About fifteen years ago, some clever music producers got the idea of mixing Gregorian chant with a pop disco or dance beat. The resulting album, MCMXC AD, by the German band "Enigma," was a massive international hit. About half of the early music enthusiasts who heard it probably dropped dead of shock at the blasphemy of the thing. The rest of the early music purists sensibly ignored it, but a daring, slummy few of them may have even…. liked it.

Well, for those whose ultra-pure musical taste was not violated enough by the subsequent commercialization and vulgarization of Gregorian chant by hit records, even by monks as in the 1994 mega-hit Chant, by the monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, here's yet another sign, if any be needed, of the death of pure culture. And I ….like it.

Boy choirs have been piping their heavenly harmonies into the European air for centuries; think of the Vienna Choir Boys or any number of cathedral kiddies. England is particularly fond of them and great composers even into the twentieth century, such as Gustav Mahler and Benjamin Britten, have written compositions for them. It was only a matter of time before the same notion that made Enigma so popular came to the boy choir world. In 1999, under the direction of composer and choir-director Robert Prizeman, a London-area boy choir took the name of "Libera" and recorded an album under the same title. They followed this up with "Luminosa" in 2001 and "Free" in 2004. Along the way they have also done film music and commercials.

"Libera" in Latin has lots of meanings. It means "children," but it also means "free," as in "liberation." Prizeman, a British film and TV composer, composed pieces for the youths in lush, skwushy, big chords which are far too sweet and old-fashioned to be used in "mainstream" modern classical composition, and accompanied them with synthesizers, organ, and some orchestral instruments. And yes, on some of the songs, there are electronic disco or dance beats. Some of the pieces are adaptations of well-known plainsong or classical tunes; others are original Prizeman compositions as well as Prizeman words. All of this is wrapped in digital reverb which sends the sound into a dizzying pool of ultra-reflected shimmer.

The result is an enchanting flight of globalized electronic angels floating over the ruins of Western civilization. They are the only singing group ever to make the "Dies Irae" sound cute. They also have real moments of beauty and reverence, as well as some catchy plainsong-inspired songs and moving adaptations of traditional religious and folk tunes. "Libera" brings me a restful hour of charm, sweetness, and aural warmth in a dark, cold world.

These heavenly boys are one of my guilty musical pleasures. Sometimes it's just too hard to maintain my uncompromising, skeptical, unsentimental, ultraserious, relentlessly ironic cultural stance. I grow weary of dissonance and abstraction. I grow even wearier of apologizing for my cultural impurity. It's Lent, a time of penance and introspection, but this is one sin I am not sorry for.

Visit, if you wish, the Libera website and click on their sample links to hear snippets of their heavenly sound.

Posted at 3:41 am | link