Gregorian Chant in the Modern Liturgy

Gregorian chant's place in ordinary Catholic worship declined substantially over the twentieth century as vernacular language and newer musical styles became standard in most parish settings following the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council, even though the Council's own documents explicitly affirmed Gregorian chant as holding pride of place in the Roman liturgy rather than calling for its removal.

Monastic communities, most famously the Benedictine monks of Solesmes Abbey in France, played a central role in the modern scholarly recovery and standardized modern performance practice of the chant repertoire, publishing critical editions based on careful comparison of medieval manuscripts and training generations of singers in a restored, historically grounded style of delivery. Solesmes recordings and scholarship became influential enough that they effectively set the twentieth century's default performance standard for Gregorian chant well beyond the abbey itself, shaping how the repertoire is sung in monasteries, seminaries and specialist choirs internationally. Chant continues to be sung daily in a number of monastic communities that maintain the full cycle of canonical hours in Latin, and it retains a smaller but real presence in some parish and cathedral settings, alongside a wider secular audience reached through recordings and concert performance that engages with the repertoire as historical or contemplative music somewhat apart from its original liturgical context.