For several centuries during the Middle Ages,...

For several centuries during the Middle Ages, the Gregorian chant, with its single melodic line and free-flowing rhythms, was the dominant music of the Roman Catholic Church.

More complex and harmonious musical forms eclipsed the chant centuries ago, but modern listeners will have a chance to savor this unique music during a free choral concert Wednesday at 8 p.m. in Loyola Marymount University’s Sacred Heart Chapel.

The Associazione Italiana di Canto Gregoriano, which is touring the United States, will sing Gregorian chants in Latin, Italian and French, along with other early church music.

“The chant as we know it today arose in the 8th and 9th centuries and became the official music of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church,” said Father Richard Trame, the university archivist. “It reached its high point in the 11th and 12th centuries.”

Texts were taken from the Mass, the Psalms and other biblical excerpts, and the music got its name from a collection of chants supposedly collected by Pope Gregory I.

“The chant emerged out of monasteries and was sung in cathedral churches and bigger parish churches,” said Trame, adding that music blending various voices grew out of the chant and eventually replaced it. “This was more immediately pleasing to the ear with its harmonies,” he said.

But Trame said some Gregorian chants were composed as late as the 18th Century, and the music never lost official church status. “It serves as the melodic source of a tremendous amount of musical composition by all kinds of composers,” Trame said.

The university is at Loyola Boulevard and West 80th Street in Westchester.