plainsong

Church music, plainsong music, large choirs — all of that stuff is extremely beautiful, and I wanted to try and get some of that in this record.

Back and forth, a choir onstage chanted plainsong, answered by another more effusive choir behind the audience.

Like that wisecrack, Hobson’s style is colloquial throughout; he works in American plainsong even when summoning voices from beyond.

This writing suggests not so much prose as plainsong—timeless, full of deceptive simplicity, and somehow, in its uncanniness, modal, rather than major or minor.

St. Martin’s, whose diners are among the most culturally and ethnically diverse, presents a 20-minute, post-meal concert of plainsong and chant called “A Nightcap for the Soul.”