The Accompaniment of Gregorian Chant

Abstract

Although Gregorian Chant is sacred monody that dates from an age in which instrumental accompaniment was not employed for liturgical music, today, particularly in the services of the Roman Catholic Church, the common practice is to use some type of organ accompaniment to the chant sung by the choir or congregation. The present thesis proposes to trace briefly the history of chant and accompaniments to chant melodies, to review the three current leading rhythmic theories, and to arrange a new set of accompaniments for a number of the melodies of the Kyriale and certain selected Mass Propers, taking special cognizance of the more recent studies on medieval harmony1 and on rhythmic interpretation.