Alleluias et Offertoires des Gaules

Gallican chant is the body of liturgical plainchant associated with the Gallican rite practiced in early medieval Gaul (roughly modern France and adjacent regions) before the Carolingian reforms. It is monophonic, unaccompanied sacred vocal music in Latin, intended for the Mass and Office. While only fragmentary musical sources survive, contemporary accounts and later comparative musicology suggest a highly ornate, melismatic style with certain Eastern (Byzantine) inflections and distinctive local liturgical usages. Gallican chant is historically important because its encounter and fusion with imported Roman chant in the late 8th–9th centuries helped give rise to the repertory we now call Gregorian chant.