Plainsong
Plainsong or plainchant (calque from the French plain-chant; Latin: cantus planus) is a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Western Church. When referring to the term plainsong, it is those sacred pieces that are composed in Latin text.[1] Plainsong was the exclusive form of Christian church music until the ninth century, and the introduction of polyphony.[2]
For other uses, see Plainsong (disambiguation).
The monophonic chants of plainsong have a non-metric rhythm.[3] Their rhythms are generally freer than the metered rhythm of later Western music, and they are sung without musical accompaniment.[3]
There are three types of chant melodies that plainsongs fall into: syllabic, neumatic, and melismatic.[3] The free flowing melismatic melody form of plainsong is still heard in Middle Eastern music being performed today.[3]
Although the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches did not split until long after the origin of plainsong, Byzantine chants are generally not classified as plainsong.
The following is a classification of Gregorian chants into types. Other chant traditions, such as the Ambrosian or Visigothic, may lack some of the types listed, and may have other types not listed.
Syllabic
Neumatic
Neumatic with melismatic sections
Hildegard of Bingen, a nun who lived in the 12th century, composed a total of 71 Latin liturgical pieces.[8] The following is a list of her devotional pieces to the Virgin Mary.[8]
Responsory-
Antiphon-
Hymn-
Sequence-
Allelula-
Modes[edit]
Plainchant employs the modal system and this is used to work out the relative pitches of each line on the staff. Read more about the use of modes in plainsong here.