Quotes:Guido of Arezzo

Boris de Zirkoff

Guido of Arezzo. Italian musician who lived in the 11th century, also known as Guido Aretinus, Fra Guittone, and Guy of Arezzo. Has been called the father of modern music. Of his life very little is known. He first appears in history as a monk in the Benedictine monastery of Pomposa, where he taught singing and invented a new educational method. Envy and jealousy drove him away and he went to Arezzo; received, about 1030, an invitation to Rome from Pope John XIV; the latter became his first pupil in Rome. Later, his former superior induced him to return to Pomposa. At one time he worked in the Benedictine monastery of St. Maur des Fosses where he invented his novel system of notation and taught the brothers to sing by it. There is no room for question as to the importance of his musical reforms and innovations. There is little doubt that the names of the first six notes of the scale, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, still in use in France and Italy, were introduced by him. They were derived from the first syllables of six lines of a hymn to St. John the Baptist. One of his most important treatises is the Micrologus Guidonos de disciplina artis musicae.

Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 1, p. 465