Chordal varieties of Veronese varieties and catalecticant matrices

It is proved that the chordal variety of the Veronese variety v_d(P^n) is projectively normal, arithmetically Cohen-Macaulay and its homogeneous ideal is generated by the 3 x 3 minors of two catalecticant matrices. These results are generalized to the catalecticant varieties Gor_{\leq}(T) with t_1 = 2. We also give a simplified proof of a theorem of O. Porras about the rank varieties of symmetric tensors.