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==History==
Gregorian chant was organized, codified, and notated mainly in the [[Franks|Frankish]] lands of western and central Europe during the 10th to 13th centuries, with later additions and redactions, but the texts and many of the melodies have antecedents going back several centuries earlier. Although popular belief credited [[Pope Gregory I|Pope Gregory the Great]] with having personally invented Gregorian chant (in much the same way that a biblical prophet would transmit a divinely received message), scholars now believe that the chant bearing his name arose from a later [[Carolingian]] synthesis of Roman and [[Gallican chant]], and that at that time the attribution to Gregory I was a "marketing ruse" to invest it with a sanctified pedigree, as part of an effort to create one liturgical protocol that would be practised throughout the entire [[Holy Roman Empire]].{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}} During the following centuries, the chant tradition remained at the heart of Church music and served as the dominant platform for new performance and compositional practices. Newly composed music on new texts was first introduced within the context of existing [[plainchant]]. The late medieval style known as [[organum]], where one or more voices have been added to a plainchant (acting as a [[cantus firmus]]) to form a new composition, marked the birth of [[polyphony]] in Western music. The Parisian composers [[Leonin]] and [[Perotin]], chief exponents of the [[Notre Dame school]] of the late 12th century, continued to end their organum compositions with passages of [[monophony|monophonic]] chant, so that continuity with the older tradition remained explicit. (The practice of juxtaposing monophonic chant with polyphonic writing can be found as late as the French [[Baroque]] composer [[François Couperin]] (1668–1733), whose organ masses were meant to be performed with interludes of the appropriate plainchant.) Although it had mostly fallen into disuse after the Baroque period, Gregorian chant experienced a revival in the 19th century in the [[Roman Catholic Church]] and the [[Anglo-Catholic]] wing of the [[Anglican Communion]].
===Organization===
[[Image:gregorian chant.gif|frame|270px|right|The ''Liber usualis'' uses square notation, as in this excerpt from the ''Kyrie eleison (Orbis factor)''.]]By the 13th century, the neumes of Gregorian chant were usually written in ''square notation'' on a four-line staff with a clef, as in the ''Graduale Aboense'' pictured above. In square notation, small groups of ascending notes on a syllable are shown as stacked squares, read from bottom to top, while descending notes are written with diamonds read from left to right. When a syllable has a large number of notes, a series of smaller such groups of neumes are written in succession, read from left to right. The oriscus, quilisma, and liquescent neumes indicate special vocal treatments, that have been largely neglected due to uncertainty as to how to sing them. Since the 1970s, with the influential insights of [[Dom. E. Cardine]] (see below under 'rhythm'), ornamental neumes have received more attention from both researchers and performers.
B-flat is indicated by a "b-mollum" (Lat. soft), a rounded undercaste 'b' placed to the left of the entire neume in which the note occurs, as shown in the "Kyrie" to the right. When necessary, a "b-durum" (Lat. hard), written squarely, indicates B-natural and serves to cancel the b-mollum . This system of square notation is standard in modern chantbooks.