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Plainchant

The official music of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages and far beyond was a great repertory of melodies designated for the liturgy. This is the system of plainchant (or plainsong), widely known as Gregorian chant.

Monks singing plainchant, depicted within an illuminated initial letter C in a late medieval manuscript. The whimsical little stringed-instrument player is outside the C, for instrumental music was taboo in church. Lambeth Palace Library, London, UK/ The Bridgeman Art Library.

It is called “plain” because it is unaccompanied, monophonic (one-line) music for voices; it takes the form of a melody and nothing more. And it is called “Gregorian” after the famous pope and church father Gregory I (c. 540–604). He is reputed to have assembled and standardized, with divine aid, all the basic chants required for the church services of his time — though in fact much Gregorian chant dates from centuries after him.