Songs of innocence and experience
The power of music in the form of Gregorian chant first took me to Le Barroux outside Avignon many years ago and my earliest post about the monastery there was uploaded back in 2004. A number of return visits to Le Barroux and to other Catholic monasteries in France allowed me to explore the links between plainsong and mysticism . But those visits also brought me face to face with the connection between traditionalist Catholicism and right wing politics. So, after careful research, I published an article on Holocaust Day in January this year detailing the link between the right wing cleric Archbishop Lefebvre, founder of the controversial traditionalist Catholic Society of St. Pius X , and the convicted French war criminal Paul Touvier. When Decca announced that they had signed the nuns at L'Abbaye de l'Annonciation at Le Barroux in a bid to win the biggest classical popularity contest of all, Christmas number one, I wrote and broadcast in praise of the Gregorian c