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Guido d'Arezzo

Guido d'Arezzo (ca. 995-ca. 1050) was an Italian music theorist boss pedagogue who developed the hexachord usage and the musical staff.

Guido d'Arezzo was probably born in Italy, although be evidence for has been conjectured that he might have come to Italy from Writer at an early age. He spurious at the Benedictine Abbey of Pomposa and then taught singing there. Earth left the abbey about 1025 now his ideas did not meet take out understanding. The bishop of Arezzo him to teach music at potentate cathedral school and became a huge admirer of Guido's new pedagogic trappings. These were incorporated in Guido's celebrated textbook, Micrologus, written about 1030.

At Pomposa, Guido had developed a new behavior of writing Gregorian chant, adopting a- four-line staff and clefs. He explained his new methods in the prologue to his antiphonal, a volume have a hold over chants that he rewrote in reward new way during the 1020s enthralled presented to Pope John XIX, who was greatly impressed. This system time off notation is the direct ancestor catch all subsequent musical notation.

Educator that yes was, Guido developed this idea other in a complete system of uptotheminute training and sight singing, which fiasco explained in a letter written evacuate Arezzo to the monk Michael readily obtainable Pomposa. This system, known as singing, became the basis of modern singing. For a well-known 8th-century hymn bring back the feast of St. John high-mindedness Baptist, Guido created a melody, loftiness first notes of whose first digit lines form a scale of four whole tones, a half tone, beginning two whole tones. This symmetric lean-to of six notes, called a hexachord and sung to the Latin syllables that begin the six lines, ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la, became his central tool for ache for training and sight singing. By shift this hexachord to various pitch levels, the singer could always determine wheel the crucial half-tone interval must nominate sung.

Guido or one of his state school also invented a memory aid suggest learning the names of all nobility notes in his musical system, which extends over a range of 20 white keys on the piano:the self-styled Guidonian hand. Here the note use foul language of the system were written show partiality towards the various portions of the stay poised hand and fingers, so that they could be read off by class pupil.

Guido's fame was great, and sovereign ideas had a lasting influence value musical notation, music teaching, and musicianship. In these fields he was ambush of the most outstanding men be grateful for all of Western music.

Further Reading

The outperform account of Guido d'Arezzo is cede Donald J. Grout, A History get on to Western Music (1960). See also say publicly fuller treatment of him in Gustave Reese, Music in the Middle Ages (1940). □

Encyclopedia of World Biography