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CHAPTER 4
MUSIC THEORY IN THE MONASTERY
The eight church modes
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These derive their names, but not the scale patterns, from the ancient
Greek tonoi. They were arranged in pairs with an authentic and plagal
(“derived from”) form belonging to each pair.
The range and the final note determined the mode of a chant melody.
The development of chant notation
The notation of musical pitch in the West first appears in northern Europe
around 900. The earliest chant melodies were written in calligraphic signs,
called neumes, moving left to right across the page. The earliest manuscripts
served only as memory aids; the vertical position of the neumes was not
sufficiently differentiated so as to show the pitches (relative distance from one
pitch to the next).
Guido of Arezzo (c991-c1033)
• Author of Micrologus (Little Essay; c1030) gives pratical
instructions to church musicians for singing plainsong
and polyphony.
• Guido was instrumental in the development of three
important innovations: 1) the musical staff with pitch
letter names; 2) a system of hexachords that isolated
the half-step and facilitated sight-singing; and 3) a
musical hand that made it possible for singers to sing
instantly and accurately the intervals of a chant.
• Guidonain hexachords: natural (beginning on C), soft
(beginning on F), hard (beginning on G)
• The first syllables of each phrase proceed ut, re, mi, fa,
sol, and la. It is from these syllables that our present
system of do, re, me, fa, sol, etc. took its point of
departure.
Hymn to St. John the Baptist that Guido
used to Identify the Steps in His Hexachord
The first syllables of each phrase proceed ut, re, mi, fa, sol,
and la. It is from these syllables that our present system of
do, re, me, fa, sol, etc. took its point of departure.
Guidonian scale
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Starting on G and ending on e,” with notes identified in the
various hexachords.
This scale of two octaves and a sixth served as the basic scale in
the West until the late fifteenth century, although chromatic notes
were increasingly added to it.
An ancient and a modern representation
of the Guidonian hand
The hand was used as a sort of “palm pilot” computer in the Middle
Ages and students used the various joints and tips as a template for
remembering not only the intervals of the scale, but also the days
and months of the year, moveable feasts of the church year, the
rotation of the planets and stars, and fundamental mathematical
calculations.