FAQ on music #6: Origins of Gregorian Chant

Q: What is the origin of Gregorian chant?

A: Singing has been a part of Christian worship since the earliest days of the Church. The chant, as it has been handed down to us and as it emerged from the rearrangements and reforms of the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries, has not entirely retained its primitive form. It unites within itself inherited elements that are much older and have been synthesized by either re-forming or preserving them. Five main streams of inherited material flow together into the chant, and within the melodic classifications of the chant they remain formally distinguishable from each other to this day. These include Jewish solo psalmody, whose basic model is preserved in the Invitatory, the Responsories, and the Tract; the monastic choir psalmody of the Divine Office; the ancient art of depicting faith in song; the ancient cantillation of the priests and lectors in the tones of orations and readings; and the popular elements of various kinds in the acclamations, doxologies, and simple hymns and antiphons. The melodic material in Gregorian chant derived from such diverse sources has nonetheless acquired one spirit: it is the Christian spirit, with its new desire to express something which lends its living breath to these melodies. The result is the Roman chant, the cantilena Romana. The term Gregorian chant comes from its early association with Pope St. Gregory the Great (6th century). According to 8th century tradition, Pope Gregory was inspired by the Holy Ghost to codify the chant of the Roman Rite. The consensus today, based on extant documents, is that the Gregorian melodies developed in the 8th and 9th centuries from a synthesis of Roman chant and Gallican practice, as promoted by the Carolingian rulers in Francia. In making Roman techniques their own, the Frankish cantors “inaugurated a long period of musical creativity, the fruits of which may be found in the extant notated music of the late 9th, 10th and 11th centuries” (S. Rankin). By the 12th and 13th centuries, Gregorian chant had become the standard song of the Western Church.