THE WEDNESDAY REPORT: June 7, 2023

Dear Partners in Ministry,

Happy June! In what might be a first for me, I don't have any news or announcements for you this week, so enjoy this bit of music-meets-language trivia:

Whether we've used it extensively in other choirs or only know it from The Sound of Music, we've all had some degree of experience with solfège, or solmization—the identification of a pitch as a degree on a scale by a syllable (do, re, mi, etc) rather than by letter name. This system is one of the oldest instructional tools in all of Western Music, created by a musical monk named Guido Monaco, or Guido d'Arrezzo (b. ca. 991/92—d. after 1033). Guido was a pioneering musical theorist (fun fact: he was the first known musician to propose arranging pitches on a multi-lined staff), and his pursuit of codifying musical notation led him to invent the concept of solmization as a means of training the ears of his choristers.

Guido's method centered around the widely known hymn, Ut queant laxis; the first tone of each line of this melody raises by one step from the previous line, which provided a familiar framework for associating pitches and their relative place in a scale. He taught his singers to refer to these pitches by the syllable of the hymn text sung on them: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la (ti came later). Eventually, this "Guidonian Method," which became a staple of Medieval musical training, expanded to a compass of nearly three octaves— the combined range of his choirs. The lowest pitch, G below low C, was symbolized by the Greek letter gamma; the top pitch, E above high C, would be sung on ut. Over time, this compass of notes (from gamma to ut) became known by a contraction of the two syllables, which itself became a term for a complete course of actions or options.

So, the next time you "run the gamut" in a work or personal endeavor, be sure to give Guido a shout-out.

Reminder: Summer Sing Session Signups

Thanks to everyone who has already signed up for Sing Sessions this July. Visit this URL to claim a spot: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C084DAEA62FA7F8C52-sing