In
medieval music
Medieval music encompasses the sacred and secular music of Western Europe during the Middle Ages, from approximately the 6th to 15th centuries. It is the first and longest major era of Western classical music and followed by the Renaissance ...
, the Guidonian hand was a
mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...
device used to assist singers in learning to
sight-sing. Some form of the device may have been used by
Guido of Arezzo
Guido of Arezzo ( it, Guido d'Arezzo; – after 1033) was an Italian music theorist and pedagogue of High medieval music. A Benedictine monk, he is regarded as the inventor—or by some, developer—of the modern staff notation that had a ma ...
, a medieval
music theorist
Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the "rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (ke ...
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 not have the depicted form until the 12th century.
Sigebertus Gemblacensis in 1105–1110 did describe Guido using the joints of the hand to aid in teaching his
hexachord
In music, a hexachord (also hexachordon) is a six-note series, as exhibited in a scale (hexatonic or hexad) or tone row. The term was adopted in this sense during the Middle Ages and adapted in the 20th century in Milton Babbitt's serial theor ...
. The Guidonian hand is closely linked with Guido's new ideas about how to learn music, including the use of hexachords, and the first known Western use of
solfège
In music, solfège (, ) or solfeggio (; ), also called sol-fa, solfa, solfeo, among many names, is a music education method used to teach aural skills, Pitch (music), pitch and sight-reading of Western classical music, Western music. Solfège is ...
.
Theory
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
In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...
s from "Γ ''ut''" (that is, "
Gamma
Gamma (uppercase , lowercase ; ''gámma'') is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop . In Modern Greek, this letter re ...
''ut''") (the contraction of which is "
Gamut
In color reproduction, including computer graphics and photography, the gamut, or color gamut , is a certain ''complete subset'' of colors. The most common usage refers to the subset of colors which can be accurately represented in a given circ ...
", which can refer to the entire span) to "E ''la''" (in other words, from the G at the bottom of the modern
bass clef
A clef (from French: 'key') is a musical symbol used to indicate which notes are represented by the lines and spaces on a musical stave. Placing a clef on a stave assigns a particular pitch to one of the five lines, which defines the pit ...
to the E at the top of the
treble clef
A clef (from French: 'key') is a Musical notation, musical symbol used to indicate which Musical note, notes are represented by the lines and spaces on a musical staff (music), stave. Placing a clef on a stave assigns a particular pitch to ...
). The compound names combine the tone's pitch letter and up to three hexachordal syllables to indicate the functions of each note. These compound names were sometimes rendered with spaces between the pitch letter and the syllables, but in prose were also sometimes combined into one word, adding an "e" after the pitch letter if it was a consonant, yielding the names indicated in the chart below. Some of the compound names clarify the register (for example, C ''fa ut'', C ''sol fa ut'', and C ''sol fa'' indicate three different octaves of C), but there are also some names that repeat (for instance, the same name B ''mi'' appears in three different octaves).
In teaching, an instructor would indicate a series of notes for their students to sing by pointing to them on their hand, similar to the system of hand signals sometimes used in conjunction with
solfège
In music, solfège (, ) or solfeggio (; ), also called sol-fa, solfa, solfeo, among many names, is a music education method used to teach aural skills, Pitch (music), pitch and sight-reading of Western classical music, Western music. Solfège is ...
. Commonly, as in the example below, the notes of the gamut were mentally superimposed onto the joints and fingertips 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
C or Do is the first note and semitone of the C major scale, the third note of the A minor scale (the relative minor of C major), and the fourth note (G, A, B, C) of the Guidonian hand, commonly pitched around 261.63 Hz. The actual frequen ...
("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. The exact position of the notes on the hand occasionally varies from source to source, so it can be argued that no one version is definitive.
[Andrew Hughes, "Solmization", ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by ]Stanley Sadie
Stanley John Sadie (; 30 October 1930 – 21 March 2005) was an influential and prolific British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the '' Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (1980), which was publ ...
and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
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
"" or "" is a Latin hymn in honor of John the Baptist, written in Horatian Sapphics with text traditionally attributed to Paulus Diaconus, the eighth-century Lombard historian. It is famous for its part in the history of musical notation, in par ...
"). The Guidonian hand was reproduced in numerous medieval treatises.
![Guidonischehand-en](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Guidonischehand-en.gif)
Exact notation to the hexachord system can be found in a reproduction of ''Ameri Practica artis musice'' (1271), or in the 1784 source ''Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum''.
[Elias Salomo, "Scientia artis musicae", ''Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum'', 3 vols., ed. Martin Gerbert (St. Blaise: Typis San-Blasianis, 1784]
reprint ed.
Hildesheim: Olms, 1963)
The hexachord in the Middle Ages
The hexachord as a mnemonic device was first described by
Guido of Arezzo
Guido of Arezzo ( it, Guido d'Arezzo; – after 1033) was an Italian music theorist and pedagogue of High medieval music. A Benedictine monk, he is regarded as the inventor—or by some, developer—of the modern staff notation that had a ma ...
, in his ''Epistola de ignoto cantu'' and the treatise titled ''Micrologus''.
[Jehoash Hirshberg, "Hexachord", ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by ]Stanley Sadie
Stanley John Sadie (; 30 October 1930 – 21 March 2005) was an influential and prolific British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the '' Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (1980), which was publ ...
and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001). It was the most basic pedagogical tool for learning new music in the European Middle Ages, and was often referenced in contemporary musical theory. In each hexachord, all adjacent pitches are a
whole tone
In Western music theory, a major second (sometimes also called whole tone or a whole step) is a second spanning two semitones (). A second is a musical interval encompassing two adjacent staff positions (see Interval number for more deta ...
apart, except for the middle two, which are separated by a
semitone
A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone, is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, and it is considered the most dissonant when sounded harmonically.
It is defined as the interval between two adjacent no ...
. These six pitches are named ''ut'', ''re'', ''mi'', ''fa'', ''sol'', and ''la'', with the semitone between ''mi'' and ''fa''. These six names are derived from the first syllable of each half-line of the 8th century hymn "
Ut queant laxis
"" or "" is a Latin hymn in honor of John the Baptist, written in Horatian Sapphics with text traditionally attributed to Paulus Diaconus, the eighth-century Lombard historian. It is famous for its part in the history of musical notation, in par ...
".
Each hexachord could start on G, C or F and the adjacent table, reading upwards from the bottom, shows the notes in each hexachord for each of three octaves. Reading from left to right could, within certain limits, permit notes within different octaves to be distinguished from each other. Thus, C (modern ''c'') was "C fa ut" (or "Cefaut"), c (modern c′) was "C sol fa ut", and cc (modern c″) was "C sol fa". Since the lowest pitch was designated by the Greek letter Γ (gamma, for 'g'), the pitch was known as "Gamma ut" or "
Gamut
In color reproduction, including computer graphics and photography, the gamut, or color gamut , is a certain ''complete subset'' of colors. The most common usage refers to the subset of colors which can be accurately represented in a given circ ...
", a term which came to designate the range of notes available, and later, a complete range of anything.
[
]
The hexachordal system also distinguished between B (''fa'' in the F hexachord, and known as "B molle" for 'soft B') and B♮ (''mi'' in the G hexachord, and known as "B durum" for 'hard B'). Over time, the soft and hard variants of 'b' were depicted as a rounded '' and a squared-off '' which gradually developed into the modern flat and natural signs (or, in Northern Europe, into the letters 'b' and 'h').
[
]
Since a single hexachord did not cover every possible note in the range of the gamut (only C–A, F–D excluding B, or G–E excluding B), singers would have to "mutate" between hexachords if the range of a sixth was exceeded or if there was an alternation between B and B.
In this way the "Guidonian" system of multiple hexachords was different from the modern system of
solfège
In music, solfège (, ) or solfeggio (; ), also called sol-fa, solfa, solfeo, among many names, is a music education method used to teach aural skills, Pitch (music), pitch and sight-reading of Western classical music, Western music. Solfège is ...
, wherein a single set of syllables suffices to name all possible pitches (including, often, chromatic pitches) within a mode.
Because it included B ''durum'', the G hexachord was called ''hexachordum durum''; likewise, the F hexachord was called ''hexachordum molle''. The C hexachord, containing neither B, was called ''hexachordum naturale''.
In the 14th century, this system was expanded to hexachords that would accommodate an increased use of signed accidentals. From this time onward, the use of such notes was called
musica ficta
''Musica ficta'' (from Latin, "false", "feigned", or "fictitious" music) was a term used in European music theory from the late 12th century to about 1600 to describe pitches, whether notated or added at the time of performance, that lie outside ...
.
See also
*
Diatonic hexachord
The diatonic, Guidonian, or major hexachord (6-32) is a hexachord consisting of six consecutive pitches from the diatonic scale that are also a consecutive segment of the circle of fifths: F C G D A E = C D E F G A = "do-re-mi-fa-sol-la".
It i ...
References
Further reading
*Claude V. Palisca. "Guido of Arezzo", ''
Grove Music Online
''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...
'', ed. L. Macy (accessed June 13, 2007)
grovemusic.com (subscription access).
*Andrew Hughes. "Solmization", ''
Grove Music Online
''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...
'', ed. L. Macy (accessed March 12, 2006)
grovemusic.com (subscription access).
External links
{{Commons category, Guidonian hands
* Margo Schulter
Music mnemonics
Musical notation
Medieval music theory