Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is also known as plainchant or plainsong, and is a form of monophonic, unaccompanied singing, which was developed in the Catholic church, probably during the period 800-1000. This music was traditionally sung by monks or other male clerics, and was used during religious services. It is the music of the Roman Rite of the Mass, also known as the Gregorian rite or Tridentine rite. Other rites of the mass, such as the Assryian or Coptic use different melodies but share the unaccompanied and monophonic nature of the Gregorian.
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2 The music and its performers 3 Gregorian chant in the liturgy 4 Select Bibliography |
Unaccompanied singing has entered the Liturgy of the Christian church since its beginnings, and was probably inherited from Jewish customs in temple and, later, synagogue services. About the first few centuries, up until about 400, information is very scanty indeed. The best we can get is information from the Old and New Testament and other ancient sources. Most of them write in a very poetic or obscure way about music, so its hard to make any sound statements about how music sounded in these first centuries.
In the next few centuries, information is still rare, so scholars are still hotly debating the period between roughly 400 and 800. It appears that in the latter part of the seventh century, a large part of the Roman Mass had been put together rather consciously in a short period of time. The music to accompany the Mass, was apparently also collected in this period. But for more information about these 'dark ages', one has to dive in some specialistic literature.
In the ninth and tenth century, the first sources with musical notation are found. Here we are treading on more secure ground...
Gregorian chant does not have different keys, nor does it have sharps and flats, but features rather an 8 note scale (think of the white keys on the piano). Although mostly similar to modern music notation except in a more basic form, standard Gregorian chant notation features many extra symbols for commonly used sequences of notes.
Traditionally it would be sung only by men, as it was originally simply the music sung by all the clergy (all male) during the liturgy. Later, as the numbers of clergy dwindled, lay men started singing these parts, and the numbers of lay men willing to do the singing dwindled women were accepted into these choirs.
On other hand, many Popes always encouraged the congragation as a whole, both men and women, to join the gregorian chant singing if they wished. Obviously, there also were female monasteries where they, too, sang Gregorian chant.
Gregorian chant, like the chants of the other rites, was later used to sing only certain parts of the liturgy. The rest of the parts are sung by the bishops, priests, and deacons with a certain default assigning of notes to words depending on their place in a sentence. The parts sung in the Gregorian chant style in the Roman Mass include:
The reason why the Introit and Offertory are not included in musical Mass settings is that their texts vary according to day and season. These texts are "proper" to each occasion, while the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei remain unchanged, being "ordinary" parts of the Mass. Of course, plainchant propers can be replaced by choral settings.History
The music and its performers
Gregorian chant in the liturgy
It should be noted that the Catholic church allowed later music written by individual composers, such as Palestrina, to replace the Gregorian chant for only some parts. This is why for example a Mozart Mass would feature the Kyrie but not the Introit, as the Introit still must be sung in the Gregorian style.
