solmisation

“The singing of the syllables do, re, sol, mi, etc.”” A venerable method of teaching and singing scales and intervals ascribed to Guido D’Arezzo (or Are tin us). It is a convenient crutch for those who are not going far; but must soon be discarded. Greek music (Vide mopes) divided the complete scale into groups of four consecutive degrees or fetrachords. Guido ora disciple divided it into groups of six degrees, or hexachords. It happened that the initial syllables of the six phrases of a certain familiar hymn to St. John formed the ascending scale of one of these hexachords (the one called naturale). The device was hit upon (as an aid for weak memories) of using these syllables as names of the notes; hence the notes of this hexachord began to be called ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. (The hymn ran as follows: “Ut queant lax is, Res on are fibris Mira gestorum Famuli tuorum Solve polluti Labii reatum, Sancte Johannes.”) It was later found convenient to use these syllables for other hexachords, the wt being movable. A crude form of modulation was developed called mutation. When the modern scale came into play early in the 17th cent. it brought into use the heptachord or scale of seven degrees. A new syllable sz was therefore devised and the so-called Are tin i an syllables, used for singing in all the keys; wt, being always the tonic, sol, the dominant, etc. The syllables have persisted for primary use and for vocal exercises ever since.. In many countries they have been since used as the definite names of the notes of the scale of C, except that the syllable do (being more easily sung) has displaced wt except in France, since its first use (perhaps by Bononcini), in 1673. This is the orly change that has been accepted among that have been advocated, the many such as the bocedisation, or bod is at i on (bo, ce, di, ga, lo, ma, ni) of Waelraut, 1550 (Pedro d’Urenna in 1620 proposing ni for si), and the be bis at i on, or labecidation (la, be, ce, de, me, fe, ge)— satirically called lab is at i on—of Hitzler in 1628. The dame nis at i on (da, me, ni, po, tu, la, be) of Graun, 1750, was not for solmisation but for use in place of words in vocalising.