Enciclopedia Cattolica Vol. IX, 1952 Music

Plain Chant Music

PLAIN CHANT MUSICAL

Italian original Cite

PLAIN CHANT MUSIC. - In 1669 Henri Du Mont published five masses that have become universally famous.

It seems that he was also the inventor of the term by which are designated those religious compositions of the 17th and 18th centuries that stand in opposition to polyphony because they are monodic, although not deriving from Gregorian chant. The origin of p. c. m. has not been established, and it is not certain that it was born in Italy.

The p. c. m. presents itself as a compromise between Gregorian chant and modern taste, and has the aim of offering easy pieces for everyone. It also claims to be simpler than Gregorian chant. From modern tonality it takes the major and minor modes, the modulations, the phrasing, the cadences and the chromaticisms; from figured notation the longs, the breves and the semibreves. Cultivated in France by Bourgoing (1634), by Cl. Chastelain, J.-B. de Contes, Du Mont, Nivers, the son of Lalli, Poisson, Laboeuf, it found its best theorist in La Faillée (1748) and was used by the Gallican neo-liturgies. Its masterpiece is the famous Messa Trompette.

Bibliography4 works
BIBL.: scattered notices in J. d'Ortique, Dict. de p. c., Paris 1857; J. Combarieu, Histoire de la musique, I, ibid. 1924, pp. 201-203; II, ibid. 1925, p. 249; M. Brenet, Dict. de la musique, ibid. 1926, p. 357.

About this entry

By Eugenio Cardine

How we know recovered from an earlier OCR reading

Translated from the Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. IX (1952), col. 1598.

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Page 963
vol. 9, coll. 1597–1598

More by Eugenio Cardine: Pothier, Joseph · Responsory · Suñol, Ramon Gregorio Maria

Cite this article

Chicago

Cardine, Eugenio. “Plain Chant Musical.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. IX, col. 1598. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1952. https://azioneromana.com/article/plain-chant-musical.

MLA

Cardine, Eugenio. “Plain Chant Musical.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. IX, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1952, col. 1598. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/plain-chant-musical.

BibTeX

@incollection{ec9_plain_chant_musical,
  author    = {Cardine, Eugenio},
  title     = {Plain Chant Musical},
  booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
  volume    = {IX},
  pages     = {1598},
  note      = {Cited by column},
  publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
  address   = {Città del Vaticano},
  year      = {1952},
  url       = {https://azioneromana.com/article/plain-chant-musical}
}

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