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Gregorian chant

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   The Introit Gaudeamus omnes, scripted in square notation in the
   14th—15th century Graduale Aboense, honours Henry, patron saint of
   Finland.
     * Gaudeamus omnes, Introit for the Mass in honour of Henry, patron
       saint of Finland —
          + Click on the manuscript image and download the high-resolution
            version to follow along with the score, starting at the large
            calligraphed "G." The antiphon repeats after the psalm verse
            "Annunciabunt...quẽ fecit dominus" and again after the "Gloria
            patri." Only the beginning and end of the "Gloria patri" are
            in the manuscript; "EVOVAE" represents the vowels in the final
            six syllables, "sæculorum, amen." The Latin is pronounced in
            the manner of Renaissance Germany, based on Åbo's German
            ecclesiastical connections.
          +

   Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form
   of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song of the Roman Catholic Church.
   Gregorian chant developed mainly in the Frankish lands of western and
   central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries, with later additions
   and redactions. Although popular legend credits Pope Gregory the Great
   with inventing Gregorian chant, scholars believe that it arose from a
   later Carolingian synthesis of Roman and Gallican chant.

   Gregorian chants are organized into eight scalar modes. Typical melodic
   features include characteristic incipits and cadences, the use of
   reciting tones around which the other notes of the melody revolve, and
   a vocabulary of musical motifs woven together through a process called
   centonization to create families of related chants. Instead of octave
   scales, six-note patterns called hexachords underlie the modes. These
   patterns use elements of the modern diatonic scale as well as what
   would now be called B flat. Gregorian melodies are transcribed using
   neumes, an early form of musical notation from which the modern
   five-line staff developed during the 16th century. Gregorian chant
   played a fundamental role in the development of polyphony.

   Gregorian chant was traditionally sung by choirs of men and boys in
   churches, or by women and men of religious orders in their chapels. It
   is the music of the Roman Rite, performed in the Mass and the monastic
   Office. Gregorian chant supplanted or marginalized the other indigenous
   plainchant traditions of the Christian West to become the official
   music of the Roman Catholic liturgy. Although Gregorian chant is no
   longer obligatory, the Roman Catholic Church still officially considers
   it the music most suitable for worship. During the 20th century,
   Gregorian chant underwent a musicological and popular resurgence.

History

Development of earlier plainchant

   Unaccompanied singing has been part of the Christian liturgy since the
   earliest days of the Church. Until the mid-1990s, it was widely
   accepted that the psalmody of ancient Jewish worship significantly
   influenced and contributed to early Christian ritual and chant. This
   view is no longer generally accepted by scholars, due to analysis that
   shows that most early Christian hymns did not have Psalms for texts,
   and that the Psalms were not sung in synagogues for centuries after the
   Destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70. However, early Christian
   rites did incorporate elements of Jewish worship that survived in later
   chant tradition. Canonical hours have their roots in Jewish prayer
   hours. " Amen" and " alleluia" come from Hebrew, and the threefold "
   sanctus" derives from the threefold "kadosh" of the Kedusha.

   The New Testament mentions singing hymns during the Last Supper: "When
   they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives" Matthew
   26.30. Other ancient witnesses such as Pope Clement I, Tertullian, St.
   Athanasius, and the abbess Egeria confirm the practice, although in
   poetic or obscure ways that shed little light on how music sounded
   during this period. The 3rd-century Greek " Oxyrhynchus hymn" survived
   with musical notation, but the connection between this hymn and the
   plainchant tradition is uncertain.

   Musical elements that would later be used in the Roman Rite began to
   appear in the 3rd century. The Apostolic Tradition, attributed to the
   theologian Hippolytus, attests the singing of Hallel psalms with
   Alleluia as the refrain in early Christian agape feasts. Chants of the
   Office, sung during the canonical hours, have their roots in the early
   4th century, when desert monks following St. Anthony introduced the
   practice of continuous psalmody, singing the complete cycle of 150
   psalms each week. Around 375, antiphonal psalmody became popular in the
   Christian East; in 386, St. Ambrose introduced this practice to the
   West.

   Scholars are still debating how plainchant developed during the 5th
   through the 9th centuries, as information from this period is scarce.
   Around 410, St. Augustine described the responsorial singing of a
   Gradual psalm at Mass. Around 678, Roman chant was taught at York.
   Distinctive regional traditions of Western plainchant arose during this
   period, notably in the British Isles ( Celtic chant), Spain (
   Mozarabic), Gaul ( Gallican), and Italy ( Roman, Old Roman, Ambrosian
   and Beneventan). These traditions may have evolved from a hypothetical
   year-round repertory of 5th-century plainchant after the western Roman
   Empire collapsed.

Origins of the new tradition

   According to legend, a dove representing the Holy Spirit inspired Pope
   Gregory I to dictate Gregorian chant.
   Enlarge
   According to legend, a dove representing the Holy Spirit inspired Pope
   Gregory I to dictate Gregorian chant.

   The Gregorian repertory was systematized for use in the Roman Rite.
   According to James McKinnon, the core liturgy of the Roman Mass was
   compiled over a brief period in the late 7th century. Other scholars,
   including Andreas Pfisterer, have argued for an earlier origin.

   Scholars debate whether the essentials of the melodies originated in
   Rome, before the 7th century, or in Francia, in the 8th and early 9th
   centuries. Traditionalists point to evidence supporting an important
   role for Pope Gregory the Great between 590 and 604, such as that
   presented in H. Bewerung's article in the Catholic Encyclopedia.
   Scholarly consensus, supported by Willi Apel and Robert Snow, asserts
   instead that Gregorian chant developed around 750 from a synthesis of
   Roman and Gallican chant commissioned by Carolingian rulers in France.
   During a visit to Gaul in 752-753, Pope Stephen II had celebrated Mass
   using Roman chant. According to Charlemagne, his father Pepin abolished
   the local Gallican rites in favour of the Roman use, in order to
   strengthen ties with Rome. In 785-786, at Charlemagne's request, Pope
   Hadrian I sent a papal sacramentary with Roman chants to the
   Carolingian court. This Roman chant was subsequently modified,
   influenced by local styles and Gallican chant, and later adapted into
   the system of eight modes. This Frankish-Roman Carolingian chant,
   augmented with new chants to complete the liturgical year, became known
   as "Gregorian." Originally the chant was probably so named to honour
   the contemporary Pope Gregory II, but later lore attributed the
   authorship of chant to his more famous predecessor Gregory the Great.
   Gregory was portrayed dictating plainchant inspired by a dove
   representing the Holy Spirit, giving Gregorian chant the stamp of holy
   authority. The myth of Gregory's authorship is popularly accepted as
   fact to this day.

Dissemination and hegemony

   Gregorian chant appeared in a remarkably uniform state across Europe
   within a short time. Charlemagne, once elevated to Holy Roman Emperor,
   aggressively spread Gregorian chant throughout his empire to
   consolidate religious and secular power, requiring the clergy to use
   the new repertory on pain of death. From English and German sources,
   Gregorian chant spread north to Scandinavia, Iceland and Finland. In
   885, Pope Stephen V banned the Slavonic liturgy, leading to the
   ascendancy of Gregorian chant in Eastern Catholic lands including
   Poland, Moravia, Slovakia, and Austria.

   The other plainchant repertories of the Christian West faced severe
   competition from the new Gregorian chant. Charlemagne continued his
   father's policy of favoring the Roman Rite over the local Gallican
   traditions. By the 9th century the Gallican rite and chant had
   effectively been eliminated, although not without local resistance. The
   Gregorian chant of the Sarum Rite displaced Celtic chant. Gregorian
   coexisted with Beneventan chant for over a century before Beneventan
   chant was abolished by papal decree (1058). Mozarabic chant survived
   the influx of the Visigoths and Moors, but not the Roman-backed
   prelates newly installed in Spain during the Reconquista. Restricted to
   a handful of dedicated chapels, modern Mozarabic chant is highly
   Gregorianized and bears no musical resemblance to its original form.
   Ambrosian chant alone survived to the present day, preserved in Milan
   due to the musical reputation and ecclesiastical authority of St.
   Ambrose.

   Gregorian chant eventually replaced the local chant tradition of Rome
   itself, which is now known as Old Roman chant. In the 10th century,
   virtually no musical manuscripts were being notated in Italy. Instead,
   Roman Popes imported Gregorian chant from the German Holy Roman
   Emperors during the 10th and 11th centuries. For example, the Credo was
   added to the Roman Rite at the behest of the German emperor Henry II in
   1014. Reinforced by the legend of Pope Gregory, Gregorian chant was
   taken to be the authentic, original chant of Rome, a misconception that
   continues to this day. By the 12th and 13th centuries, Gregorian chant
   had supplanted or marginalized all the other Western plainchant
   traditions.

   Later sources of these other chant traditions show an increasing
   Gregorian influence, such as occasional efforts to categorize their
   chants into the Gregorian modes. Similarly, the Gregorian repertory
   incorporated elements of these lost plainchant traditions, which can be
   identified by careful stylistic and historical analysis. For example,
   the Improperia of Good Friday are believed to be a remnant of the
   Gallican repertory.

Musical form

Melodic types

   Gregorian chants are categorized into three melodic types based on the
   number of pitches sung to each syllable. Syllabic chants have primarily
   one note per syllable. In neumatic chants, two or three notes per
   syllable predominate, while melismatic chants have syllables that are
   sung to a long series of notes, ranging from five or six notes per
   syllable to over sixty in the more prolix melismas.

   Gregorian chants fall into two broad categories of melody: recitatives
   and free melodies. The simplest kind of melody is the liturgical
   recitative. Recitative melodies are dominated by a single pitch, called
   the reciting tone. Other pitches appear in melodic formulae for
   incipits, partial cadences, and full cadences. These chants are
   primarily syllabic. For example, the Collect for Easter consists of 127
   syllables sung to 131 pitches, with 108 of these pitches being the
   reciting note A and the other 23 pitches flexing down to G. Liturgical
   recitatives are commonly found in the accentus chants of the liturgy,
   such as the intonations of the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel during the
   Mass, and in the direct psalmody of the Office.
     * Epistle for the Solemn Mass of Easter Day —
          + example of liturgical recitative in Gregorian chant
          +

   Psalmodic chants, which intone psalms, include both recitatives and
   free melodies. Psalmodic chants include direct psalmody , antiphonal
   chants, and responsorial chants. In direct psalmody, psalm verses are
   sung without refrains to simple, formulaic tones. Most psalmodic chants
   are antiphonal and responsorial, sung to free melodies of varying
   complexity.

   Antiphonal chants such as the Introit, Offertory, and Communion
   originally referred to chants in which two choirs sang in alternation,
   one choir singing verses of a psalm, the other singing a refrain called
   an antiphon. Over time, the verses were reduced in number, usually to
   just one psalm verse and the Doxology, or even omitted entirely.
   Antiphonal chants reflect their ancient origins as elaborate
   recitatives through the reciting tones in their melodies. Ordinary
   chants, such as the Kyrie and Gloria, are not considered antiphonal
   chants, although they are often performed in antiphonal style.
     * Loquetur Dominus, Introit for Week XXXIV of Ordinary Time —
          + example of antiphonal psalmody in Gregorian chant
          +

   Responsorial chants such as the Gradual, Tract, Alleluia, and the
   Office Responsories originally consisted of a refrain called a respond
   sung by a choir, alternating with psalm verses sung by a soloist.
   Responsorial chants are often composed of an amalgamation of various
   stock musical phrases, pieced together in a practice called
   centonization. Although the Tracts lost their responds, they are
   strongly centonized.
     * De profundis, Tract for the Requiem Mass —
          + example of responsorial psalmody in Gregorian chant
          +

   Gregorian chant evolved to fulfill various functions in the Roman
   Catholic liturgy. Broadly speaking, liturgical recitatives are used for
   texts intoned by deacons or priests. Antiphonal chants accompany
   liturgical actions: the entrance of the officiant, the collection of
   offerings, and the distribution of sanctified bread and wine.
   Responsorial chants expand on readings and lessons.

   The non-psalmodic chants, including the Ordinary of the Mass,
   sequences, and hymns, were originally intended for congregational
   singing. The structure of their texts largely defines their musical
   style. In sequences, the same melodic phrase is repeated in each
   couplet. The strophic texts of hymns use the same syllabic melody for
   each stanza.

Modality

   Early plainchant, like much of Western music, is believed to have been
   distinguished by the use of the diatonic scale, possibly developing
   from an earlier pentatonic scale. Around 1025, Guido d'Arezzo
   revolutionized Western music with the development of the gamut, in
   which pitches in the singing range were organized into overlapping
   hexachords. Hexachords could be built on C (the natural hexachord,
   C-D-E^F-G-A), F (the soft hexachord, using a B-flat, F-G-A^Bb-C-D), or
   G (the hard hexachord, using a B-natural, G-A-B^C-D-E). The B-flat was
   an integral part of the system of hexachords rather than an accidental.
   The use of notes outside of this collection was described as musica
   ficta.

   Gregorian chant was categorized into eight modes, influenced by the
   eightfold division of Byzantine chants called the oktoechos. Each mode
   is distinguished by its final, dominant, and ambitus. The final is the
   ending note, which is usually an important note in the overall
   structure of the melody. The dominant is a secondary pitch that usually
   serves as a reciting tone in the melody. Ambitus refers to the range of
   pitches used in the melody. Melodies whose final is in the middle of
   the ambitus, or which have only a limited ambitus, are categorized as
   plagal, while melodies whose final is in the lower end of the ambitus
   and have a range of over five or six notes are categorized as
   authentic. Although corresponding plagal and authentic modes have the
   same final, they have different dominants. The names, rarely used in
   medieval times, derive from a misunderstanding of the Ancient Greek
   modes; the prefix "Hypo-" indicates corresponding plagal modes.

          Modes 1 and 2 are the authentic and plagal modes ending on D,
          sometimes called Dorian and Hypodorian.
          Modes 3 and 4 are the authentic and plagal modes ending on E,
          sometimes called Phrygian and Hypophrygian.
          Modes 5 and 6 are the authentic and plagal modes ending on F,
          sometimes called Lydian and Hypolydian.
          Modes 7 and 8 are the authentic and plagal modes ending on G,
          sometimes called Mixolydian and Hypomixolydian.

   Although the modes with melodies ending on A, B, and C are sometimes
   referred to as Aeolian, Locrian, and Ionian, these are not considered
   distinct modes, and are treated as transpositions of whichever mode
   uses the same set of hexachords. The actual pitch of the Gregorian
   chant is not fixed, so the piece can be sung in whichever range is most
   comfortable.

   Certain classes of Gregorian chant have a separate musical formula for
   each mode, allowing one section of the chant to transition smoothly
   into the next section, such as the psalm tones between antiphons and
   psalm verses.

   Not every Gregorian chant fits neatly into Guido's hexachords or into
   the system of eight modes. For example, there are chants—especially
   from German sources—whose neumes suggest a warbling of pitches between
   the notes E and F, outside the hexachord system. Early Gregorian chant,
   like Ambrosian and Old Roman chant, whose melodies are most closely
   related to Gregorian, did not use the modal system. As the modal system
   gained acceptance, Gregorian chants were edited to conform to the
   modes, especially during 12th-century Cistercian reforms. Finals were
   altered, melodic ranges reduced, melismas trimmed, B-flats eliminated,
   and repeated words removed. Despite these attempts to impose modal
   consistency, some chants—notably Communions—defy simple modal
   assignment. For example, in four medieval manuscripts, the Communion
   Circuibo was transcribed using a different mode in each.

Musical idiom

   Several features besides modality contribute to the musical idiom of
   Gregorian chant, giving it a distinctive musical flavor. Melodic motion
   is primarily stepwise. Skips of a third are common, and larger skips
   far more common than in other plainchant repertories such as Ambrosian
   chant or Beneventan chant. Gregorian melodies are more likely to
   traverse a seventh than a full octave, so that melodies rarely travel
   from D up to the D an octave higher, but often travel from D to the C a
   seventh higher, using such patterns as D-F-G-A-C. Gregorian melodies
   often explore chains of pitches, such as F-A-C, around which the other
   notes of the chant gravitate. Within each mode, certain incipits and
   cadences are preferred, which the modal theory alone does not explain.
   Chants often display complex internal structures that combine and
   repeat musical subphrases. This occurs notably in the Offertories; in
   chants with shorter, repeating texts such as the Kyrie and Agnus Dei;
   and in longer chants with clear textual divisions such as the Great
   Responsories, the Gloria, and the Credo.

   Chants sometimes fall into melodically related groups. The musical
   phrases centonized to create Graduals and Tracts follow a musical
   "grammar" of sorts. Certain phrases are used only at the beginnings of
   chants, or only at the end, or only in certain combinations, creating
   musical families of chants such as the Iustus ut palma family of
   Graduals. Several Introits in mode 3, including Loquetur Dominus above,
   exhibit melodic similarities. Mode 3 chants have C as a dominant, so C
   is the expected reciting tone. These mode 3 Introits, however, use both
   G and C as reciting tones, and often begin with a decorated leap from G
   to C to establish this tonality. Similar examples exist throughout the
   repertory.

Notation

   Iubilate deo universa terra shows psalm verses in unheightened neumes.
   Enlarge
   Iubilate deo universa terra shows psalm verses in unheightened neumes.

   The earliest notated sources of Gregorian chant used symbols called
   neumes to indicate changes in pitch and duration within each syllable,
   but not the specific pitches of individual notes, nor the relative
   starting pitches of each neume. Scholars postulate that this practice
   may have been derived from cheironomic hand-gestures, the ekphonetic
   notation of Byzantine chant, punctuation marks, or diacritical accents.
   Later innovations included the use of heightened or diastemic neumes
   showing the relative pitches between neumes, and a musical staff
   marking one line with a particular pitch, usually C or F. Additional
   symbols developed, such as the custos, placed at the end of a system to
   show the next pitch. Other symbols indicated changes in articulation,
   duration, or tempo, such as a letter "t" to indicate a tenuto. Another
   form of early notation used a system of letters corresponding to
   different pitches, much as Shaker music is notated.
   The Liber usualis uses square notation, as in this excerpt from the
   Kyrie eleison (Orbis factor).
   The Liber usualis uses square notation, as in this excerpt from the
   Kyrie eleison (Orbis factor).

   By the 13th century, the neumes of Gregorian chant were usually written
   in square notation on a four-line staff with a clef, as in the Graduale
   Aboense pictured above. In square notation, small groups of ascending
   notes on a syllable are shown as stacked squares, read from bottom to
   top, while descending notes are written with diamonds read from left to
   right. When a syllable has a large number of notes, a series of smaller
   such groups of neumes are written in succession, read from left to
   right. The oriscus, quilisma, and liquescent neumes indicate special
   vocal treatments, whose exact nature is unconfirmed. B-flat is
   indicated by a "soft b" placed to the left of the entire neume in which
   the note occurs, as shown in the "Kyrie" to the right. When necessary,
   a "hard b" with a descender indicates B-natural. This system of square
   notation is standard in modern chantbooks.

Performance

Texture

   Chant was traditionally reserved for men, as it was originally sung by
   the all-male clergy during the Mass and the prayers of the Office.
   Outside the larger cities, the number of available clergy dropped, and
   lay men started singing these parts. In convents, women were permitted
   to sing the Mass and Office as a function of their consecrated life,
   but the choir was still considered an official liturgical duty reserved
   to clergy, so lay women were not allowed to sing in the Schola cantorum
   or other choirs.

   Chant was normally sung in unison. Later innovations included tropes,
   extra words or notes added to a chant, and organum, improvisational
   harmonies focusing on octaves, fifths, fourths, and, later, thirds.
   Neither tropes nor organum, however, belong to the chant repertory
   proper. The main exception to this is the sequence, whose origins lay
   in troping the extended melisma of Alleluia chants known as the
   jubilus, but the sequences, like the tropes, were later officially
   suppressed. The Council of Trent struck sequences from the Gregorian
   corpus, except those for Easter, Pentecost, Corpus Christi and All
   Souls' Day.

   We do not know much about the particular vocal stylings or performance
   practices used for Gregorian chant in the Middle Ages. On occasion, the
   clergy was urged to have their singers perform with more restraint and
   piety. This suggests that virtuosic performances occurred, contrary to
   the modern stereotype of Gregorian chant as slow-moving mood music.
   This tension between musicality and piety goes far back; Gregory the
   Great himself criticized the practice of promoting clerics based on
   their charming singing rather than their preaching. However, Odo of
   Cluny, a renowned monastic reformer, praised the intellectual and
   musical virtuosity to be found in chant:

          "For in these [Offertories and Communions] there are the most
          varied kinds of ascent, descent, repeat..., delight for the
          cognoscenti, difficulty for the beginners, and an admirable
          organization... that widely differs from other chants; they are
          not so much made according to the rules of music... but rather
          evince the authority and validity... of music."

   True antiphonal performance by two alternating choruses still occurs,
   as in certain German monasteries. However, antiphonal chants are
   generally performed in responsorial style by a solo cantor alternating
   with a chorus. This practice appears to have begun in the Middle Ages.
   Another medieval innovation had the solo cantor sing the opening words
   of responsorial chants, with the full chorus finishing the end of the
   opening phrase. This innovation allowed the soloist to fix the pitch of
   the chant for the chorus and to cue the choral entrance.

Rhythm

   Because of the ambiguity of medieval notation, rhythm in Gregorian
   chant is contested among scholars. Certain neumes such as the pressus
   indicate repeated notes, which may indicate lengthening or
   repercussion. By the 13th century, with the widespread use of square
   notation, most chant was sung with an approximately equal duration
   allotted to each note, although Jerome of Moravia cites exceptions in
   which certain notes, such as the final notes of a chant, are
   lengthened. Later redactions such as the Editio medicaea of 1614
   rewrote chant so that melismas, with their melodic accent, fell on
   accented syllables. This aesthetic held sway until the re-examination
   of chant in the late 19th century by such scholars as Wagner, Pothier,
   and Mocquereau, who fell into two camps.

   One school of thought, including Wagner, Jammers, and Lipphardt,
   advocated imposing rhythmic meters on chants, although they disagreed
   how that should be done. An opposing interpretation, represented by
   Pothier and Mocquereau, supported a free rhythm of equal note values,
   although some notes are lengthened for textual emphasis or musical
   effect. The modern Solesmes editions of Gregorian chant follow this
   interpretation. Mocquereau divided melodies into two- and three-note
   phrases, each beginning with an ictus, an accented musical pulse akin
   to a downbeat, notated in chantbooks as a small vertical mark. These
   basic melodic units combined into larger phrases through a complex
   system expressed by cheironomic hand-gestures. This approach prevailed
   during the twentieth century, propagated by Justine Ward's program of
   music education for children, until Vatican II diminished the
   liturgical role of chant and new scholarship "essentially discredited"
   Mocquereau's rhythmic theories.

   Common modern practice favors performing Gregorian chant with no beat
   or regular metric accent, largely for aesthetic reasons. The text
   determines the accent while the melodic contour determines the
   phrasing. The note lengthenings recommended by the Solesmes school
   remain influential, though not prescriptive.

Liturgical functions

   Gregorian chant is sung in the Office during the canonical hours and in
   the liturgy of the Mass. Texts known as accentus are intoned by
   bishops, priests, and deacons, mostly on a single reciting tone with
   simple melodic formulae at certain places in each sentence. More
   complex chants are sung by trained soloists and choirs. The most
   complete collection of chants is the Liber usualis, which contains the
   chants for the Tridentine Mass and the most commonly used Office
   chants. Outside of monasteries, the more compact Graduale Romanum is
   commonly used.

Proper chants of the Mass

   The Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Tract, Sequence, Offertory and
   Communion chants are part of the Proper of the Mass. "Proper" is
   cognate with "property"; each feast day possesses its own specific
   texts and chants for these parts of the liturgy.

   Introits cover the procession of the officiants. Introits are
   antiphonal chants, typically consisting of an antiphon, a psalm verse,
   a repeat of the antiphon, an intonation of the Doxology, and a final
   repeat of the antiphon. Reciting tones often dominate their melodic
   structures.

   Graduals are responsorial chants that intone a lesson following the
   reading of the Epistle. Graduals usually result from centonization;
   stock musical phrases are assembled like a patchwork to create the full
   melody of the chant, creating families of musically related melodies.

   The Alleluia is known for the jubilus, an extended joyful melisma. It
   is common for different Alleluia texts to share essentially the same
   melody. The process of applying an existing melody to a new Alleluia
   text is called adaptation. Alleluias are not sung during penitential
   times, such as Lent. Instead, a Tract is chanted, usually with texts
   from the Psalms. Tracts, like Graduals, are highly centonized.

   Sequences are sung poems based on couplets. Although many sequences are
   not part of the liturgy and thus not part of the Gregorian repertory
   proper, Gregorian sequences include such well-known chants as Victimae
   paschali laudes and Veni Sancte Spiritus. According to Notker Balbulus,
   an early sequence writer, their origins lie in the addition of words to
   the long melismas of the jubilus of Alleluia chants.

   Offertories are sung during the giving of offerings. Offertories once
   had highly prolix melodies in their verses, but the use of verses in
   Gregorian Offertories disappeared around the 12th century.

   Communions are sung during the distribution of the Eucharist. Communion
   melodies are often tonally unstable, alternating between B-natural and
   B-flat. Such Communions often do not fit unambiguously into a single
   musical mode.

Ordinary chants of the Mass

   The Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei use the
   same text in every service of the Mass. Because they follow the regular
   invariable "order" of the Mass, these chants are called " Ordinary."

   The Kyrie consists of a threefold repetition of "Kyrie eleison" ("Lord,
   have mercy"), a threefold repetition of "Christe eleison" ("Christ have
   mercy"), followed by another threefold repetition of "Kyrie eleison."
   In older chants, "Kyrie eleison imas" ("Lord, have mercy on us") can be
   found. The Kyrie is distinguished by its use of the Greek language
   instead of Latin. Because of the textual repetition, various musical
   repeat structures occur in these chants. The following, Kyrie ad. lib.
   VI as transmitted in a Cambrai manuscript, uses the form ABA CDC EFE',
   with shifts in tessitura between sections. The E' section, on the final
   "Kyrie eleison," itself has an aa'b structure, contributing to the
   sense of climax.
     * Kyrie 55, Vatican ad lib. VI, from Cambrai, Bibl. Mun. 61, fo.155v,
       as transcribed by David Hiley —
          + example of musical repeat structures in Gregorian chant
          +

   The Gloria recites the Greater Doxology, and the Credo intones the
   Nicene Creed. Because of the length of these texts, these chants often
   break into musical subsections corresponding with textual breaks.
   Because the Credo was the last Ordinary chant to be added to the Mass,
   there are relatively few Credo melodies in the Gregorian corpus.

   The Sanctus and the Agnus Dei, like the Kyrie, also contain repeated
   texts, which their musical structures often exploit.

   Technically, the Ite missa est and the Benedicamus Domino, which
   conclude the Mass, belong to the Ordinary. They have their own
   Gregorian melodies, but because they are short and simple, and have
   rarely been the subject of later musical composition, they are often
   omitted in discussion.

Chants of the Office

   Gregorian chant is sung in the canonical hours of the monastic Office,
   primarily in antiphons used to sing the Psalms, in the Great
   Responsories of Matins, and the Short Responsories of the Lesser Hours
   and Compline. The psalm antiphons of the Office tend to be short and
   simple, especially compared to the complex Great Responsories.
     * Hodie Christus natus est, Antiphon for Second Vespers of Christmas
       —
          + example of Gregorian chant for the Office
          +

   At the close of the Office, one of four Marian antiphons is sung. These
   songs, Alma Redemptoris Mater (see top of article), Ave Regina
   caelorum, Regina caeli laetare, and Salve, Regina, are relatively late
   chants, dating to the 11th century, and considerably more complex than
   most Office antiphons. Apel has described these four songs as "among
   the most beautiful creations of the late Middle Ages."
     * Alma Redemptoris Mater, Marian antiphon sung at Compline and Lauds
       between the First Sunday of Advent and Candlemas —
          + Marian antiphon
          +

Influence

Medieval and Renaissance music

   Gregorian chant had a significant impact on the development of medieval
   and Renaissance music. Modern staff notation developed directly from
   Gregorian neumes. The square notation that had been devised for
   plainchant was borrowed and adapted for other kinds of music. Certain
   groupings of neumes were used to indicate repeating rhythms called
   rhythmic modes. Rounded noteheads increasingly replaced the older
   squares and lozenges in the 15th and 16th centuries, although
   chantbooks conservatively maintained the square notation. By the 16th
   century, the fifth line added to the musical staff had become standard.
   The bass clef and the flat, natural, and sharp accidentals derived
   directly from Gregorian notation.

   Gregorian melodies provided musical material and served as models for
   tropes and liturgical dramas. Vernacular hymns such as "Christ ist
   erstanden" and "Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist" adapted original
   Gregorian melodies to translated texts. Secular tunes such as the
   popular Renaissance " In Nomine" were based on Gregorian melodies.
   Beginning with the improvised harmonizations of Gregorian chant known
   as organum, Gregorian chants became a driving force in medieval and
   Renaissance polyphony. Often, a Gregorian chant (sometimes in modified
   form) would be used as a cantus firmus, so that the consecutive notes
   of the chant determined the harmonic progression. The Marian antiphons,
   especially Alma Redemptoris Mater, were frequently arranged by
   Renaissance composers. The use of chant as a cantus firmus was the
   predominant practice until the Baroque period, when the stronger
   harmonic progressions made possible by an independent bass line became
   standard.

   The Catholic Church later allowed polyphonic arrangements to replace
   the Gregorian chant of the Ordinary of the Mass. This is why the Mass
   as a compositional form, as set by composers like Palestrina or Mozart,
   features a Kyrie but not an Introit. The Propers may also be replaced
   by choral settings on certain solemn occasions. Among the composers who
   most frequently wrote polyphonic settings of the Propers were William
   Byrd and Tomás Luis de Victoria. These polyphonic arrangements usually
   incorporate elements of the original chant.

20th century

   The renewed interest in early music in the late 19th century left its
   mark on 20th-century music. Gregorian influences in classical music
   include the choral setting of four chants in "Quatre motets sur des
   thèmes Grégoriens" by Maurice Duruflé, the carols of Peter Maxwell
   Davies, and the choral work of Arvo Pärt. Gregorian chant has been
   incorporated into other genres, such as Enigma's " Sadeness (Part I)",
   the chant interpretation of pop and rock by the German band Gregorian,
   the techno project E Nomine, and the work of black metal band
   Deathspell Omega. Norwegian black metal bands utilize Gregorian-style
   chants for clean vocal approach, featuring singers such as Garm or ICS
   Vortex of Borknagar and Dimmu Borgir, and Ihsahn of the band Emperor.
   The modal melodies of chant provide unusual sounds to ears attuned to
   modern scales.

   Gregorian chant as plainchant experienced a popular resurgence during
   the New Age music and world music movements of the 1980s and '90s. The
   iconic album was Chant, recorded by the Benedictine Monks of Santo
   Domingo de Silos, which was marketed as music to inspire timeless calm
   and serenity. It became conventional wisdom that listening to Gregorian
   chant increased the production of beta waves in the brain, reinforcing
   the popular reputation of Gregorian chant as tranquilizing music.

   Gregorian chant has often been parodied for its supposed monotony, both
   before and after the release of Chant. Famous references include the
   flagellant monks in Monty Python and the Holy Grail intoning "Pie Jesu
   Domine" and the karaoke machine of public domain music featuring "The
   Languid and Bittersweet 'Gregorian Chant No. 5'" in the Mystery Science
   Theatre 3000 episode Pod People.

   The asteroid 100019 Gregorianik is named in its honour, using the
   German short form of the term.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_chant"
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