Guidonian hand

Guidonian Hand

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Guidonian hand

In Medieval music

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....
, the Guidonian hand was a mnemonic

Mnemonic

A mnemonic device is a memory aid. Commonly met mnemonics are often verbal, something such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something, particularly lists, but may be visual, kinesthetic or auditory....
device used to assist singers in learning to sight sing

Sight reading

Sight-reading is the reading and performing of a piece of written music, specifically when the performer has not seen it before. Sight-singing is often used to describe a singer who is sight-reading....
. Some form of the device may have been used by Guido of Arezzo

Guido of Arezzo

Image:Statue of Guido of Arezzo.jpgGuido of Arezzo or Guido Aretinus or Guido da Arezzo or Guido Monaco or Guido D'Arezzo was a music theorist of the Medieval music era....
, a medieval music theorist

Music theory

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In Medieval music

Medieval music

Mnemonic

Sight reading

Guido of Arezzo

Music theory

Music theory is the field of study that deals with how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It identifies patterns that govern composer techniques....
who wrote a number of treatises, including one instructing singers in sightreading. The hand occurs in some manuscripts before Guido's time as a tool to find the semitone, it does have the depicted form until the 12th century. Sigebertus Gemblacensis (c1105–10) did describe Guido using the joints of the hand to aid in teaching his hexachord. The Guidonian hand is closely linked with Guido's new ideas about how to learn music, including the use of 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....
s, and the first known use of 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 ....
.

The idea of the Guidonian hand is that each portion of the hand represents a specific note within the hexachord system, which spans nearly three octave

Octave

In music, an octave The octave is occasionally referred to as a diapason.The octave above an indicated note is sometimes abbreviated 8va, and the octave below 8vb....
s from "G ut" (that is, "Gamma

Gamma

Gamma is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. It was derived from the Phoenician alphabet Gimel ....
ut") (the contraction of which is "gamut", which can refer to the entire span) to "E la" (in other words, from the G at the bottom of the modern bass clef

Clef

A clef is a musical notation used to indicate the pitch of written notes. Placed on one of the lines at the beginning of the staff , it indicates the name and pitch of the notes on that line....
). In teaching, an instructor would indicate a series of notes by pointing to them on their hand, and the students would sing them. This is similar to the system of hand signals sometimes used in conjunction with solfege.

There have been a number of variations in the position of the notes on the hand, and no one variation is definitive but, as in the example below, the notes of the gamut were mentally superimposed onto the joints and tips of the fingers of the left hand. Thus "gamma ut" (two Gs below middle C) was the tip of the thumb, A ("A re") was the inside of the thumb knuckle, B ("B mi") was the joint at the base of the thumb, C ("C fa ut") was the joint at the base of the index finger, and so on, spiraling around the hand counterclockwise past middle C

Middle C

C or Do is the first note of the fixed-Do solf?ge.In Western music, the expression "Middle C" refers to the musical note "C" located exactly between the two staff of the grand staff and near the top and bottom, respectively, of the bass voice and soprano voices....
("C sol fa ut") until the D a ninth above middle C ("D la sol") (the middle joint of the middle finger) and the E above that ("E la") (the back of that joint, the only note on the back of the hand) were reached.

This device allowed people to visualize where the half steps of the gamut were, and to visualize the interlocking positions of the hexachords (the names of which — ut re mi fa sol la — were taken from the hymn 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....
). The Guidonian hand was reproduced in numerous medieval treatises.

The medieval hexachordal system (c = Middle C
Middle C

C or Do is the first note of the fixed-Do solf?ge.In Western music, the expression "**Middle C**" refers to the musical note "C" located exactly between the two staff of the grand staff and near the top and bottom, respectively, of the bass voice and soprano voices....
)
Note	Syllable
e"							la
d"						la	sol
c"						sol	fa
							mi
						fa
a'					la	mi	re
g'					sol	re	ut
f'					fa	ut
e'				la	mi
d'			la	sol	re
c'			sol	fa	ut
				mi
			fa
a		la	mi	re
g		sol	re	ut
f		fa	ut
e	la	mi
d	sol	re
c	fa	ut
B	mi
A	re
G	ut

Guidonian hand

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