James Davy finds respect and equality in the interplay between piano and plainsong in a new disc from Pluscarden Abbey.
Plainchant has an astonishing capacity to endure: sung over and over in the liturgy, treated in numerous ways, reworked and manipulated like clay into new shapes, its sinuous and swirling lines pinned up and repackaged into four-square (or occasionally lilting triple-time) hymnody, or stretched beyond its spirit by over-anxious performers.
Too often plainchant is put on a pedestal but performed without the life that has ensured its survival over centuries as the most economical and universally accessible form of sacred music. Admittedly some chants are best left to those who work with this sometimes-forbidding material regularly; for the best chant and ravishing accompaniments, head to Westminster Cathedral – but I digress.
