The Middle Ages and Guido — the Notation Revolution

The Limit of a Theory You “Can’t Write Down”

Ancient theory (Article 1) had a decisive hole — there was no way to record sound accurately. Melodies were passed by word of mouth and changed across generations. Multiple voices could be neither precisely layered nor analyzed. What theory could handle was limited to “the sound ringing here and now.”

The Middle Ages broke through this limit. Its protagonist was notation.

Boethius — Bridging Antiquity to the Middle Ages

Boethius (c.480-524) wrote down ancient Greek music theory in Latin and transmitted it to medieval Europe. His De institutione musica became the standard medieval textbook.

He classified music into three kinds:

• musica mundana — the harmony of the cosmos and heavenly bodies (inaudible music)
• musica humana — the harmony of human body and soul
• musica instrumentalis — actually sounding music

And he placed music as one of the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music) — that is, a branch of mathematics. The medieval university’s view that “music = a discipline dealing with number” originates here. An age in which theory (numerical ratio) ranked above performance.

Church Modes

Medieval music (Gregorian chant and the like) was organized by eight church modes. Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian (plus a plagal for each authentic). They borrow the ancient Greek mode names, but the content is different (the correspondence of pitch orderings is shifted). The framework of “mode” would govern music until the later convergence to major and minor (two modes).

Guido d’Arezzo — the Notation Revolution

Guido d’Arezzo (c.991-1033) was an Italian monk who achieved one of the greatest technical innovations in music theory’s history.

The Four-Line Staff (fixing pitch on lines)

Earlier neumes only showed the rough rise and fall of a melody, leaving exact pitch to the singer’s memory. Guido drew four lines (a staff) and placed notes on lines and spaces, fixing pitch visually. Now one could “sing a never-heard melody correctly from the score alone.”

Solmization (the origin of do-re-mi)

Guido noticed that the first syllable of each line of the hymn to St. John rises in pitch in order, and took the note names from its words:

Ut queant laxis / Resonare fibris / Mira gestorum / Famuli tuorum / Solve polluti / Labii reatum

This is ut re mi fa sol la — the direct origin of today’s do re mi fa sol la (ut later became the more singable do; si/ti was added for seven notes). He also devised the technique of singing by “relative position” (hexachords, units of six notes) and the “Guidonian hand,” which assigns note names to parts of the hand as a mnemonic.

Why Notation Made “Theory” Possible

The notation revolution transformed the music that followed:

1. The development of polyphony — because multiple voices could be written precisely, complex layering became possible. Organum → Ars Antiqua → Ars Nova (14th c., the complexification of notated rhythm; Philippe de Vitry)
2. Objectification for analysis — “written music” can be analyzed and criticized after the fact. Theory extended its object from “sound ringing now” to “recorded works”
3. Enabling composition — one could assemble music on paper rather than in the head

Being able to “write sound” released music from mathematics (Boethius) into an art of making works. Without notation, there is no Bach, no Rameau’s harmonic theory.

From This Article to the Next

We have traced the Middle Ages — Boethius’s transmission and Guido’s notation revolution. Music that could now be “written” would, in the Renaissance, refine the technique of beautifully layering multiple melodies (counterpoint). The next article turns to Zarlino, who distinguished major and minor triads and systematized the rules of counterpoint — the era in which the vertical sonority “chord” begins to enter theory’s field of view.