CORALE. –
I. SONG
In current usage, the true choral or liturgical song is Gregorian chant (v. CANTO). Polyphonic song is also called “choral,” but not properly so, because Gregorian chant alone is the obligatory singing in choirs, and therefore the chant of the Church. In a broad sense, one may also speak of choral song in the modern style, when, as in polyphony, the solo form does not predominate.In Gregorian choral song, the rhythm is free and the modality diatonic, whereas in other cases it may, without exceeding the liturgical laws, imbue the melodic line with moderate chromaticism.
Protestant choral song, which took on a special form with the Lutheran Reformation, contrasts with Catholic choral song, and especially with Gregorian chant, both in its text—usually in the vernacular, in several voices, and of symmetrical structure—and in the movement
of the voices and in the cadences, which generally establish the consistently square form of the compositions. Thus the theme too, although sometimes taken from Gregorian chant, is transposed and fitted into the choral measure, separating each phrase member with obligatory pauses or rests, and thereby breaking the musical phraseology of Gregorian chant.
Gregorio N. Suñol
II. BOOK
The large volumes made up of sheets of parchment placed on the lecterns in church choirs and containing, with the appropriate musical notation, the antiphons to be sung precisely in choir are called c.Produced extensively during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, they had illuminated initials but, generally, no actual illustrations. Nevertheless, even those miniatures, owing to the very size of the volumes and consequently of the initials, and to the constant use to which the c. were subjected, rarely possessed great artistic or refined qualities. In Siena, in the Cathedral; in Pienza, in the Cathedral; in Ferrara likewise, in the Cathedral; in Milan, at S. Ambrogio; and generally in the great churches of the monastic orders, notable collections of c. are preserved; for their decoration,