Broadcast Yourself. Gregorian chant. Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song of the western Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries, with later additions and redactions. Although popular legend credits Pope St. Gregory the Great with inventing Gregorian chant, scholars believe that it arose from a later Carolingian synthesis of Roman chant and Gallican chant. History[edit] Development of earlier plainchant[edit] Musical elements that would later be used in the Roman Rite began to appear in the 3rd century.
Scholars are still debating how plainchant developed during the 5th through the 9th centuries, as information from this period is scarce. John the Deacon, biographer (c. 872) of Pope Gregory I, modestly claimed that the saint "compiled a patchwork antiphonary",[11] unsurprisingly, given his considerable work with liturgical development. Origins of mature plainchant[edit] Medieval Music: Birth of Polyphony. Medieval Music: Birth of Polyphony edieval music sounds nothing like modern music. For the uninitiated, medieval music is not just Gregorian chant like that made popular by the Benedectine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos. Chant does exhibit an almost trance-like quality, but it's the nature of the genre to only use about a half dozen notes and about as many different rhythmic patterns. Add to this the fact that there is no harmony, and you have a genre of music where every piece sounds almost exactly the same.
So I'm more interested in instrumental music and medieval polyphony like organum. This music creates an amazing, transcendental atmosphere. Basically, all early music can be divided into two general categories: sacred and secular. The goals of sacred and secular early medieval composers were originally different. Even to this day, this type of division still exists between those formally trained in music and those who are not. With the birth of Christianity came the mass.
Gregorian chant - eNotes.com Reference. Personal Notes on Gregorian Chants: