Daily Almanac for
Jul 24, 2008
Info search tips
Bio search tips

Encyclopedia

chant

chant, general name for one-voiced, unaccompanied, liturgical music. Usually it refers to the liturgical melodies of the Byzantine, Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican churches and is analogous to cantillation in Jewish liturgical music, Qur'anic chanting in Islam, and single-line chanting in other religions. Roman Catholic chant, commonly called Gregorian chant or plainsong, is diatonic, modally organized (see mode), and has a free rhythm determined by the text. Anglican chant is a harmonized, metrical adaptation to English texts of the Gregorian method of psalm singing, in which a short melody is adjusted to the length of different psalm verses by repeating one tone, the recitation tone, for any number of words in the text. The texts of Anglican chant, used in many Protestant churches, are from the Book of Common Prayer.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

    • Cite
    • Print
    • Bookmark

More on chant from Infoplease:

  • Gregorian chant - Gregorian chant: Gregorian chant: see plainsong.
  • Walt Whitman: Old Chants - An ancient song, reciting, ending, Once gazing toward thee, Mother of All, Musing, seeking themes fitted for thee, Accept me, thou saidst, the elder b
  • Walt Whitman: Chanting the Square Deific - Chanting the square deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides, Out of the old and new, out of the square entirely divine, Solid, four-sided,
  • Cale Young Rice: The Chant of the Colorado - My brother, man, shapes him a plan And builds him a house in a day, But I have toiled through a million years For a home to last alway. I have flooded
  • plainsong - plainsong plainsong or plainchant,the unharmonized chant of the medieval Christian liturgies in ...

See more Encyclopedia articles on: Music: Theory, Forms, and Instruments


Premium Partner Content
HighBeam Research

Related content from HighBeam Research on: chant

Additional search results provided by HighBeam Research, LLC. © Copyright 2005. All rights reserved.