. What brought the secular and godly together?
Father Karl credits various “miracles” and the story is incredible. In February, Universal advertised in the Catholic press for a group to record plainchant. On the day before the closing date, Father Karl received an e-mail from a friend in London: “It was three words: ‘Schnell schnell, Karl!’ And a link to the advert.”
Father Karl replied with a YouTube clip of the order singing for the papal visit last year. (What do monks watch on YouTube, by the way? “I like to see the Popes. For instance, a beautiful clip of the last Holy Mass of Paul VI.” No dogs on skateboards, then.)
From hundreds who applied, Universal chose Stift Heiligenkreuz. But the deal has met resistance from some younger brothers who asked not to sing. “They lived a very secular life without God and then had a big conversion,” says Father Karl. “They are afraid this media tum-tum could bring them out of godly life.”
And there is a further temptation, one that most boy bands would consider a perk: groupies. “We have some young monks, 18 or 19, very handsome, and if girls get crazy what shall we do?” asks Father Karl. This is a serious concern. “Priests are normally very sensitive and they are not machos, so this touches the heart of a woman,” he suggests – his own experience of an amorous Italian penpal still troubling.
As it happens, girls with a penchant for a scapular will have to travel to Vienna; the monks have refused to tour. To do so would be a sin, they say, because Benedictine Gregorian chant is a form of prayer, sung before the altar. “We sing to God,” says Father Karl, “not to people.”
But the truth is that people do respond to this rarefied, ancient music again and again. I can recall in the early 1990s, every visit to my Uncle Peter’s in Solihull being met by Gregorian chants wafting through his home. While the Spanish monks of Silos were the classical-chart chanters of choice, Enigma stuck a thumping beat under a plainsong sample and watched their album MCMXC a.D. sell more than 14 million copies.
But why does Universal think the time is ripe for a Gregorian revival? For one thing, plainchant is the soundtrack to Halo, the sci-fi video game phenomenon. Universal also noticed a spike of interest in its existing Gregorian chant back catalogue. “Not overwhelming but enough to think something was going on,” says Tom Lewis, the A&R manager who signed Stift Heiligenkreuz.
Lewis is also hoping that, right now, we are anxious enough to tap into chanting. At the time of the last Gregorian surge, 18 years ago, we teetered on the verge of recession. Here we are again facing economic gloom and environmental doom. “There is a palpable sense of anxiety, and that tends to be associated with seeking sanctuary,” says Lewis. “People turn to soothing music for stress relief.”
What’s interesting, as Fabrice Fitch, early music reviewer for Gramophone magazine, notes, is that we generally like our plainchant plain: straight up, without a twist. “The generic sound associated with Gregorian chant is calming. Ensembles who have a more experimental, more vigorous way of performing – French group Ensemble Organum, for instance – haven’t caught on.”
Certainly, hearing the monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz chant lunchtime prayer is a contemplative experience. As the 40 voices dance around the liturgy, the effect is hypnotic, akin to the repetitive rhythm of rowing. The choirmaster, Father Simeon, explains that the call and response repetition allows the monks to meditate. “It is an objective form of singing but it allows for subjective emotion.”
Father Karl suggests that, whether we understand it or not, plainchant “leads the soul through different stages of feeling; it makes you sad, it gives joy, it raises the soul to Heaven”. Exactly the “primal response” that Universal’s Tom Lewis felt when he heard Stift Heiligenkreuz for the first time.
One “miracle” remains for Father Karl to explain. In two weeks in February three monks died – the first deaths at the monastery in five years and an exciting experience for the younger brothers. “Death is nothing we chase away,” says Father Karl.
“We are living for this; we want to go to Heaven, to paradise. The young brothers all found the funeral liturgy joyful – we think that the monks arrived at their goal – and so we chose those songs for the CD and we called the album Music For Paradise.”
My audience with the monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz is over. Father Karl leads me outside, where teenagers bound up to him – not because he’s a pop star, but because he baptised them. The May Day fair is in full swing; monks stroll about with flagons of frothing beer, while nuns tackle enormous cream cakes.
As Father Karl heads back to the monastery, his mobile goes – a Gregorian chant ringtone. You can’t take the monk out of the monastery and you certainly can’t take the monastery out of the monk.
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