Glossary of Sacred Music

Five-and-twenty words that unlock the tradition. Each term is defined as the singers themselves would use it; the guide pages and chant pages of this site put them to work.

Antiphon

A short chanted refrain framing a psalm or canticle — the jewel-setting of the Office; thousands survive, each tuned to its feast.

Cantor

The singer who intones and leads the chant; in medieval schools, a decade's training in memory before notation existed.

Compline

The Church's night prayer, last of the canonical hours — ending, by long custom, with a Marian antiphon in the dark: one of four that follow the seasons, the Salve Regina from Trinity Sunday to Advent.

Dies irae

The 13th-century sequence of the traditional Requiem whose first four notes became, from the nineteenth century on, a familiar musical sign of death.

Divine Office

The Liturgy of the Hours: the daily cycle of psalms and prayers at fixed hours, chant's native home.

Doxology

A formula of praise to the Trinity — above all the Gloria Patri, chanted at the close of the psalms.

Gregorian chant

The Roman Church's repertoire of monophonic, unaccompanied, Latin liturgical song, codified in the 8th–9th centuries.

Introit

The entrance chant of the Mass, sung as the ministers approach the altar; nearly every Mass of the year has its own.

Kyrie

The Greek cry 'Lord, have mercy' — ninefold in its traditional form — opening the Mass Ordinary; one of the few Greek survivals in the Latin Mass.

Melisma

A long run of notes sung on a single syllable — chant's wordless overflow, most lavish on the Alleluia.

Mode

One of the eight church scales that give chant its colors — the ancestors of our major and minor keys.

Monophony

Music of a single melodic line with no harmony: the defining texture of chant, one voice for one Body.

Neumes

The earliest chant notation — small gestures above the text showing melodic shape, born around the 9th century.

Ordinary

The unchanging sung parts of the Mass — Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei — as opposed to the Propers.

Plainchant / plainsong

General terms for unaccompanied monophonic liturgical song; Gregorian chant is its great Roman family.

Propers

The chants that change with the day's feast — Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory, Communion.

Psalm tone

A simple melodic formula for reciting psalm verses — the workhorse patterns that carry the psalter through each week.

Requiem

The Mass for the dead, from its Introit 'Requiem aeternam' — eternal rest; historic home of the Dies irae.

Responsory

A chant of dialogue between soloist and choir, answering the readings of the Office.

Schola cantorum

'School of singers' — the trained choir that sings the chant; also the ancient Roman institution that preserved it.

Sequence

A long chant, usually rhymed, sung before the Gospel on great feasts; of the many medieval sequences only a handful survived the reform after Trent, among them the Dies irae and the golden Veni Sancte Spiritus.

Solesmes

The French Benedictine abbey whose monks restored the authentic melodies from the oldest manuscripts in the 19th–20th centuries.

Staff

The ruled lines for writing pitch, credited to Guido of Arezzo (c. 1025), who built on earlier single lines to teach chant faster — the ancestor of the modern staff.

Trisagion

The ancient 'thrice-holy' acclamation — Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal — sung in the Good Friday Reproaches and echoed in the Media vita.

Vespers

The great evening office at lamp-lighting, crowned by the Magnificat.