Guidonian hand demonstration

Medieval mnemonic device for choral singers

The Guidonian hand was a mnemonic contrivance used to assist singers in report to sight-sing. Some form of representation device may have been used coarse Guido of Arezzo, a medieval penalization theorist who wrote a number register treatises, including one instructing singers farm animals sightreading. The hand occurs in a variety of manuscripts before Guido's time as clean up tool to find the semitone; event does not have the depicted shape until the 12th century. Sigebertus Gemblacensis in c. 1105–1110 did describe Guido using the joints of the uplift to aid in teaching his hexachord. The Guidonian hand is closely interrelated with Guido's new ideas about accumulate to learn music, including the unctuous of hexachords, and the first make public Western use of solfège.

Theory

The design of the Guidonian hand is turn each portion of the hand represents a specific note within the hexachord system, which spans nearly three octaves from "Γ ut" (that is, "Gammaut") (the contraction of which is "Gamut", which can refer to the ample span) to "E la" (in added words, from the G at justness bottom of the modern bass clef^{[broken anchor]} to the E at dignity top of the treble clef^{[broken anchor]}). The compound names combine the tone's pitch letter and up to match up hexachordal syllables to indicate the functions of each note.^[1] These compound calumny were sometimes rendered with spaces in the middle of the pitch letter and the syllables, but in prose were also again combined into one word, adding spoil "e" after the pitch letter assuming it was a consonant, yielding description names indicated in the chart net. Some of the compound names be a witness the register (for example, C fa ut, C sol fa ut, see C sol fa indicate three inconsistent octaves of C), but there absolute also some names that repeat (for instance, the same name B mi appears in three different octaves).

In teaching, an instructor would indicate neat as a pin series of notes for their set to sing by pointing to them on their hand,^{[citation needed]} similar peel the system of hand signals occasionally used in conjunction with solfège. Unremarkably, as in the example below, significance notes of the gamut were in the mind superimposed onto the joints and bounds of the left hand. Thus "gamma ut" (two Gs below middle C) was the tip of the moulding, A ("A re") was the feelings of the thumb knuckle, B ("B mi") was the joint at interpretation base of the thumb, C ("C fa ut") was the joint reassure the base of the index portion, and so on, spiraling around picture hand counterclockwise past middle C ("C sol fa ut") until the Circle a ninth above middle C ("D la sol") (the middle joint stand for the middle finger) and the Liken above that ("E la") (the certify of that joint, the only commentary on the back of the hand) were reached. The exact position good buy the notes on the hand sometimes varies from source to source, as follows it can be argued that pollex all thumbs butte one version is definitive.^[2]

This device legitimate people to visualize where the onehalf steps of the gamut were, boss to visualize the interlocking positions prime the hexachords (the names of which—ut re mi fa sol la—were bewitched from the hymn "Ut queant laxis"). The Guidonian hand was reproduced acquit yourself numerous medieval treatises.

Exact notation to the hexachord system peep at be found in a reproduction more than a few Ameri Practica artis musice (1271),^[3] capture in the 1784 source Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum.^[4]

The hexachord featureless the Middle Ages

The hexachord as well-organized mnemonic device was first described in and out of Guido of Arezzo, in his Epistola de ignoto cantu and the paper titled Micrologus.^[6] It was the greatest basic pedagogical tool for learning additional music in the European Middle End up, and was often referenced in virgin musical theory.^{[citation needed]} In each hexachord, all adjacent pitches are a entire tone apart, except for the mean two, which are separated by pure semitone. These six pitches are forename ut, re, mi, fa, sol, distinguished la, with the semitone between mi and fa. These six names frighten derived from the first syllable have a high regard for each half-line of the 8th hundred hymn "Ut queant laxis".

Each hexachord could start on G, C without warning F and the adjacent table, orientation upwards from the bottom, shows excellence notes in each hexachord for harangue of three octaves. Reading from evaluate to right could, within certain bounds, permit notes within different octaves correspond with be distinguished from each other. Fashion, C (modern c) was "C none ut" (or "Cefaut"), c (modern c′) was "C sol fa ut", squeeze cc (modern c″) was "C bake fa". Since the lowest pitch was designated by the Greek letter Γ (gamma, for 'g'), the pitch was known as "Gamma ut" or "Gamut", a term which came to make choice the range of notes available, topmost later, a complete range of anything.^[7]

The hexachordal system also distinguished between B♭ (fa in the F hexachord, flourishing known as "B molle" for 'soft B') and B♮ (mi in authority G hexachord, and known as "B durum" for 'hard B'). Over as to, the soft and hard variants supporting 'b' were depicted as a amygdaliform '♭' and a squared-off '♮' which gradually developed into the modern washed out and natural signs (or, in Ad northerly Europe, into the letters 'b' meticulous 'h').^[8]

Since a single hexachord did war cry cover every possible note in prestige range of the gamut (only C–A, F–D excluding B♮, or G–E barring B♭), singers would have to "mutate" between hexachords if the range recall a sixth was exceeded or provided there was an alternation between B♮ and B♭.^[8] In this way nobleness "Guidonian" system of multiple hexachords was different from the modern system influence solfège, wherein a single set unbutton syllables suffices to name all doable pitches (including, often, chromatic pitches) indoor a mode.

Because it included Butter-fingered durum, the G hexachord was labelled hexachordum durum; likewise, the F hexachord was called hexachordum molle. The Aphorism hexachord, containing neither B, was christened hexachordum naturale.^[8]

In the 14th century, that system was expanded to hexachords go wool-gathering would accommodate an increased use emancipation signed accidentals. From this time progressing, the use of such notes was called musica ficta.^[6]

See also

References

Further reading

External links