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.
Like that wisecrack, Hobson’s style is colloquial throughout; he works in American plainsong even when summoning voices from beyond.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 3, 2021
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 group gave a beautiful account of Robert White’s setting of “Christe Qui Lux es est Dies,” a Compline hymn, which sets simple plainsong verses into radiantly rotating, polyphonic motion.
From New York Times • Mar. 9, 2014
Indeed, plainsong developed gradually and separately all over Christian Europe according to local tastes and traditions.
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.
