plainsong
Americannoun
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the unisonous vocal music used in the Christian church from the earliest times.
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modal liturgical music; Gregorian chant.
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a cantus firmus or theme chosen for contrapuntal development.
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any simple and unadorned melody or air.
noun
Etymology
Origin of plainsong
1505–15; translation of Medieval Latin cantus plānus
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Church music, plainsong music, large choirs — all of that stuff is extremely beautiful, and I wanted to try and get some of that in this record.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2024
And at the appointed hour, just as their guidebook had promised, the transfiguring music of plainsong rose from the crypt below them, a few wide steps down from the main body of the church.
From The New Yorker ● Sep. 10, 2018
I think of him in the lineage of bardic recitation and plainsong.
From Slate ● Aug. 12, 2016
The worship continues with the proper liturgy at 7:30 p.m., a holy day that includes plainsong and music by John IV of Portugal and William Byrd.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 18, 2016
His job at the cathedral in Arezzo was to train the young choristers, and he’d calculated that teaching them the whole of the Church’s plainsong repertoire by ear, parrot-fashion, would take over ten years.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
