Gregorian Chant

Gregorian Chant is beautiful music, and there’s a lot of it. 

Even after the Second Vatican Council, multiple church documents and Popes have said it deserves “pride of place” in our liturgies. 

It’s important to understand that Gregorian chant, like music in every style, is a living tradition. Even to this day, scholars do extensive research on historical performance practice, the Vatican continues to release chant books, and arguments about whether or not to sing Gregorian Chant at the liturgy more closely resemble modern political discourse rather than a Church navigating the waters of preserving an invaluable tradition in a changing world. 

The earliest chant sung in Rome is called Old Roman Chant. In the 7th-11th centuries, this was primarily an oral tradition, cultivated by professional musical groups like the papal Schola Cantorum, the earliest predecessor to the modern day Sistine Chapel Choir. After the 11th century, Old Roman Chant started to go out of style and Gregorian Chant was largely adopted as the primary musical repertory in Rome. 

The sound and shape of Gregorian Chant can help to form our understanding of what it means to pray as a community. As prayer in song, Gregorian Chant lays bare all complexity in favor of a single melody, arranged so as to bring alive every syllable. Our prayer becomes a desperate plea, acted out in song — a ritualized practice through which we can call upon God with one voice to grant our prayer. How desperately needed is this right now? 

Gregorian Chant tells us something important about the tradition that we are a part of — over the course of more than a thousand years, we have continually cultivated our prayer in and through the richness of song. These songs ground us as a community, one that can share in delight and despair and bring our faith to life. 

2 minutes