In Medieval music

Medieval music

Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...

, the Guidonian hand was a mnemonic

Mnemonic

A mnemonic , or mnemonic device, is any learning technique that aids memory. To improve long term memory, mnemonic systems are used to make memorization easier. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often verbal, such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something,...

 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.-Sight-reading:...

. Some form of the device may have been used by Guido of Arezzo

Guido of Arezzo

Guido of Arezzo or Guido Aretinus or Guido da Arezzo or Guido Monaco or Guido d'Arezzo was a music theorist of the Medieval era...

, a medieval music theorist

Music theory

Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...

 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 (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 collection of six pitch classes including six-note segments of a scale or tone row. The term was adopted in the Middle Ages and adapted in the twentieth-century in Milton Babbitt's serial theory.-Middle Ages:...

s, and the first known use of solfege

Solfege

In music, solfège 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 solfège 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 is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...

s from "Γ 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 letter Gimel . Letters that arose from Gamma include the Roman C and G and the Cyrillic letters Ge Г and Ghe Ґ.-Greek:In Ancient Greek, gamma represented a...

 ut") (the contraction of which is "Gamut

Gamut (disambiguation)

Gamut may refer to:Arts and design:* Gamut, a complete scale in medieval music; see Guidonian hand, and Diatonic and chromatic* Gamut, a range of colors that can be reproduced by a particular printing process, display device, or set of paints...

", which can refer to the entire span) to "E la" (in other words, from the G at the bottom of the modern bass clef to the E at the top of the treble clef). 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 solfège scale. Its enharmonic is B.-Middle C:Middle C is designated C4 in scientific pitch notation because of the note's position as the fourth C key on a standard 88-key piano keyboard...

 ("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 are verses in honour of John the Baptist written in Horatian Sapphics by Paulus Diaconus, the eighth century Lombard 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 solfège scale. Its enharmonic is B.-Middle C:Middle C is designated C4 in scientific pitch notation because of the note's position as the fourth C key on a standard 88-key piano keyboard...

)

	|	| Mutation
		1.	2.	3.	4.	5.	6.	7.
Note	| Note	| Solomisation
e"	ee							la
d"	dd						la	sol
c"	cc						sol	fa
b'								mi
b'							fa
a'	aa					la	mi	re
g'	g					sol	re	ut
f'	f					fa	ut
e'	e				la	mi
d'	d			la	sol	re
c'	c			sol	fa	ut
b					mi
b				fa
a	a		la	mi	re
g	G		sol	re	ut
f	F		fa	ut
e	E	la	mi
d	D	sol	re
c	C	fa	ut
B	B	mi
A	A	re
G	Γ	ut

Exact Notation to the Hexachodsystem can be found in a Reproduction of Ameri Practica artis musice (1271).

Or in the Script "Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum" aus dem Jahr 1784.

Hexachord in Middle Ages

The hexachord as a mnemonic device was first described by Guido of Arezzo

Guido of Arezzo

Guido of Arezzo or Guido Aretinus or Guido da Arezzo or Guido Monaco or Guido d'Arezzo was a music theorist of the Medieval era...

, in his Epistola de ignoto cantu and the treatise titled Micrologus. 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 apart, except for the middle two, which are separated by a semitone

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....

. 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

Ut queant laxis

Ut queant laxis or Hymnus in Ioannem are verses in honour of John the Baptist written in Horatian Sapphics by Paulus Diaconus, the eighth century Lombard historian...

.

Each hexachord could start on G, C or F and the table to the right, 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

Gamut (disambiguation)

Gamut may refer to:Arts and design:* Gamut, a complete scale in medieval music; see Guidonian hand, and Diatonic and chromatic* Gamut, a range of colors that can be reproduced by a particular printing process, display device, or set of paints...

", 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.

Since a single hexachord did not cover every possible note in the range of the gamut (only C–A, F–D excluding B natural, or G–E excluding B flat), singers would have to "mutate" between hexachords if the range of a sixth was exceeded or if there was an alternation between B natural and B flat. In this way the "Guidonian" system of multiple hexachords was different from a modern system called solfege

Solfege

In music, solfège 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 solfège syllable...

, wherein a single set of syllables in one location 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

Musica ficta was a term used in European music theory from the late 12th century to about 1600 to describe any pitches, whether notated or to be added by performers in accordance with their training, that lie outside the system of musica recta or musica vera as defined by the hexachord system of...

.

External links

• Hand of Guido