It's "Christmas at the Cathedral", not "Christmas Eve at the Cathedral". Maybe there was an issue with the recording of Laetentur, or they liked Tollite better.

That Schroeder was the new shiny thing then (and NOT published by GIA). Other than that, it seems to be a pretty unadventurous program. The choral sound is typical and even excellent for the time, and a vast improvement on the 20s-30s (Listening to the "Arcadelt", I couldn't help comparing it to Montani's 1928 recording with its gracial tempo.)

I think Chonak is onto something with the early music comment. The choral sound is not just that; we've also had some changes in vocal science and pedagogy. But we don't tolerate the type of vibrato that comes with full-bore operatic production. And that's largely due to the English cathedral tradition and the early music choirs that flowed out of that.

And our expectations for this music are different. We have 3 generations of adults who have grown up on modern-style (!) recordings of polyphony, and these have shaped our expectations of music in the Mass. Not only do we want repertoire that was probably only heard at elite establishments, but we want it at a performance level that was probably never achieved at those establishments. Even out best church choirs can't fully meet the auditory image, just because they're performing live. Wanting more and better is fine. But it means that people have to come up with money, because amateurs aren't going to produce it.

Aside: the early music revival had a strong choral component, from the French Schola Cantorum onwards. And just as it was getting well underway, Vatican II happened. Where would we be now if early music singers had passed freely into church work, and the actual task of recovering authentic performance styles had happened in an authentic context? What if something like Cinquecento's residency at St. Roch in Vienna were the rule rather than the exception?

Thanks Chonak, very interesting to hear. Some beautiful singing.

This recording does not approach any of this music as "early music" or "late music," rather the same aesthetic and choral style is applied to all the whole program of music. It is an aesthetic style to my ears illustrative of mid-twentieth century church choir sound. Very similar to the recordings of the Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal with the Regina Fryxell liturgy settings.

I'm not sure that early music style has changed church singing as much as nearly all genres of music now favor a more neutral, white sound. I think this is true in pop music as much as in sacred music.
I can't comment on the diction, other than to say I'm not sure how it is different from contemporary pronunciation. There may be some regional dialect in this New England choir...?

Davido, part of that's a function of the slow tempo, though they sound like they have enough bodies to stagger effectively.

Their Latin "o" is interesting. It's as if they wanted something brighter than "aw", but they end up with something indistinguishable from "ah". (Aremus...) At least it's not the thing I refer to in rehearsal as "the Simpson 'o'".

A very nice Christmas carol program, I particularly enjoyed hearing Adeste fidelis which I haven't heard sung in a long time. It was interesting to hear the mass parts; What I remember singing was Christmas Carol Mass by Korman, so it's nice to hear something a little different and before my time. Thanks for sharing.

I depart from most and do not insist on a closed sound for syllable-final O. “Oremus”? That’s going to be /o.re.mus/: I don’t think that Americans in particular will do that without carrying over the “r” too much and making it sound like “oar”. Sometimes French has a not-/o/ vowel that is syllable final and not followed by a consonant which is what triggers that normally but it’s usually not /ɔ/ (unfortunately). And I’ve commented before that Fontgombault sometimes uses the KIT vowel (which I expect, to my chagrin, from Americans and French Canadians but not European French speakers) in lieu of /i/.

Anyway, I agree that we have better teaching and science and different expectations. Different repertoire demands a different sound. And then the operatic sound is not tolerated.

Now, as to the chant. It’s not that far from early Dom Gajard. But even then, while the vocal faults are legion, the monks had a better sensitivity to tempo, expression, dynamics…and that’s even more apparent now with the essentially complete Sunday and major feast recordings of Triors and the many CDs of Fontgombault. I think the technique complaint remains, but there’s also nothing wrong with wanting a more forward and resonant sound than one would get from mid-20th century American choirs.

My own schola has some issues: leader from Brazil, a few guys from Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky, one each from Jersey, Chicago, California, me from all over but with New England roots… and Hebrew words are currently the bane of our existence (we introduce diphthongs where they have no place) but on our best days I would agree with the original assessment that we can do better than many of these choirs from the 60s

It’s striking to me that we left behind both the « Tridentine » rite and real interest in other usages and historical practices, as well as polyphony from earlier periods, right as the academy got interested in all of this.