Considerations on the Necessity of Restoring the Chant of the Church of Rome in All Churches of the Empire

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"without propriety, and without respect for the place that one thus dares to profane." See J.-J. Rousseau, Dictionary, art. "Plain-Chant."

The Plain-Chant plainchant thus introduced into the Latin Church had subsisted there for several centuries when Pope St. Gregory, having reformed the liturgie romaine Roman liturgy, chose from the remnants of antiquity the best Chants he could find, and made a collection that was called by his name Chant grégorien Gregorian Chant. This Chant, thus rectified, became successively that of the entire Church of the West. The manner in which it was introduced into the Gauls offers circumstances remarkable enough to deserve to be reported.

It appears that the Chant romain Roman chant was known in France as early as the time of Clovis; for in 498 we see this prince asking Theodoric, king of the Goths of Italy, for a Musician; and upon his request, Theodoric sent him a Singer of the Church of Rome, named Acorede.

"At the arrival of this Musician," says Guillaume Dupeyrat, in his Recherches sur la Chapelle de nos Rois Research on the Chapel of our Kings, "the Priests and Cantors of Clovis fashioned themselves and learned to sing more softly and more agreeably...; and having learned to play instruments, this great monarch used them thereafter for divine service; which has continued under his successors and until the decline of his lineage, that Music has always been in honor at the court of our first kings."

But the national taste and the caprices of particular Churches did not delay in corrupting and altering the primitive purity of the Roman Chant; and in the time of Charlemagne, that is to say about three centuries after the period