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Plainchant is the name given to sacred music from the Christian Church, dating back as far as the 1st century. I assume it is called "plain-chant" because of its monophonic nature: it is purely one melody without any accompaniment or harmony.
Notation for plainchant only started appearing in the 9th century, though. It is known that the lyrics they would sing were psalms, but the rhythms are lost to time now.
Different authorities in the Church had different views on music's role. It was seen as something that was beneficial in moderation, however, too much music could "seduce" the listener, pulling them away from religion. St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) shared this view.
In the Church's early centuries, there were multiple different liturgical rites, and so plainchant varied between them.
A unified repertory of plainchant emerged from the Roman liturgy from the 7th century onward. Roman bishops asserted their importance by promoting the spread of Roman liturgy, including their plainchant. It is often called "Gregorian chant" because of this. There was a myth that Pope Gregory I, who was pope from 590-604, spread Roman liturgy and composed the chants himself. However, it is impossible to say his exact role in how much plainchant spread.
Charlemagne, King of the Franks, from 768-814, had also done work to unify the liturgy. He reworked Roman chants and established singing schools to teach them. He established a consistent repertoire of chants in his kingdom.
Styles:
There were three styles of plainchant: syllabic, neumatic, and melismatic. They were characterized by how many notes were sung per syllable.
In syllabic plainchant, each syllable of text has its own note. In neumatic passages, each syllable is sung with two to six notes, and in melismatic passages, a single syllable is sung with many notes. The style that a chant was sung in is decided by what its function in the liturgy.
Often, long prayers and readings from the Bible would be syllabic, because there were a lot of words to get through. Parts of the Mass like the Introit (the beginning), Offertory (bread & wine is offered on the altar), and Communion (bread & wine is served to baptized attendants), use neumatic plainchant because they have more time. The attached video below is an example of neumatic and melismatic style chant.
Chants with brief text deserve the same attention as those with longer, and if they were sung as syllabic, they would not receive such. So, they are melismatic. The Alleluia is particularly elaborate, especially on the final word, "alleluia," there is a long melisma (vocal run)---this specific melisma on the world "alleluia" is called a jubilus!
This video uses a more modern version of notation, developed in the 19th century by the monks of Solesmes, France.
Notation:
Early notation was based on signs called "neumes." These symbols indicate the pitches or groups of pitches. There were different ways to write them throughout Europe, but they resembled one another.
The earliest neumes served as reminders to go up or down in pitch, but they did not specify what pitches to sing. They were reminders for how to move through a song already familiar, not used to write and teach new music to a person. This was before musical notation had lines to specify certain pitches, as it does today.
A later version of neumes developed during the 11th and 12th centuries, where they were positioned either above or below one or two central lines---the lines represent a specific pitch.
I haven't listened to plainchant a lot, but like who's surprised about that. My choir has sung Britten's Ceremony of Carols, which starts with a kind of plainchant called an "antiphon." These antiphons would be sung before and after a song. The one we sang was called "Hodie" and is based on the antiphon like the video below:
Mostly everything I wrote here I have read from the textbook "A History of Music in Western Culture" :3
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