This is such an exciting and thrilling performance! The small changes from the Roman version are intriguing. Listening to this really makes me wonder if there are differences in conventions between parish and monastic practice. There is something about the pacing here that suggests a certain timelessness.
Take note of the sheer variety here, the differences in the way each chant is rendered. This is just so masterful. The structure is super tight, highly ordered, very practiced, and yet…the singing has a wild spontaneity to it that sometimes suggests total elation.
Hi Jeffrey,
"Listening to this really makes me wonder if there are differences in conventions between parish and monastic practice"–I wouldn't think so. If you get out your old Liber Usualis (compiled by the Benedictine monks of Solsmes) you will find a similar but different version of the Salve Regina at the end of Compline. There might be some historical reason for variations but I tend to think of it as similar to the variations you can see in the "St Michael the Archangel" prayer from place to place.
In the multi-award winning independent movie, "Of Gods and Men," the story of the seven Trappist monks martyred by Muslim terrorists in Algiers in 1996, the ACTORS chant a portion of this Cistercian solemn "Salve" in the scene depicting Compline. Very moving. And very interesting that the screenwriter went to the trouble of making sure that, since the movie was about Trappists, the "Salve" was the Cistercian version!
In this interview on NPR's "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, the actor Lambert Wilson, who plays the Prior, Father Christian, speaks of how the chanting together, in preparation and rehearsal, was the "cement" that bound the seven actors together. Not surprisingly, his favorite chant was the Salve, and, at Ms. Gross' request, he gives it a go in this interview:
http://m.npr.org/story/133278072?url=/2011/02/22/133278072/lambert-wilson-of-gods-and-men-and-james-bond