THE CONTINUING PRESENCE OF CHANT

Gregorian chant was important in itself and for its influence on other music. It was used in Christian services throughout central and western Europe until the Reformation and in Catholic areas after that. Most people in these areas heard it at least weekly. It remained the principal activity of professional singers until the end of the sixteenth century; musicians we know primarily as composers, such as Leoninus, Du Fay, Ockeghem, Josquin, and Palestrina, spent most of their time singing and directing the performance of chant. Chant was reformed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and again in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But the Second Vatican Council of 1962–65, in an effort to engage congregations more directly in worship, permitted holding Catholic services in local languages rather than in Latin. Chant was no longer prescribed, and it has virtually disappeared from regular Catholic services, replaced by new tunes with vernacular texts. By the late twentieth century, chant was practiced mostly in monasteries and convents or performed in concerts, and was known mainly through recordings. One recording by the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de Silos in Spain, titled simply Chant, was the best-selling CD in Europe for more than six months in 1993 and was a best seller in the United States as well. The trend continues in the twenty-first century: music in the style of chant is used in Halo and other video games, and in 2008, the monks of Heiligenkreuz (Holy Cross) Abbey in Austria released an album titled Chant: Music for Paradise that became a top-ten hit and went gold or platinum in the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Poland. Music by Hildegard of Bingen and other composers of chant, once heard only in their own locales, is performed, recorded, and heard around the world.

From the ninth through the thirteenth centuries, chant formed the foundation for most polyphonic music, and it continued to play a leading role in polyphonic sacred music well into the sixteenth century. The diversity already inherent in chant, from the contrast between syllabic and melismatic styles to the various modes, was reflected in similar diversity in later service music. From the beginning of the Reformation, composers adapted many chants for use as chorale or hymn tunes in the Protestant churches, and melodies derived from chant are still used today in Lutheran, Anglican, and other churches. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, composers frequently used chant melodies, in secular as well as sacred music.

Yet the importance of Gregorian chant for later music goes beyond its presence in pieces directly based on it. Chant was part of the musical world of most Europeans for over a thousand years, and it deeply influenced their sense of how melodies should be shaped and how music should go. All later music in the Western tradition bears its imprint.

Further Reading is available at digital.wwnorton.com/hwm10