Marek Klein has made a distinguished career out of performing, recording, and studying Gregorian Chant. He is the general manager and singer for the Gregorian chorus Gregoriana.
In 2012, he began the Graduale Project with the goal of recording every chant in the Graduale Romanum, the official liturgical book of the Roman Catholic Church containing chants.
Since then, he has released over 230 recordings of traditional Gregorian chant. Klein makes them available for free on YouTube, but he has also released compilations of the works he records each year.
On the project’s webpage, Klein reminds us that Gregorian chant is a fluid style of singing. Each singer will perform a Gregorian chant slightly different from the next due to the early notation, which left determining many musical aspects like tempo, dynamic, and even the length of each note to the performers.
Klein also notes that these chants are not meant to be sung by a soloist, but rather a group of singers, called a schola. We assume that he made this decision so that he could tackle this major undertaking at his own pace. Still even without a schola, his recordings are excellent tools to help us learn these ancient chants.
Follow Cecilia–Aleteia’s music page–on Facebook!
And today we celebrate...