Gregorian Chant Experience

For Nóirín Ní Riain, Gregorian Chant is an everyday happening. For many years she has had chants as intimate experiences, friends of the heart, to be sung and held close at times of joy and sorrow. These forty are her favourites - from 'Regina Caeli' to Pange Lingua', from 'Magnificat cum Alleluia' to the 'Gloría' - which have accompanied her through thick and thin, a source of meditation and healing. She shares this now, inviting you into her private space, in this collection of meditations, of performances and of beautifully transcribed chants, written in the hand of a modern-day scribe in the monastic tradition.

These heartsongs will tug the memory strings for many who learned plainchant as schoolchildren. They will introduce a young generation to what is for them a new experience. These are the religious songs of the ancients, now breathed into new life for our own time. They bear with them the wisdom and the serenity of centuries of meditation and attunement of the spirit.

Nóirín performs these chants sometimes on her own, sometimes with the gathering of student priests from St Patrick's College, Thurles. She accompanies them on Indian instruments - the surpeti and the shruti box - providing a continuous drone, sometimes breathy, sometimes plaintive, always anchoring the voice with an earthy sound.

Through this book and recording, Nóirín hopes you will share her strong sense of the special value of chant by listening, singing, reading and meditating -and letting these ancient chants soar.