Database of Melodies and Texts of Gregorian Chant

This is a searchable database of plainchant melodies and texts included in medieval sources and new editions. It serves as a simple tool for searching information on Gregorian chant and other medieval monody including sacred songs. At this time the database contains almost 25.000 records of chant incipits that provide information about text, melody, genre, modus and concordances in new editions and other on-line databases. Some of the records include also hypertext links to facsimiles where a particular chant can be found.



The Global Chant Database was developed by Jan Koláček - PhD student of the Institute of Musicology at the Charles University in Prague. The database is intended as an easy tool for scholars and students to search and identify plainchant melodies with a possibility of displaying the sources. The purpose of the database is to comprise the chant incipits of all important editions of plainchant and medieval manuscripts. The melody encoding scheme is compatible with the font 'Volpiano' and other melody codes - this enables to make links with other chant databases.

The Global Chant Database is intended as an open system with external contributors. Scholars and students doing a research on a medieval music source can contribute to the database using a special application that enables easy melody input. For more information on cooperation, please contact the database administrator.

Index of all texts included in the database:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Z

Search by Bible

01 Jul 2010

NEW!! New version of the Global Chant Database is available!
Join at www.gregorian-chant.org.

13 Nov 2009

GCD is now connected with the Bible! For browsing chants inspired by Holy Scripture go to Bible search.

02 Nov 2009

Hymn melodies from the Cantus Planus database were added to GCD by courtesy of Prof. David Hiley.

03 Sep 2009

Chant incipits from Hymni et sequentiae (Budapest, 1956) by Benjamin Rajeczky were added to the database.

27 May 2009

References to Schlager's Alleluia catalogues were added with kind permission and help of Dominique Gatté.

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17/07/2010 - 22:24  Jan Koláček

LMLO texts are available here. As for the melodies, no permission was granted to include them in this database and as far as I know, they are not online.

17/07/2010 - 20:29  Jerome F. Weber

I believe Hughes's Late Med Lit Offices is online. Can someone give me the URL?

20/05/2010 - 15:19  ollie

Am running a college module in modal music and wanted some chants in the dorian mode to use as models. Any advice?

13/03/2010 - 22:33  jerome

Hello, can anyone tell me the name of this melody : d e d b d b d d b b d d b d c# d... b... Thanks !

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