GREGORIAN CHANT:
BACKGROUND:
• Early Christian church music
• Among the earliest forms of notations in the western tradition
• Served as functional music in the worship services of the Roman Catholic Church
• Evolved from the Hebrew chant tradition
• Originally passed down orally
• Used as the basis for many new compositions during the Middle Ages and Renaissance
• Named after Pope Gregory the Great, during whose reign the existing repertory was organized and codified.
CHARACTERISTICS:
• Monophonic texture,
• Modal
• Moves by step or narrow leap
• Unmeasured rhythm and sung without any fixed metrical pattern- instead the melody is sing freely following the natural inflections of the text
• Based on sacred Latin texts
