The sacred chant of Rome, apart from its liturgical value, is of importance to musicology. In it there lives on as a substratum the remembrance of popular traditional songs. Also from Roman Chant there came the development of polyphonic music and the art of instrumental variation in Europe. In addition, it was the origin of a great number of vernacular religious chants associated with the different Christian creeds. I consider, therefore, that I am justified in claiming that the liturgical chant of the Roman Church represents a musical repertory of the highest order which can be regarded as an artistic patrimony not only of the Christian Church but of all mankind

The central corpus of the Roman Chant—known since the ninth century as “Gregorian Chant”—was already in existence during the eighth and ninth centuries. In it there are to be found reminiscences of eastern and western song of the most remote epochs: musical elements of the most ancient cultures which would have been lost for ever, had not Pontifical Rome recollected them and conserved them in its liturgy.