A chant (from French chanter, from Latin cantare, "to sing") is the iterative speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two main pitches called reciting tones. Chants may range from a simple melody involving a limited set of notes to highly complex musical structures, often including a great deal of repetition of musical subphrases, such as Great Responsories and Offertories of Gregorian chant. Chant may be considered speech, music, or a heightened or stylized form of speech. In the Late Middle Ages, some religious chant evolved into song (forming one of the roots of later Western music).
HINT:
In this Dossier
Chants in the context of Plainsong
Plainsong or plainchant (calque from the French plain-chant; Latin: cantus planus) is a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Western Church. When referring to the term plainsong, it is those sacred pieces that are composed in Latin text. Plainsong was the exclusive form of the Western Christian church music until the ninth century, and the introduction of polyphony.
The monophonic chants of plainsong have a non-metric rhythm, which is generally considered freer than the metered rhythms of later Western music. They are also traditionally sung without musical accompaniment, though recent scholarship has unearthed a widespread custom of accompanied chant that transcended religious and geographical borders.
View the full Wikipedia page for Plainsong