Guido of Arezzo (EN)

Guido of Arezzo, Guido Aretinus, *between 991 and 998, †after 1033, Italian music theorist, OSB. Almost all biographical data comes from his own writings. The date of Guido of Arezzo’s birth is determined on the basis of an explicit reference in the now lost Micrologus, which states that Guido of Arezzo completed this treatise at the age of 34, during the pontificate of John XIX (1024–33). He was educated at the Benedictine abbey in Pomposa on the Adriatic coast (near Ferrara). It was probably there that he and his fellow monk Michael compiled an antiphonary based on the principles of the new diastematic notation. Around 1025, having failed to gain acceptance for his theoretical and pedagogical ideas, he left Pomposa and settled in Arezzo, where, with the support of Theodald, the local bishop (1023–36), he took up the post of singing teacher at the cathedral. In Arezzo or its vicinity, he wrote Micrologus, a work that he dedicated to Bishop Theodald, as well as Regulae rhythmicae. Presumably around 1028, he arrived in Rome with Abbot Grunwald and Peter, provost of the cathedral chapter in Arezzo, summoned by John XIX, who was interested in the new antiphonary. According to Guido of Arezzo’s account, included in a letter to Michael of Pomposa, the pope showed him much kindness, interest and appreciation (Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum, ed. M. Gerbert, 3 vols., St. Blasien 1784 II, 44a). Due to the heat and health problems, Guido of Arezzo left Rome with the intention of returning the following winter. He then visited Abbot Guido of Pomposa, who expressed his approval of the new antiphonary and encouraged Guido of Arezzo to return to Pomposa, while warning him against simony, which was widespread among the bishops of Italian cities at the time. However, Guido stayed near Arezzo, presumably at the Camaldolese monastery in Avellana (the oldest records of Guido’s notation come from this circle). The further course of Guido of Arezzo’s life and the circumstances of his death are unknown.

The theoretical work of Guido of Arezzo, closely linked to music teaching and practice, brought two groundbreaking elements to European musical thought: the principles of diastematic notation and the foundations of the solmisation system. The principles of diastematic notation, according to which Guido compiled an antiphonary (now lost), were described in Prologus ad antiphonarium, published by Gerbert as Aliae Guidonis regulae de ignoto cantu. Innovations in this area were motivated by purely practical considerations: until then, singers had been taught the required repertoire by rote – at the cost of many years of work – a repertoire that was necessarily diverse and full of variants. The new notation was intended to enable quick and accurate reading of the chants without the help of a teacher and to contribute to the unification of the repertoire. The fundamental innovation introduced by Guido of Arezzo was a system of stave lines spaced at third intervals (the number of lines was not fixed), together with a system of clefs, whose function was fulfilled either by Latin letters used in the division of the monochord (the so-called litterae-claves) or by yellow lines for the note C and red lines for F. The purpose of highlighting the notes C and F was to indicate precisely the locations of the semitones B–C and E–F, as well as to facilitate the identification of the finales of the individual church modes. Coloured lines, used either independently or in combination with litterae-claves, appear in manuscripts of central Italian provenance from the eleventh century onward. 

Micrologus, the most comprehensive and best-known treatise by Guido of Arezzo (preserved in over 70 manuscripts), is a creative summary and development of the music theory of the time. Guido attached great importance to the monochord as an instrument for teaching singing. Of the two methods of dividing the monochord presented in Micrologus (Chapter 3), the first was taken from Dialogus de musica (a treatise traditionally attributed to Abbot Odo of Cluny), while the second was Guido of Arezzo’s own achievement. The scale Γ–dd, derived from the division of the string (expanded in relation to the scale in Dialogus de musica by the addition of the tetracordum superacutum aa–dd), formed the foundation of the theory of musica plana up to and including the fifteenth century. Guido’s definitions and terminology concerning intervals and church modes became the standard for subsequent generations of music theorists. Particularly innovative are Guido of Arezzo’s discussions on the theory of melody (Micrologus, Chapters 15 and 16). Guido explained the formal components of melody in terms of grammar. By comparing singing to spoken text, he distinguished cantus prosaici as an analogy to prose and cantus metrici as an analogy to metrical poetry. He understood melody as the movement of sounds (motus vocum) in an ascending (arsis) and descending (thesis) direction based on six intervals (modi): semitone, whole tone, minor third, major third, fourth and fifth. He also dealt with the expressive properties of music, adapting the classical theory of ethos to the tonal categories of the time and postulating the selection of a melody appropriate to the character of a given verbal text (Chapters 14 and 15). To stimulate the creativity of his students, Guido recommended a teaching method that could be described as a form of “mechanical composition.” This method involved assigning the vowels a, e, i, o, and u to successive notes in the musical scale and constructing melodies by matching the appropriate notes to the syllables of a given text (Chapter 17).

Guido of Arezzo’s remarks on organum (Micrologus, Chapters 18 and 19) are of fundamental importance for the history of European polyphony. Guido described two types of organum known from the treatise Musica enchiriadis: strict organum (organum purum) and free organum (organum mixtum). In the first type, the vox organalis moved in parallel fourths below the vox principalis (so-called organum sub voce); the remaining voices (their number was not strictly fixed) were created by doubling the vox principalis and vox organalis at the octave. The resulting combinations of parallel fourths, fifths, and octaves were called symphonia by Guido, and the organum based on them was considered “hard” (modus diaphoniae durus). In organum mixtum, which Guido valued more highly and regarded as “soft” (modus diaphoniae mollis), the vox principalis and vox organalis could move either in parallel motion (but only in fourths) or in oblique motion, in which case the vox organalis acted as a kind of drone. In this type of organum, Guido preferred the consonances of the fourth, major third, and major second, allowed the minor third, but did not permit the semitone.

Guido of Arezzo devoted considerable attention to cadences (occursus). In this context he recommended the progression major second–unison and allowed the combination major third–unison, while regarding the use of a minor third in a cadence as inadmissible. He also classified church tones according to their use in organum. He regarded tritus and tetrardus as the most useful (tropi aptissimi), since they allow for the formation of all three preferred consonances: the fourth, the major third and the major second. In second place he ranked protus, in which it is possible to form the preferred fourth and major second as well as the acceptable minor third. He considered deuterus to be the least useful, as only the fourth and the minor third are possible within it.

Regulae rhythmicae is a versified presentation of the views set out in the Prologus ad antiphonarium and the Micrologus.  The opening three lines concerning the contrast between musicus and cantor (ed. J. Smits van Waesberghe, p. 95: “Musicorum et cantorum magna est distantia:/Isti dicunt, illi sciunt, quae componit musica. /Nam qui facit, quod non sapit, diffinitur bestia.”) became one of the most frequently quoted passages from the writings of Guido of Arezzo by later theorists. 

The last of Guido of Arezzo’s writings, Epistola de ignoto cantu, addressed to Michael of Pomposa, contains a description of a new method for memorizing sounds, intervals, and melodic phrases. Guido recommended using a previously known melody for this purpose; he himself reported using the melody of the hymn to St John the Baptist, Ut queant laxis. The text of the hymn is attributed to Paul the Deacon (ca. 800), while the melody is probably the work of Guido of Arezzo. In this melody, Guido identified six phrases beginning on six different notes; using the initial syllables of the text of those phrases, he labelled six successive notes from C to A. The syllables distinguished in this way – ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la – were used in solmisation from the ninth century until the beginning of the seventeenth century, after which they were transformed into an octachord: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do. It is very likely that Guido himself used the solmisation method, but this is not directly apparent from his writings. Guido of Arezzo did not formulate the theory of the three hexachords or the related theory of mutation.

Medieval tradition attributed to Guido of Arezzo the introduction of a mnemonic method to aid solmisation, which consisted of memorising the letters representing the notes of the scale Г– dd in the correct order on the inside of the left hand. Images of the so-called “Guido’s hand” (manus Guidonica) appear in manuscripts from the 12th century onwards.

For Latin theorists, Guido was a particularly important authority. His name was included in catalogues of “inventors of music” alongside Pythagoras and Boethius, and his treatises, especially the Micrologus, were among the most frequently copied and commented upon.

Literature: J. Smits van Waesberghe The Musical Notation of Guido of Arezzo oraz Guido of Arezzo and Musical Improvisation, “Musica Disciplina” V, 1951; J. Smits van Waesberghe De musico-paedagogico et theoretico Guidone Aretino eiusque vita et moribus, Florence 1953; J. Smits van Waesberghe Guido von Arezzo als Musikerzieher und Musiktheoretiker, conference proceedings, Bamberg 1953; H. Oesch Guido von Arezzo, Bern 1954; W. Wiora Zum Problem des Ursprungs der mittelalterlichen Solmisation, “Die Musikforschung” IX, 1956; J. Smits van Waesberghe Les origines de la notation alphabétique au Moyen Age, “Anuario musical” XII, 1957; R.L. Crocker “Musica rhythmica” and “Musica metrica” in Antique and Medieval Theory, “Journal of Music Theory” II, 1958 (contains the English translation of Chapter 15 of Micrologus); C.-A. Moberg Die Musik in Guido von Arezzos Solmisationshymne, “Archiv für Musikwissenschaft” XVI 1959; M. Huglo L’auteur du “Dialogue sur la musique” attribué à Odon, “Revue de Musicologie” LV, 1969; J. Smits van Waesberghe Musikerziehung. Lehre und Theorie der Musik im Mittelalter, «Musikgeschichte in Bildern» III, 3, Leipzig 1969; L.A. Gushee Question of Genre in Medieval Treatises on Music, in: Gattungen der Musik in Einzeldarstellungen, commemorative book for L. Schrade, Bern 1973; J. Smits van Waesberghe Wie Wortwahl und Terminologie bei Guido von Arezzo entstanden und überliefert worden, “Archiv für Musikwissenschaft” XXXI, 1974; E.L. Waeltner, M. Bernhard Wortindex zu den echten Schriften Guidos von Arezzo, Munich 1976; Hucbald, Guido and John on Music: three medieval treatises, ed. C.V. Palisca, New Haven 1978; K. Berger The Hand and the Art of Memory, “Musica Disciplina” 35, 1981; S. Fuller Theoretical Foundations of Early Organum Theory, “Acta Musicologica” 53, 1981; T. Russel A Poetic Key to a Pre-Guidonian Palm and the Echemata, “Journal of the American Musicological Society” 34, 1981; J. Chailley Ut queant laxis et les origines de la gamme, “Acta Musicologica” 56, 1984; M. Huglo Bibliographie des éditions et études relatives à la théorie musicale du Moyen Age 1972–1987, “Acta Musicologica” 60, 1988; K.-J. Sachs Tradition und Innovation bei Guido von Arezzo, in: Kontinuität und Transformation der Antike im Mittelalter, ed. W. Erzgräber, Sigmaringen 1989; F. Reckow Guido’s Theory of Organum after Guido: Transmission, Adaptation, Transformation, in: Essays on Medieval Music in Honor of David G. Hughes, ed. G.M. Boone, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1995; Ch. Berger Cithara, Cribrum und caprea: Wege zum Hexachord, in: Schule und Schüler im Mittelalter, Beiträge zur europäischen Bildungsgeschichte des 9. bis 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. M. Kintzinger et al., Cologne 1996; N. Carey, D. Clampitt Regions: A Theory of Tonal Spaces in Early Medieval Treatises, “Journal of Music Theory” 40, 1996; A. Rusconi Philosophus, musicus, cantor: Prospettive ideologiche nell’opera di Guido d’Arezzo, “Note Gregoriane” 4, 1997; Ch. Meyer La tradition du Micrologus de Guy d’Arezzo: une contribution à l’histoire de la réception du texte, “Revue de Musicologie” 83, 1997; E. Nolte Zur Bedeutung Guidos von Arezzo als Musikpädagoge, in: Musikpädagogische Biographieforschung: Fachgeschichte – Zeitgeschichte – Lebensgeschichte, ed. R.D. Kraemer, “Musikpädagogische Forschung” 18, Essen 1997; K. Desmond Sicut in grammatical: Analogical Discourse in Chapter 15 of Guido’s Micrologus, “Journal of Musicology” 16, 1998; B.F. Jessberger Ein Lobgesang Guidos auf die Musik (12. Jahrhundert), in: Aus Überrest und Tradition: Festschrift für Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, ed. P. Engels, Lauf 1999; A. Mafucci L’autografo di Guido d’Arezzo, “Rivista Internazionale di Musica Sacra”, Nuova Serie 21, 2000; Ch. Meyer Die Tonartenlehre im Mittelalter, in: «Geschichte der Musiktheorie», vol. 4, Die Lehre vom einstimmigen liturgischen Gesang, ed. Th.F. Ertelt, F. Zaminer, Darmstadt 2000; A. Rusconi Dalle lettere il canto: Un metodo pedagogico di Guido D’Arezzo, “Rivista Internazionale di Musica Sacra”, Nuova Serie 21, 2000; W. Hirschmann Accessus und Glosse: Die Micrologus-Version der Handschrift Oxford, St. John’s College 188, in: Quellen und Studien zur Musiktheorie des Mittelalters, 3, ed. M. Bernhard, Munich 2001; E. Green What is Chapter 17 of Guido’s Micrologus About? A Proposal for a New Answer, “International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music” 38, 2007; D. Pesce A Historical Context for Guido d’Arezzo’s Use of distinction, in: Music in Medieval Europe: Studies in Honour of Bryan Gillingham, ed. T. Bailey, A. Santosuosso, Burlington 2007; D. Pesce Guido d’Arezzo, Ut queant laxis, and Musical Understanding, in: Music Education in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. R.E. Murray, S. Forscher Weiss, C.J. Cyrus, Bloomington 2010; S. Mengozzi The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo Between Myth and History, Cambridge 2010; C. Ruini Guido d’Arezzo e Matilde di Canossa: Intrecci tra politica e musica, “Polifonie: Storia e teoria della coralità” 5, 2017.