Editing Gradual (section)

==Musical form and style==
[[Image:Gregorian legend.png|thumb|''Sanctissimus namque Gregorius'', from the Vatican edition of the ''Graduale Romanum''.]]

The usual form of the Gradual is a single respond with a solo verse, although a final repetition of the respond was found up to the Renaissance and is still permitted by the ''[[Liber usualis]]''.

Graduals are among the most florid and [[melisma]]tic of all Gregorian chants; ''Clamaverunt iusti'', for example, has melismas with up to 66 notes.{{ref|ref03}}  Graduals as a group are also notable for melismas that stress one or two pitches, both through repeated notes and repercussive [[neume]]s. Both the verse and the respond tend to be similar in style, excepting a tendency for the verse to have a higher [[tessitura]].{{ref|ref04}}

Like Tracts, most Graduals show clear signs of [[centonization]], a process of composition in which an extended vocabulary of stock musical phrases are woven together. Some phrases are only used for [[incipit]]s, some only for [[cadence (gait)|cadence]]s, and some only in the middle of a musical line. The Gregorian Graduals can be organized into musical families that share common musical phrases. Although nearly half of the Gregorian Graduals belong to a family of related chants in the fifth [[Church mode|mode]], the most famous family of Graduals are those of the second mode, commonly called the ''[[Iustus ut palma]]'' group after one representative chant.{{ref|ref05}}  The Graduals of the [[Old Roman chant]] fall similarly into centonization families, including a family corresponding to the ''Iustus ut palma'' group.