CHAMPAIGN – The hum of low-pitched voices is soothing.

"Me ma ma ooh moo" sounds come from voices warming up.

A Gregorian chant choir practices in the choir loft of Holy Cross Catholic Church every Monday night.

The chanting, in Latin without musical accompaniment, began with monks. Songs were learned orally to accompany Catholic Masses and other ritualistic Christian services in the western world.

It first was notated in the 10th century.

"I do this because of the beauty of it," says Nicholas Haggin, the director who started the local choir called Schola Cantorum in fall 2005. "I know that the same music I am singing was sung generations before and generations before that back in the 9th century."

For 3 1/2 years, the group of chanters has ranged between four and nine.

It is a liturgical group that does not really perform, but often is asked to sing for Roman Catholic, Episcopal and other Christian church services. The chanters next will sing at the 11:30 a.m. Feb. 22 Mass at St. Matthew's Catholic Church, 1303 Lincolnshire Drive, C.

In preparation, Higgins chants the words to "Parce Domine" from a thin hymnal titled "Kyrie," and six choral chanters answer him with words from the chorus of the song.

Isabel Cole, the only woman currently a member of the group, says, "This is like a pathway to the past – singing and meditating. ... I started in May of 2008 because I saw a notice in the Holy Cross bulletin that said 'no experience necessary.' My only musical background is playing the clarinet and piano."

Haggin also has not had formal music training other than piano lessons.

"When I came here in 1997 to study computer engineering at the UI (University of Illinois), I lived at Newman Hall," he said. "I got involved in the 10:30 a.m. choir at St. John's Chapel directed by Fred Stoltzfus. At the first rehearsal, they handed me a single Gregorian chant in notation."

He shows a sheet of the notated music with small black squares scattered among four horizontal lines.

"There were several new choir members," Haggin says, "and he stopped to explain that the chants were phonetic Latin, had vowels like English and sounded like they looked."

"Next, I learned pronunciations from the Middle Ages," he said, "like 'excelsis,' which is kind of mushed together and pronounced 'ex shell sees.'"

Even though Haggin continued his computer education through a master's degree at Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, and works as a computer programmer at the UI, he has a fine ear for music.

After only the warm-up and one song on a recent rehearsal night, he could hear an off tone.

"It sounds mucousy; who has a seasonal cold or allergies?" he asked.

One singer quickly confessed then headed for the water fountain.

Stoltzfus, the choral director and UI music professor who introduced the chanting to Haggin, got interested in the music form when he did sabbatical research in Belgium. Back at the UI, he started the Choragos Ensemble in 1999 to recreate some old-fashioned chanting.

The history of chanting in the area goes back at least another 11 years. The Parkland Camerata recorded "Gregorian Chanting Through the Ages" in 1988.