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6 unusual facts about Gregorian chant


Gorze Abbey

Gorze was also the home of the "chant messin", an early form of Gregorian chant or plainsong, as a part of the liturgy, and also of sacred drama, particularly in connection with the Easter rituals.

James McKinnon

He also edited the collection The Music of Antiquity and the Middle Ages which includes chapters he wrote on early Western civilization, Christian antiquity and the emergence of Gregorian chant.

John David Jenkins

After his appointment to Aberdare, a town where Dissenters were strong, Jenkins organised choral services with psalms being sung to Anglican chants and the canticles to Gregorian chants.

Laurentia McLachlan

She was a pioneer in the restoration of the Gregorian chant in England and a leading authority on music and medieval manuscripts.

Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music

The degrees are offered with one of the following foci: Gregorian chant, composition, choral direction, musicology, pipe organ and pianoforte.

St Cecilia's Abbey, Ryde

As one of the institutes devoted 'entirely to divine worship in the contemplative life' (Vatican II, Perfectae Caritatis, 9) and following the tradition of Solesmes, St Cecilia's Abbey lays principal emphasis on the solemn celebration of the liturgy, with Mass and the Divine Office sung daily in Gregorian chant.


Anton Urspruch

In the last years of his life Urspruch was part of the revival of Gregorian Chant, having contact with the Beuron Archabbey and the cloister at Maria Laach Abbey.

Beneventan chant

Beneventan chant is a liturgical plainchant repertory of the Roman Catholic Church, used primarily in the orbit of the southern Italian ecclesiastical centers of Benevento and Montecassino, distinct from Gregorian chant and related to Ambrosian chant.

Church of the Sacred Heart, Hove

The Sunday Mass at 11.30am (Missa normativa) is celebrated in English and Latin, and the music includes both Gregorian Chant and the Polyphony of the Renaissance.

Imagination's Light

In the accompanying booklet, Kevin Kern mentions basing "Keepers of the Flame" on an ancient Gregorian chant called "Pange Lingua".

Libera Me

In addition to the Gregorian chant in the Roman Gradual, many composers have written settings for the text, including Tomás Luis de Victoria, Anton Bruckner, Giuseppe Verdi, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Duruflé, Benjamin Britten, Krzysztof Penderecki and David Maslanka.

Procedamus in pace!

Procedamus in pace! (meaning 'Let us proceed in peace') is a Gregorian chant performed by the Capella Antiqua Munchen orchestra and appears on conductor Konrad Ruhland's Paschale Mysterium, originally released in 1976.

Sacred Heart Cathedral, Wellington

While firmly based on Gregorian chant, the choir sings a wide repertoire range from Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd to George Frideric Handel, Herbert Howells, Samuel Sebastian Wesley, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Duruflé, Ildebrando Pizzetti, James MacMillan and many other composers including occasional commissioned contemporary works.

Sacred Heart Choir, Chapel of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

The Sacred Heart Choir is a Malaysian Gregorian chant schola and vocal ensemble consisting of boys and men from the Chapel of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Sungai Buloh, Selangor, Malaysia.

St.-Martins-Chorknaben Biberach

Their repertory covers all the periods in musical history – from Gregorian Chant over Bach and Mozart up to modern composers like Poulenc or Miškinis.


see also

Antiphon

Ambrose and Gregory the Great, who are known for their contributions to the formulation of Gregorian chant, are credited with 'antiphonaries', collections of works suitable for antiphon, which are still used in the Roman Catholic Church today.

Berno

Berno of Reichenau (c. 978-1048) - German abbot, reformer of Gregorian chant

Fernando de las Infantas

In 1577 Infantas came into conflict with Pope Gregory XIII and the composers Palestrina and Annibale Zoilo over the reversal of reforms in Gregorian chant, at one point causing his sponsor Philip II of Spain to instruct the Spanish ambassador in Spain to intercede with the Pope.

Helena Tulve

Tulve’s works give a fair idea of the richness and variety of her cultural experience: the French school of spectral music, IRCAM’s experimentalism, Kaija Saariaho and Giacinto Scelsi, echoes of Gregorian chant and Eastern musics.

Scott Turkington

Until 2010, he served as organist and choirmaster for the Roman Catholic Basilica of Saint John the Evangelist in Stamford, Connecticut, where he conducted a choir in a program of weekly polyphonic Mass settings and Gregorian chant.

He is editor of A Gregorian Chant Masterclass by Theodore Marier, published by the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut.

Then You Turn Away

"Vox Humana" uses a sample of a female Gregorian chant written by Hildegard of Bingen.