CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Gregorian (band)

German musical group

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ161552 ↗
Source-derived summary

Gregorian is a German band headed by Frank Peterson that performs Gregorian chant-inspired versions of modern pop and rock songs. The band features both vocal harmony and instrumental accompaniment. They competed in Unser Lied für Stockholm, the German national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest 2016, and placed 5th in the first round of public voting with the song "Masters of Chant", failing to make the Top 3 with 9.06% of the public vote.

Band history

Originally, Gregorian was conceived as a more pop-oriented group in the vein of Enigma. Under this concept, Peterson together with Matthias Meissner and Thomas Schwarz, recorded the 1991 album Sadisfaction, with lead vocals provided by the Sisters of Oz: Susana Espelleta (Peterson's wife at the time) and Birgit Freud. However, this was the only album by the trio in that style.

In 1998, Peterson and his team of Jan-Eric Kohrs, Michael Soltau and Carsten Heusmann re-invented the project to perform popular songs in the Gregorian style. The criteria for song selection were strict; in order to be considered, a song needed to be translatable into the 7-tone scale. For each album, songs were carefully chosen in addition to original songs written by Jan-Eric Kohrs, Amelia Brightman and Carsten Heussman. Twelve vocalists - previously acclaimed session and choir singers - were then hired to record the tracks.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Gregorian (band)” is german musical group. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Gregorian, band and German, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2016, 1991, 1998—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1991. For this dossier, Gregorian, band and German is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “german musical group” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q161552. VIAF identifies the subject as 138608819. The Library of Congress control number is no2009181993. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2016, 1991 and 1998.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Gregorian (band)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Gregorian (band) primary sources, Gregorian (band) archive and Gregorian research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Gregorian (band)”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Gregorian (band)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.