TRACT (Tractus). - It is the chant that follows the Gradual (v.) and takes the place of the Alleluia, in the penitential seasons from Septuagesima to Easter, in Masses for the dead and on certain other days (vigils, etc.). It consists of two, three, four and even more verses which in Christian antiquity were sung by a single cantor, later by two at the ambo, in succession (tractim), that is, without antiphonal or responsorial interruptions on the part of the choir.
At first the tract followed the second scriptural reading that preceded the Gospel, while the Gradual followed the first; but once the first or the second reading was suppressed, the tract was joined immediately to the Gradual. When the singing of the Alleluia was later introduced (Gregory the Great) and extended to all feasts and Sundays of the year, the tract remained for the Sundays of the penitential seasons, in which the Alleluia is omitted; the tract "Domine non secundum" of the Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent is a Gallican importation of the 8th century, coming from the liturgy for penitents (Jungmann), because ferias with a single prophetic reading had as a rule a single chant, namely the Gradual. The melodies of the tract are considered by Wagner "most ancient and venerable monuments of Latin ecclesiastical chant."
Wagner explains the Latin term tractus as the equivalent of the Greek εἰριός = hirmos, that is, of a typical melody for intoning the various parts of a hymn; the tract would be nothing other than the primitive Gradual, that is, a responsorial psalm dating from the 4th or 5th century, in which the responsory is omitted before the abbreviation of the texts for the enrichment of the melodies. Therefore the tract is not to be considered a chant of mourning or penance; but since the season of Lent has preserved the ancient elements of the liturgy, it has also preserved the ancient Gradual, called the tract, with its most ancient melodies.
Bibliography4 works
Pietro Siffrin