A HISTORY OF VOCAL MUSIC. 581 



an antiphon in accordance with its rules. So pleased was 

 he with the result thus attained that he at once proposed to 

 retain the learned monk in his own service. But Guido's 

 retiring habits were altogether unfitted for continual residence 

 amongst the splendours of the Papal Court. He was allowed 

 to quit Eome oq condition that he returned during the follow- 

 ing winter, a provision which he never complied with. He 

 spent the leisure of the rest of his life in teaching the monks 

 his new system, and in instructing the children of the choir to 

 sing by aid of its rules." 



Let us now take a glance at some of the results of Guido's 

 labours. We have seen what St. Gregory and St. Ambrose 

 did towards the development of the scale : Guido went still 

 further, and arrana;ed the scale in hexachords — i.e., scales 



• • • 1 



containing six sounds, in place of the more primitive scale con- 

 taining three notes. The chief feature of the hexachord was 

 that a semitone always occurred between the third and fourth 

 note. Guido used seven hexachords, and from them in later 

 years w^as obtained the complete scale. His system was taught 

 as late as the eighteenth century, Dr. Burney, the historian, 

 having learnt it from the organist of Chester Cathedral. 



Guido was also the inventor of our modern form of sol- 

 misation — in other words, of sol-fa-ing. The idea was not 

 actually his own, but was probably due to the Greeks of old ; 

 but, of course, Guido's extended scale formed a new basis alto- 

 gether, and required a new nomenclature — Do, Ee, Mi, Fa, 

 Sol, La. Bear in mind he had only six notes to name. ; the 

 seventh, Si, was not added till many years after his death. 

 Perhaps you may not all know what suggested the now familiar 

 terms to Guido. I have an illustration which is a copy of a 

 hymn sung in Guido's time : it was really composed two 

 hundred years earlier — 



UT queant laxis REsonare fi'oris 

 i\IIra gestorum FAmuli tuoram, 

 SOLvG pollutis LAbiis reatum, 



Sancte Johannes. 



You w^ill notice that each of the six musical phrases begins with 

 a note of the hexachord, taking each in succession. Guido also 

 observed this, and took the syllables sung to those notes — Ut, 

 Ee, Mi, Fa, Sol, La — as the foundation of his " sol-fa " system — 

 a system which, with slight modification, has been in use from 

 that day to this. The changes that have occurred are, that for 

 Ut is substituted Do ; and about five hundred years after the 

 death of Guido a seventh syllable, Si, was added, to be, of 

 course, followed by a repetition of Do, thus completing our 

 scale— Do, Ee, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si, Do. 



Guido is also credited with the invention of the stave and 

 the clef — not exactly the stave of five lines and four spaces 



