CHORAL. —
I. SINGING
In current usage, true choral or liturgical singing is Gregorian chant (v. CANTO). The term “choral” is also applied to polyphonic music, though not strictly, since Gregorian chant alone is the obligatory music in choirs and therefore the chant of the Church. In a broader sense, the term may also denote modern-style singing when, as in polyphony, the soloistic form does not predominate.In Gregorian chant the rhythm is free and the modality diatonic, whereas in other cases, without transgressing liturgical norms, the melodic line may be coloured by moderate chromaticism.
Protestant choral singing, which took on a distinctive form with the Lutheran Reformation, contrasts with Catholic choral singing, and especially with Gregorian chant, both in its text—usually in the vernacular and set for several voices with a symmetrical structure—and in the movement of the voices and cadences, which typically establish a consistently square form for the compositions. Thus even when a theme is sometimes borrowed from Gregorian chant, it is transposed and framed into choral metre, breaking up each phrase member with obligatory pauses or silences and thus disrupting the musical phrasing of Gregorian chant.
II. BOOK
Choral books are large volumes made of parchment leaves placed on lecterns in church choirs and containing, with the appropriate musical notation, the antiphons to be sung in choir.Produced in large numbers during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they featured illuminated initials but, generally speaking, no true illustrations. Even these miniatures, however, owing to the size of the volumes and hence of the initials and to the constant use to which the choral books were put, rarely attained high artistic merit or refinement. Notable collections of choral books are preserved in Siena Cathedral, in Pienza Cathedral, in Ferrara Cathedral, in Milan’s Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio and, in general, in the great churches of the monastic orders; for their decoration see also the entries: ANTIFONARIO; CODICE; GRADUALE; SALTERIO; MINIATURA. — See pl. XX.