Gallican Chant

Gallican Chant

In the broad sense, “Gallican” identifies all the Western rites outside of Rome (and its dependent province of Africa, about which nothing is known). The Gallican rite and its chant, properly speaking, originated with the Gallo-Roman people. The term most commonly refers to the liturgical plainchant sung as part of the Gallican rite of the Western Church in Gaul until it was replaced by Gregorian chant following the late 8th century.

OVERVIEW

In the 5th century the Arian Visigoths overran southwestern Gaul and the pagan Franks moved into northern Gaul. The intervening area, the last remaining part of Roman Gaul, was conquered by the Franks in 486, and early in the 6th century they completed their conquest of present-day France by driving the Visigoths into Spain. In the meantime King Clovis was baptized a Catholic at Reims in 496 or shortly after. The Franks adopted the Gallican rite, leaving the remaining Gallo-Romans much autonomy in civil and religious affairs. Several sources affirm the existence of a Gallican rite in the Frankish lands through the 9th century.

Gallican liturgy was not unified but probably employed variant forms throughout the region, and we have no body of Gallican chant sources surviving (as we do with Beneventan and other chants). No chantbooks of Gallican chant have survived, although the first documented reference to a book of Western plainchant is of a Gallican text with psalms and chants. Our knowledge of Gallican chant comes from descriptions of the chant by observers, and Gallican elements that came into later Gregorian chant.

Observers described Gallican chant as recognizably different from Roman chant in both its texts and its music. The Gallican rite and texts were often florid and dramatic compared with their Roman counterparts, and this included the regular use of melismatic music. An element of Gregorian chant not found in Roman chant, which may illustrate Gallican origins, is the "Gallican cadence," in which the final neume, is an upward step whose second pitch is repeated, such as C-D-D. Several recordings bearing the term “Gallican” in their titles are sung from Aquitanian manuscripts.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Liturgica.com offers the following additional content on this subject:

1. Early Western Liturgics

2. Early Western Chant

3. Gregorian Reforms

4. Carolingian Reforms

5. Gregorian Chant

6. Development of manuscript notation

The Liturgica.com Web Store offers:

1. CDs of various minor western chant forms

2. A wide range of books on the development of liturgical worship

3. A selection of books on chant and its development