Talk:Gregorian chant

Merger proposal: Plainsong

In my experience the two are one and the same, gregorian being the older somewhat misleading name and plainsong (or plainchant) the newer more self-evident one. I guess one could could describe many more types of music than Gregorian chant as "a plain chant" but the plainsong article makes no mention of anything but gregorian chant. In my mind it would be far better just to have a paragraph mentioning the use of both terms in the far supperior Gregorian chant article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sonarpulse (talk • contribs) 21:41, 19 May 2010

Well Ambrosian chant is usually regarded as another form of plain chant, I think there are others too, so maybe it's more a case of reworking the plainchant article to cover the other forms of chant. David Underdown (talk) 15:21, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

The term plainsong (or plainchant) incorporates any piece if 1. It is monodic. 2. It is purely vocal (though in recent times modern composers have used instrumental accompaniments). 3. It comprises verbal prose-rhythms and therefore lacks strict time values. 4. It does not correspond to "modern scales" but is modal. 5. It is printed in square notes called neumes. Most music which falls into this category is Gregorian Chant, however, historians seem to agree that there are either four or five other varieties of plainchant: Ambrosian, Gallican, Mozarabic, Old-Roman, and some people also include plainchant from Benevento in S. Italy. What would seem to make best sense would be if as Sonarpulse suggested the two were merged. However, the new article plainsong would also have to include the other four/five varieties of plainchant, as David pointed out. We would have to either 1. merge all the articles, editing the entire Gregorian plainchant article history to accommodate the other types or 2. simply edit the plainsong page as it is in giving it a summary of plainchant in general, and therefore covering all of the varieties of the style, which it currently does not. We could just give a general introduction about what qualifies as plainchant, and then a résumé of the 4/5 various styles with Template:Main at the top of each section concerning the subcategories. Any thoughts? Jay-Sebastos (talk) 19:32, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Plainchant is a collective term. Slavic Prostopinije, Gregorian Chant, Ambrosian Chant, and even the systems used to sing the Jewish and Muslim prayers, these all are forms of plainchant. Gregorian is probably the best known of these, but far from the only one, and quite worthy of separate entry. Gregorian mode should probably be merged into Gregorian Chant, but neither into plainsong. Wfh (talk) 00:57, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree with "quite worthy of separate entry" and no merge. History2007 (talk) 08:32, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree as well, however I think that the article plainsong has to be much more encompassing since at the moment it only talks about Gregorian chant. Instead it should include short summaries of all the major chants and have links to each one's main article. Gregorian chant is not the only type of plainsong. Jay-Sebastos (talk) 09:41, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, plainsong should be improved, and could go on someone's to-do-list. History2007 (talk) 12:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

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