MASS TRANSIT The monks of Heiligenkreuz submitted their demo to Universal Classics via YouTube.

This week, a band of monks sits atop the Billboard and iTunes classical charts. The latest classical craze comes from a Cistercian monastery, the Stift Heiligenkreuz abbey in the southern Vienna Woods, founded in 1133. But Universal Classics’ blockbuster release of Chant: Music for the Soul isn’t unprecedented. In 1994, the Gregorian chant sensation of the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de Silos triggered a “Macarena”-like fad that had record stores buzzing. A generation later, this revived chant intoxication again speaks to the public’s penchant for purchasable nirvana to de-stress and unwind. But does chant only briefly, cyclically fill a lifestyle niche, or has it become more than a fleeting fad?

For insight, we first checked the users’ comment wall on iTunes. The reasoning ranges from the anaestheic to the aesthetic, as consumers look for aural wallpaper. “Eleanor Silver” recommends chant “if you need a little bit of peaceful background music.” “Mike 9412” notes that, while he underwent a dental operation, the “soothing, relaxing” sounds lulled him into a deep sleep. And “Violingirl91-katyliz” likes to hear the record while she “writes letters,” “does homework” or just “chills out.” For many others, however, the music’s monophonic simplicity grows tiresome: In his editorial review of the 1994 Benedictine album, Amazon.com critic Matthew Westphal quips, “Most of these discs have been listened to exactly once and put away.”

Yet the music’s plainness is its strongest selling point. Clayton Parr, director of choral activities at DePaul University, believes such music enjoys a continual popularity in the States. He writes via e-mail, “Chant is sung in unison—no harmony, everyone singing the same thing—and calls for a musical aesthetic in which individual voices are called on to dissolve themselves into one, implying a certain loss of self that seems to have appeal to many in this hyperindividualistic age.”

In less musicological terms, Kirk McElhearn, an author and coauthor of a dozen books about Apple, such as iPod & iTunes Garage, thinks Chant’s success stems mostly from shrewd marketing. “If a major label puts something odd in front of people, some people will be curious enough to check it out,” he argues, noting how vigorously iTunes promoted Chant with top-of-the-page banner ads. McElhearn adds that every year a couple of classical albums like this break out, partly because people are curious about some labels’ touted music but also because the general public embraces the more relaxing aspects of classical music. That’s proven by the ongoing sales success of the Adagio series, which showcases composers and certain instruments’ slowest movements.

And maybe that quest for relaxation does indicate a latent yearning for some spiritual connection. Gerry Fisher, salesman at WFMT and self-proclaimed “refugee from the record business,” sees the Chant sensation as a mirror image to that of popular religions (he adds that the marketing targeted “yoga journals”). “Maybe it’s the paganism of record-store employees combined with the blindness of the buyers,” he says, “but no one seemed to care about the gospel and Christian sections at any store where I worked—no one except the customers.”

But should an ancient prayer practice from the Roman Catholic Church translate into personal over-the-counter convenience? Parr says chant was never meant to be “concert music” in the first place and that monks sing with God as their audience. “I don’t think putting the music on a CD changes the purpose of the music any more than it does for concert music,” he says.Fisher agrees, and he also acknowledges the allure of the album’s cover, which depicts guys apparently under the age of 35 who appear to be walking on water. “That’s a small part of what’s driving sales, too,” he says with a grin. “Even monks vowed to chastity can evoke rock-star sex appeal.”