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Guido of Arezzo

 
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Guido of Arezzo or Guido Aretinus or Guido da Arezzo or Guido Monaco or Guido D'Arezzo (991/992–after 1033) was a music theorist of the Medieval
Medieval music

The term medieval music encompasses European music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends in approximately the middle of the fifteenth century....
 era. He is regarded as the inventor of modern musical notation
Musical notation

Music notation or musical notation is any system which represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written Modern musical symbols....
 (staff notation) that replaced neumatic notation
Neume

Neumes are the basic elements of Western and Eastern systems of musical notation prior to the invention of five-line staff notation. The word neume is a Middle English corruption of the ultimately Greek language word for breath ....
; his text, the Micrologus
Micrologus

The Micrologus is a treatise on Medieval music written by Guido of Arezzo, dating to approximately 1026. It was dedicated to Tedald, Bishop of Arezzo....
, was the second-most-widely distributed treatise on music in the Middle Ages (after the writings of Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Anicius Manlius Severinus Bo?thius was a Christian or pagan philosopher of the 6th century. He was born in Rome to an ancient and important family which included emperors Petronius Maximus and Olybrius and many Roman consul....
).

Guido was a monk
Monk

A Monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, the unconditioning of mind and body in favor of the realization of one's true nature, and does so living either alone or with any number of like-minded people, whilst always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose....
 of the Benedictine
Benedictine

Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy....
 order from the Italian
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
 city-state of Arezzo
Arezzo

Arezzo or Arretium is a city in central Italy, capital of Province of Arezzo, located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about 80 km south-east of Florence, at an elevation of 296 meters above sea level....
.






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thumb|Statue of Guido in Arezzo

Guido of Arezzo or Guido Aretinus or Guido da Arezzo or Guido Monaco or Guido D'Arezzo (991/992–after 1033) was a music theorist of the Medieval
Medieval music

The term medieval music encompasses European music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends in approximately the middle of the fifteenth century....
 era. He is regarded as the inventor of modern musical notation
Musical notation

Music notation or musical notation is any system which represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written Modern musical symbols....
 (staff notation) that replaced neumatic notation
Neume

Neumes are the basic elements of Western and Eastern systems of musical notation prior to the invention of five-line staff notation. The word neume is a Middle English corruption of the ultimately Greek language word for breath ....
; his text, the Micrologus
Micrologus

The Micrologus is a treatise on Medieval music written by Guido of Arezzo, dating to approximately 1026. It was dedicated to Tedald, Bishop of Arezzo....
, was the second-most-widely distributed treatise on music in the Middle Ages (after the writings of Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Anicius Manlius Severinus Bo?thius was a Christian or pagan philosopher of the 6th century. He was born in Rome to an ancient and important family which included emperors Petronius Maximus and Olybrius and many Roman consul....
).

Guido was a monk
Monk

A Monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, the unconditioning of mind and body in favor of the realization of one's true nature, and does so living either alone or with any number of like-minded people, whilst always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose....
 of the Benedictine
Benedictine

Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy....
 order from the Italian
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
 city-state of Arezzo
Arezzo

Arezzo or Arretium is a city in central Italy, capital of Province of Arezzo, located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about 80 km south-east of Florence, at an elevation of 296 meters above sea level....
. Recent research has dated his Micrologus to 1025 or 1026; since Guido stated in a letter that he was thirty-four when he wrote it, his birthdate is presumed to be around 991 or 992. His early career was spent at the monastery of Pomposa
Pomposa Abbey

Pomposa Abbey is a Order of St. Benedict monastery near Ferrara, Italy. It was one of the most important in northern Italy. The buildings are Romanesque architecture....
, on the Adriatic coast near Ferrara
Ferrara

Ferrara is a city in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy, capital city of the Province of Ferrara.It is situated 50 km north-northeast of Bologna, on the Po di Volano, a branch channel of the main stream of the Po River, located 5 km north....
. While there, he noted the difficulty that singers had in remembering Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainsong, a form of monophony liturgy chant in Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services....
s. He came up with a method for teaching the singers to learn chants in a short time, and quickly became famous throughout north Italy. However, he attracted the hostility of the other monks at the abbey, prompting him to move to Arezzo, a town which had no abbey, but which did have a large group of cathedral singers, whose training the Bishop Tedald
Tedald, Bishop of Arezzo

Tedald , also known as Theodald, Theodaldus, Tedaldus, Tedaldo, or Teodaldo, was the forty-third Bishop of Arezzo from 1023 until his death....
 invited him to conduct.

While at Arezzo, he developed new technologies for teaching, such as staff notation and solfeggio (the progenitor of the "do-re-mi" scale, whose syllables are taken from the initial syllables of each of the first six musical phrases of the first stanza of the hymn
Hymn

A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity/deities, a prominent figure or an epic tale....
, Ut queant laxis
Ut queant laxis

Ut queant laxis or Hymnus in Ioannem is a plainchant hymn to John the Baptist written by Paulus Diaconus, the eighth century Lombards historian....
). This may have been based on his earlier work at Pomposa, but the antiphoner that he wrote there is lost. Guido is also credited with the invention of the Guidonian hand
Guidonian hand

In Medieval music, the Guidonian hand was a mnemonic device used to assist singers in learning to sight reading. Some form of the device may have been used by Guido of Arezzo, a medieval music theory who wrote a number of treatises, including one instructing singers in sightreading....
, a widely used mnemonic system where note names are mapped to parts of the human hand. The Micrologus, written at the cathedral at Arezzo and dedicated to Tedald, contains Guido's teaching method as it had developed by that time. Soon it had attracted the attention of Pope John XIX
Pope John XIX

John XIX , born Romanus, was Pope from 1024 to 1032.He succeeded his brother, Pope Benedict VIII , both being members of the powerful house of counts of Tusculum....
, who invited Guido to Rome. Most likely he went there in 1028, but he soon returned to Arezzo, due to his poor health. Nothing is known of him after this time, except that his lost antiphoner was probably completed in 1030.

Guido House 20030330
Guido of Arezzo is also the namesake of GUIDO music notation
GUIDO music notation

GUIDO Music Notation is a computer music notation system designed to logically represent all aspects of music in a format which is both computer-readable and easily readable by human beings....
, a format for computerized representation of musical scores.

See also

  • Solfege
    Solfege

    In music, solf?ge is a pedagogical solmization technique for the teaching of sight-singing in which each note of the score is sung to a special syllable, called a solf?ge syllable ....
  • Guidonian hand
    Guidonian hand

    In Medieval music, the Guidonian hand was a mnemonic device used to assist singers in learning to sight reading. Some form of the device may have been used by Guido of Arezzo, a medieval music theory who wrote a number of treatises, including one instructing singers in sightreading....
  • Gamut (music)
  • Hexachord
    Hexachord

    In music, a hexachord is a six-note segment of a scale or tone row. The term was adopted in the Middle Ages and adapted in the twentieth-century in Milton Babbitt serialism....


External links

  • at The Catholic Enyclopedia.
  • - an argument that the sol-fa mnemonic was derived from the Ode to Phyllis, by Stuart Lyons. (Also in print ISBN 978 0 85668 790 7)