Biography
The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, active across 37 dioceses in the United States and seven in Canada, maintains its American training center at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Nebraska, amid the agricultural landscape southwest of Lincoln. That institution emphasizes daily performance of Gregorian chant and has issued multiple recordings, among them the commercially successful Requiem, which appeared on the Sony label.
Pope John Paul II canonically established the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter in 1988. The group oversees two seminaries: St. Peter in Wigratzbad, Germany, which serves German- and French-speaking candidates, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, founded in 1993 for English speakers. Both houses conduct all chant and liturgy exclusively in Latin. Enrollment at Our Lady of Guadalupe has increased annually since its opening, and the album Requiem captured the voices of many among the seventy-five seminarians then in residence. Those men perform chant four times each day while also pursuing coursework, cultivating crops, sharing communal meals, tending bees, and competing in athletics—the seminary basketball squad once finished as high as third place in a league of other American seminaries.
De Montfort Music principals Kevin and Monica Fitzgibbons arranged the Fraternity’s association with Sony; their label concentrates on making early sacred repertory approachable through performance and recording. For Requiem they enlisted veteran Sony personnel Christopher Alder as producer and Brad Michel as engineer, both of them Grammy recipients. The project stood out for its foregrounding of the chant texts, printed complete in the booklet, an approach that encourages listeners to reflect on the words in the same manner the priests themselves do.
Pope John Paul II canonically established the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter in 1988. The group oversees two seminaries: St. Peter in Wigratzbad, Germany, which serves German- and French-speaking candidates, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, founded in 1993 for English speakers. Both houses conduct all chant and liturgy exclusively in Latin. Enrollment at Our Lady of Guadalupe has increased annually since its opening, and the album Requiem captured the voices of many among the seventy-five seminarians then in residence. Those men perform chant four times each day while also pursuing coursework, cultivating crops, sharing communal meals, tending bees, and competing in athletics—the seminary basketball squad once finished as high as third place in a league of other American seminaries.
De Montfort Music principals Kevin and Monica Fitzgibbons arranged the Fraternity’s association with Sony; their label concentrates on making early sacred repertory approachable through performance and recording. For Requiem they enlisted veteran Sony personnel Christopher Alder as producer and Brad Michel as engineer, both of them Grammy recipients. The project stood out for its foregrounding of the chant texts, printed complete in the booklet, an approach that encourages listeners to reflect on the words in the same manner the priests themselves do.
Singles