It's really beautiful. I miss subway music. It's mostly terrible but on occasion it hits hard. I remember having a hard day, at the end of my rope, tired beyond thought. A time I'd never expose myself to live music, and just being spun out by a from the heart, depths of the soul performance from a person too unlovely, too undisciplined to hold on to a stage for long. It's strange to go to a place guerrilla style, either to get an audience that wasn't asking or for an irresistible acoustic. Because it doesn't belong it's has a greater impact for greater or worse. Going to the audience, and the audience has almost no fucks to give. It's a more than credible cover of a soul favorite of mine.
I remember seeing this video a few years back. It is quite beautiful, though not a historically accurate arrangment of the melody (which is the part I assume is 800 years old). There's too many 3rds. early christian chant didn't like thirds much - and never on strong beats like a cadence. It also wasn't really "major or minor", but modal. for perspective, this is what these melodies sound like Another fun fact, the Icelandic Parliament, the Althing was founded hundreds of years before this chant was written, in 930 - It's the world's oldest parliament. I've been to Thingvellir, which is the site that the Althing used to be held at. The land there is literally on a tiny plate between the North American and Eurasian plates, and you can see the continents pulling apart. another tertiary fact - Thing, in older germanic languages, held a meaning of "gathering", so Althing is "gathering of all", and thingvellir is "gathering valley"