# The Controversial History of Do-Re-Mi

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** 12tone
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spB9eTMQINA
- **Дата:** 01.05.2026
- **Длительность:** 18:56
- **Просмотры:** 19,757

## Описание

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How do we know how modern music came to be? We tell stories and imagine clear evolutions, but the process of cultural change is rarely simple enough to track with such straightforward tools. And yet we find them irresistible. The stories of the great innovators of centuries past, who laid the foundation for the modern musical world, have echoed throughout history, and they're great stories, but what do we do when we don't know what's true? One of the greatest figures in European music history is Guido d'Arezzo, the famed inventor of modern solfege... Maybe. It's actually a lot more complicated.

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## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spB9eTMQINA) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

Music is an easy subject for legends. Online music communities abound with salacious rumors of their favorite stars' over-the-top antics, conspiracies about the hidden meanings and secret origins of songs, and whispered tales of long-lost masterpieces waiting to be rediscovered. And this is nothing new. For as long as there's been a music press, there's been gossip, speculation, and wonder. But if we go back far enough, the legends start to change. While modern legends tell unbelievable stories about fundamentally human subjects, as the weight of history begins to pile on their shoulders, those characters transform from mere people into mythical figures, bringing musical brilliance into the world like Prometheus carrying fire from the heavens. I want to tell you one of those legends today, and then I want to tell you why it scares me. This is the story of Guido d'Arezzo. Let's go back in time. Before we get started, if you want to see my next video a month early, or just watch this one ad-free, those are both live now on Patreon. There's a link in the description, more on that at the end of the video. Okay, so to be clear, Guido d'Arezzo did exist. He was a real guy. We don't know a lot about his life, but we know he was a Benedictine monk around the year 1000. We know he spent time at the Abbey of Pomposa, and we know that he eventually moved to the Tuscan city of Arezzo. He may also have been born there. Guido was a musician and a teacher who developed what were, at the time, revolutionary musical ideas. Some of these were pretty specific to the styles of the day, but he's also credited with an invention we still use a full millennium later. Solmization, or solfege. You may not know those names, but you've definitely heard of this. Solfege is the practice of associating the notes of a scale with specific syllables, so they're easier to remember. Specifically, these syllables: do, re, [singing] mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. I told you it'd be familiar. But back in Guido's day, this wasn't a thing. No one did that until Guido came along. But to understand how he got there, we have to talk a bit about how music back then worked. As a choir teacher, Guido was mainly concerned with the labor-intensive task of teaching young boys to sing sacred hymns. And by this point, the church had built up quite the repertoire. According to Kenneth Levy, cantors might be expected to learn up to 80 hours of music. For reference, that's about four times longer than Bruce Springsteen's entire discography. And those chants were in Latin, a language many of them had not yet learned to read or even speak. This made teaching them really hard, especially because the music notation of the time was not great. The main technique was the delightfully named neume, which were little symbols you'd put over the lyrics to show them melodic contour of each syllable. But neumes on their own don't convey any information about pitch. They helped you remember songs, but they couldn't help you learn new ones. To do that, you had to study with a master who would teach you each of the Psalms through oral instruction, singing them with you over and over until you're familiar enough to do it on your own. Which meant that you couldn't finish your training until you'd managed to fit four Bruce Springsteens worth of music in a foreign language in your head. You had to memorize everything, and Guido found this incredibly frustrating. He wanted a system that would let you learn new songs without ever having to hear them, but as the legend goes, no one had made that yet. So, he decided to do it himself. And his solution was simple: add some lines above the lyrics that indicate pitch, then add the neumes on top of them in the shape of the melody. He colored two of the lines, a red one for F and a yellow one for C, to help you orient yourself, and then you just read the notes as written. This is basically an early form of staff notation, which means that among his many other accomplishments, Guido d'Arezzo invented sight singing, and generations of music students do not thank him for it. With Guido's new system, you could quickly scan a written Psalm and identify all the notes of the melody without anyone singing it to you first. But, that's not quite enough. You may be able to name the pitches, but you also have to know what they sound like. And this is where Guido made a miraculous discovery, a hymn to St. John called Ut queant laxis. And the remarkable thing about this particular hymn is that each line of the melody starts on a different note, from C in the first line up to A in the sixth. — [singing] — These six notes make up what's called a hexachord, the basic building block of medieval monastic melodies. Specifically, this is the natural hexachord running from C to A. To modern musicians, this can get a bit confusing because it looks like a scale, but in medieval practice, a hexachord defines not just a set of pitches, but also a range. This one runs not from C to A, but from this C to this A. You were allowed to change hexachords in a process called mutating, but many hymns of the time were written entirely with these six natural notes. This made Ut queant laxis a perfect model song. Learn to sing it really well, memorize the sounds of the first syllable of each line, and then when faced with an

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spB9eTMQINA&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

unfamiliar hymn, use those syllables to guide you to the correct notes. If you did have to mutate to a new hexachord, you just realign your syllables to cover that range instead. And thus, solfege was born. And it hasn't changed much since. The music we use it for is very different, but over the next thousand years, the actual syllables would be updated only three times. Ut is kind of hard to sing, so in the 17th century, Giovanni Battista Doni suggested replacing it with Do. He said this was short for Dominus, Latin for God, the root of all creation, but it's also the first syllable of his last name, so you know. You be the judge. Around the same time, musicians were running into trouble with the hexachord system. Over the centuries, sacred music had become much more elaborate, and constantly switching between hexachords was a hassle. You really only had to do it for B anyway, so they turned back to Ut queant laxis in search of a seventh syllable to round out the scale and sing without mutations. The seventh line is Sancte Johannes with the initials SI, so the seventh note became C. Later in the 18th century, the English school teacher Sarah Glover changed it to T so that each syllable would start with a different letter. That change was eventually adopted in most English-speaking countries. Beyond that, Guido's idea was so good that we still use it basically unmodified to this day. That's one story. Let me tell you another. This one starts with a simple observation summarized by Henry George Farmer in 1930. — The somewhat bombastic style of the language of the hymn, coupled with the glaring vocal arrangement of the syllables, suggests the hymn was based on the syllables. — And if that's true, if he didn't find these syllables in a pre-existing psalm, where did he find them? There are many possibilities, but one in particular stands out as enticingly plausible. While in Europe intellectual pursuits had largely retreated to behind the walls of monasteries, there was still a lot going on in other parts of the world, like China, India, the Americas, and right across the Mediterranean from Guido's Italy, the Middle East. And that would make sense. As pointed out by Hisham Shami, the 11th century was right in the middle of the Abbasid Caliphate, a golden age of scholarship centered on the famous House of Wisdom in Baghdad. This was a period of incredible research, with Arab scholars collecting and translating many ancient works from Greece and India, and developing important new ideas in fields as diverse as philosophy, medicine, math, and of course, music. That sort of intellectual environment would have been fertile ground for the development of solfege. But cultural exchange between Europe and the Arab world was complicated. Ever since the fall of Rome, the two sides of the Mediterranean had kind of stopped talking to each other. It's not immediately obvious how Guido would have encountered musical ideas originating in Baghdad, and the route is kind of long, but it did exist. According to Albert Leighton, the 11th century church encouraged their monks to travel for many reasons, both spiritual and practical. They would go on pilgrimages to holy sites across the continent or to other monasteries to study with their teachers and their libraries. They also carried letters and relics and sometimes even establish new monasteries in foreign lands. And all of that travel brought some of them to Al-Andalus. Covering much of modern Spain and Portugal, Al-Andalus was the home of a separate caliphate under the rule of the Umayyad dynasty. As a Muslim society based in Europe, Al-Andalus became a sort of cultural bridge, a melting pot between two worlds. Muslim scholars and musicians would travel there from the Middle East and Christian monks would join them from elsewhere in Europe. They would exchange ideas and some would return home bringing those ideas with them. There's a ton of evidence for Arab influence on medieval Europe. This is literally how they learned about zero, like the number zero. Originally conceived in India, the modern number system was translated by Arabic scribes then carried to Europe through the conveyor belt of knowledge in Al-Andalus. That's why they're sometimes called Arabic numerals. We also see Arab influence on European architecture, astronomy, and agricultural practices. We even know that they influenced music with the introduction of new instruments like the lute. That influence almost certainly came with its own forms of music theory, which could easily have made their way back to Guido himself. Again, we don't know much about his life, but it's very possible he was among the monks who made that trip or that he knew someone who was. And if so, it's not much of a stretch to assume that familiarity with Arab music theory affected his later work. So, the idea could have spread from Baghdad to Arezzo, but we're still missing one crucial thing. Any evidence that the Arabs used solfege in the first place. And we do have some. Surviving writings by both Franciscus Meninski and Jean-Benjamin de Laborde independently mention an Arabic system called Durr-i-Mufassal, which they translate as separated pearls. This is again a set of syllables that match up with the pitches of a seven-note scale, and those syllables, according to Laborde, are do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do. And those sound familiar. Like, really familiar. It It's the same syllables. So, the theory goes that Guido learned this system, recognized how incredibly useful it could be, and wrote a hymn to help teach it to his students. Over the years, the nuances got sanded off, and he wound up getting

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spB9eTMQINA&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

credit for the whole thing, even though he'd only done a small part. So, there we have it. Two stories, both of which make sense with the historical record, which brings me to the big question. Which of them is true? I mean, this is a video essay, right? I'm supposed to take you on a journey that leads to a nice, satisfying conclusion, so you have a fun fact you can tell your friends to prove that you watch the smart people side of YouTube. But I can't do that because I don't know. And that's not because I'm too lazy to do the research, it's because no one knows. Scholarly consensus is largely settled on the Guido story, but in certain corners of academia, the debate rages on. Neither version has sufficient evidence to call it proven. And there are reasons to doubt both interpretations. Guido d'Arezzo is like the Oscar Wilde of medieval music, the famously clever guy whose name you slap on when you're not sure who actually said it. Over the years, he's gotten credit for loads of things that were later shown to be someone else's idea. They said he invented staff notation, but we actually have records of other people doing basically that before he was even born. He's also been called the inventor of letter-based note names, clefs, singing in harmony, even the Guidonian hand, a mnemonic that's literally named after him, doesn't show up in any of his surviving works, nor does the system it's supposed to help you remember. Records of this time were historically pretty spotty, and he did do some cool stuff, so as centuries passed, his reputation ballooned from a music teacher with good ideas into like the patron saint of teaching music. In that context, any claim that he invented any particular thing should be treated with some level of skepticism. But in the case of solfege, we do know he's at least part of the story. One of the few surviving documents we have is a letter he wrote to his friend Michael at the Abbey of Pomposa. In it, he describes using Ut queant laxis as a teaching tool, implying that he, you know, did that. But there are a couple noteworthy points here. First, the instructions in the letter aren't quite as specific as you'd expect. He suggests using a familiar song as a reference, then offers Ut queant laxis as an example of one that he likes. He never says to use the syllables, just that knowing where the lines start is helpful. And second, reading through it, he's pretty cagey about claiming credit. He says the system is important in that he's conveying it to others, but he stops short of saying he invented it. And there's a couple possible reasons. It could be the humility of a monk who believes all glory for his earthly works belonged rightly to God. After all, taking personal credit for divine inspiration could be viewed as sinful hubris. Or it may have been a more social thing. One particularly salacious aspect of Guido's story is that he seems to have been ostracized and persecuted by some of his fellow monks, possibly for the radical nature of his musical ideas. Downplaying his role in the creation of such a revolutionary system could be his way of not becoming an even bigger target for his detractors. That way, if they had an issue, they'd have to take it up with God. Or a third option is that he just didn't think of it as his idea. He was telling brother Michael about a tool he'd learned from someone else and adapted to his own teaching. With so little text to work from, any of those are possible. But the Arab origin story also has a pretty glaring problem that, for the sake of a dramatic reveal, I have yet to mention. I said our main sources for the Arabic solfege system were Meninski and Laborde, which you might have noticed are not Arabic names. These are later European writers from the 17th and 18th centuries, respectively. If they were using primary sources from the 11th century, they didn't cite them, and no modern scholar I found has been able to confirm that they exist. That's a huge gap, and it leaves open the very real possibility that the chain of influence ran the other way. Maybe Guido did invent solfege on his own, then it made its way from Italy to the Arab world, either through Andalusian Spain or some other knowledge channel in later centuries. This is why it's important for me to stress that when I talk about either interpretation, I'm telling you a story. It's a story that's consistent with available historical evidence, but it's not a matter of historical record. Neither of these is provably true and they probably never will be, which brings me to the real point of this video. When multiple stories make sense, how do we decide which one to tell? Why do we credit the invention of solfege to a Christian monk in Italy instead of Muslim scholars in Baghdad? I think you see where I'm going with this. And yes, music history in the West has always had a nasty habit of downplaying or outright ignoring contributions by non-European cultures. This is nothing new. In recent years, we've seen a strong push toward changing that, but that process is still very much underway. Besides, the popularity of the Guido story far predates any modern ideas of equity or multiculturalism, so I'm sure it didn't hurt that it positioned such an important invention squarely within the borders of Europe. But there's another bias at work here, too. One that may be even more dangerous. The bias toward a good story. In the Guido interpretation, what happened is that one brilliant guy had a great idea. That's it. It's simple and clean. We have a clear protagonist with obvious motivations and a single moment of insight. In the Arabic interpretation, though, we don't know who, we don't know when or where, and we can only guess at why. That's so many unknowns. It's not a satisfying answer.

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spB9eTMQINA&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 18:00)

But just because a story offers straightforward answers doesn't mean it's true. In fact, it's often a red flag, a sign that you're missing important nuance. The reason the idea of an Arab origin appeals to me is that it looks a lot more like how history actually works. The Guido story is an example of what historians call the great man theory, that the course of history has been shaped largely by a few special individuals who were particularly smart, strong, brave, or charismatic. You know the names: Genghis Khan, George Washington, Julius Caesar, Martin Luther King. In this framework, most people don't matter. They go about their lives doing whatever it is they do, and then someone comes along and changes everything forever, or at least until we get to the next great man. In music, we see this kind of thinking in the way we talk about artists. Figures like Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven aren't just well-known, well-liked composers, they're visionaries whose singular genius transformed the artistic landscape in ways no one else could. Or, for a more recent example, ask any boomer about the Beatles or any '90s kid about Kurt Cobain. It's an appealingly simple narrative, but history isn't simple. History is messy. These days, historians prefer to look at major cultural changes as the product of complex webs of influence playing out over time. Take Kurt Cobain. It's true that Nevermind had a huge impact on popular music, but prior to that album's release, Nirvana was deep in the trenches of the Seattle music scene, playing with and around many other bands with similar attitudes and styles. They borrowed ideas from their friends and from other artists and genres they liked to create a sound that was distinctly them, but also reflective of the culture and community they were a part of. And outside Seattle, there was a growing dissatisfaction among rock fans with the status quo of hair metal, driving demand for a new, raw style of rock to replace it. It happened to be Nirvana who broke through first, but if they hadn't been around, it could easily have been Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, or Nine Inch Nails, to name a few. The timing might have been different, but the alt rock explosion of the '90s was coming with or without Cobain. That doesn't mean he's not important, it just means he was part of a movement. And Guido's story looks pretty similar. We have one guy, demonized by the establishment, whose brilliant insight allows him to rise above his detractors and cement his place in history as the dude who did the thing. The Arab origin, on the other hand, puts his contribution into a much larger context, with ideas slowly forming, moving around through cultural channels, and evolving through cultural exchange. That doesn't mean it happened. Again, we are lacking a lot of textual evidence. It's also very possible that the cultural context of Guido's work was much more localized, responding mainly to the circumstances within Italy and the Catholic Church. In fact, if you asked me to bet, I'd say that's probably more likely, or at least it remains the scholarly consensus. And while I did a lot of research for this video, other people have done a whole lot more. So, my point isn't to convince you that the Guido story is a lie. My point is to convince you that it's a story. It doesn't just convey historical fact, it uses those facts to support a specific worldview, a specific understanding not just of what happened, but of what happened means. The choice to center Guido is a choice, and it has consequences. So, it's worth asking why, with so many blanks left to fill in, the version we tell looks the way it does. This is a really complicated topic, and I've only scratched the surface here. Earlier, I mentioned Hisham Shami, who wrote an entire master's thesis on it that was extremely valuable in my research. That's linked in the sources if you want to know more. And if you have thoughts you'd like to share, the best place to do that is the 12-tone Discord server. It's a great community of music fans, composers, and theorists, and I'm sure there'll be a lively discussion there once this drops. So, if you want to get in on that, there's a link in the description. And hey, thanks for watching. Thanks to our featured patrons Susan Jones, Jill Sungard, Howard Levine, Warren Hewitt, Damien Follows Sutherland, Neil Moore, Jeff, and Hippia Mori. Check out Patreon for a follow-up outro, and as always, keep on rocking.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/52499*