Anglican Chant - Double, Triple and Quadruple Chants

Double, Triple and Quadruple Chants

The example above is a single chant. This is mostly only used for very short psalms (half a dozen verses or so).

The most commonly used chants are double chants. These are twice the length of a single chant. The music of the chant is repeated for every pair of verses. This reflects the structure of the Hebrew poetry of many of the psalms: Each verse is in two halves - the second half answers the first; the verses are in pairs - the second verse answers the first. If the entire text (or a section of it) has an odd number of verses, the second half of the chant is usually repeated on the last verse, which may be marked "2nd part". Similarly, "3rd part" markings may be used for triple chants.

Triple and quadruple chants appeared from the latter part of the 19th century, to cover some of the exceptions to this format. They set the verses of the psalm in groups of 3 or 4 verses respectively. Psalm 2 (for example) is well-suited to a triple chant; a quadruple chant might be used for Psalm 78.

A double chant is divided into "quarters", each of which has the music for half a verse. Triple and quadruple chants may also be described as containing six or eight quarters.

The Gloria Patri, usually sung at the end of a psalm or canticle, is two verses long, so depending on the type of chant, it is sung in one of the following ways:

• • to two verses of a single chant,
  • to a double chant,
  • to the first and third parts of a triple chant,
  • or to the first and fourth parts of a quadruple chant.