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.
Back and forth, a choir onstage chanted plainsong, answered by another more effusive choir behind the audience.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 20, 2023
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
He surrounds his loops of glimmering keyboard and guitar with cathedral-size reverberation, and he sings sustained melodies somewhere between plainsong and slow-motion Beach Boys.
From New York Times • Sep. 30, 2011
This chant, also called plainchant or plainsong, has by default often been described as ‘Gregorian’ chant, after Gregory the Great, who was Pope at the end of the sixth century.
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.
