Home > 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, mainly during the period 800- 1000. It takes its name from Pope St. Gregory the Great.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 Assyrian or Coptic use different melodies but share the unaccompanied and monophonic nature of the Gregorian, which allude to a common source.
1 History
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 scant indeed. The best we can get is information from the Old and New TestamentThe New Testament sometimes called the Greek Scriptures is the name given to the part of the Christian Bible that was written after the birth of Jesus Christ. The term is a translation of the Latin Novum Testamentum which translates the Greek Η &Kappa and other ancient sources. Most of them write in a very poeticPoetry is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. It consists largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its use 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. Since Gregorian chant is remarkably uniform in geographically very distant regions, and this unification happened in a rather short time, most likely around 800, the bulk of evidence suggests that a major effort at making the repertory consistent happened at this time. In addition, the stylistic unity of the chant suggests that a large amount of the actual music was composed around the same time and place. Most likely--though extremely difficult to prove--much of the actual chant composition, as we know it today, took place in the Frankish domain during the Carolingian RenaissanceThe Carolingian Renaissance refers to the often-rejected but just as frequently resuscitated idea that a flowering of literature, the arts, architecture, jurisprudence, liturgical and scriptural studies occurred during and shortly after the reign of Charl, under the combined guidance of CharlemagneCharlemagne (c. 2nd of April, 747 28th of January, 814) (or Charles the Great in German Karl der Grosse in Latin Carolus Magnus giving rise to the adjective form 'Carolingian'), was king of the Franks from 771 to 814, nominally King of the Lombards, and H and the popes.
Detailed recent study also shows numerous survivals of earlier reportories of chant. Sometimes there are actual repertories that are still sung in a specific place (a good example is Ambrosian chant , which originated in MilanThis is about the Italian city of Milan. For other uses, see Milan (disambiguation). Milan Milano in the Italian language, and Milan in Milanese dialect, from Latin, Mediolanum with the meaning of 'in the middle of the plain') is the main city in northern, and was preserved due to the reputation and authority of St. Ambrose who is reputed to have written many of its earliest hymns); or repertories that survived because they were in isolated locations shielded from the edicts of Rome, which was attempting to establish a consistent practice during this period (an example is the Mozarabic Rite, which survived in Spain from the time of the Visigoths, through the domination by the Moors, until about the 12th century); and in other cases older chants were incorporated into the actual Gregorian chant, and can be pieced together by careful stylistic dissection of the originals. In all likelihood, chant is at least as old as the breakup of the western Roman Empire in the 5th century, but mutated into different forms in different regions until brought together into one unified repertory under Charlemagne.
In the ninth and tenth century, the first sources with decipherable musical notation are found. Most scholars of Gregorian chant agree that the development of music notation assisted the dissemination of chant across a thousand miles of Europe; indeed it may have been impossible any other way, since there is no evidence of mutation across distance. Survivals of notated manuscripts, however, are few, and restricted to a few locations in Germany ( Regensburg), Switzerland ( St. Gall) and France ( Laon, St Martial). Most of the Gregorian chant familiar today, at least that in the Mass, has changed little since this time.
Visit http://interletras.com/canticum
