Ut queant laxis resonare fibrisMira gestorum famuli tuorum,Solve polluti labii reatum,Sancte Iohannes!
In the hymn's melody, the syllables I've bolded -- the first syllable of each half-line -- are sung on the ascending notes of the major scale: C D E F G A. This was noticed by Guido de Arezzo, the father of musical notation, in the 11th century, and he used the syllables ut re mi fa sol la to represent those six notes. There was no syllable for the leading tone, a gap which was surprisingly not filled for many centuries.
In the 17th century, Giovanni Battista Doni changed ut to do, arguing that an open syllable was more suitable for singing. (The tendency to pronounce sol as an open syllable, so, bears this out.) Do was chosen because it is the first syllable of Dominus, "Lord" (and also, perhaps not coincidentally, of Doni). Around the same time, a seventh syllable, si, was added for the leading tone. This was an acronym of Sancte Iohannes, the next line of "Ut queant laxis," even though in the hymn the first syllables of Sancte and Iohannes are sung on G and C, respectively.
In the 19th century, music educator Sarah Anna Glover wanted to be able to abbreviate each syllable as a single letter, so she changed si (which began with the same letter as sol) to ti. As far as I know, the letter t was chosen arbitrarily, and any other consonant (except the six already taken by other syllables) would have served just as well.
So, do stands for Dominus, "Lord." (Dom should therefore be an acceptable variant, which strengthens the link between do-re-mi and Domrémy.) Re stands for resonare, "to resound, to echo." Mi stands for mira, "wonderful, marvelous." Fa stands for famuli, "servants, slaves." Sol stands for solve, "loosen, free, release, dissolve." La stands for labii, "of lip(s)." Ti, uniquely, does not stand for anything, but is a modification of si (Sanctes Iohannes, "O Saint John"). If we assume that ti, too, is an acronym, and that the second (unchanged) letter still stands for John, the only Latin expression that comes to mind for it to stand for is testimonium Ioannis, "the witness of John" (see John 1:19, Vulgate).
It is appropriate that the tonic, on which the whole scale is based, is identified with the Lord, and that the leading tone, which "points to" the tonic, is identified with John and his witness. It is also interesting to note that, in the modern system of letter names for notes, Dominus has become C (as in Christus), and Sancte Iohannes has become B (as in Baptista).
As for do-re-mi itself, well Dominus resonare mira is sort of like Romanes eunt domus -- it's not even remotely grammatical Latin, but the gist is clear enough: "the wondrous echoes of the Lord" or something of that nature.
It occurred to me to wonder if any modern song would be as suitable as "Ut queant laxis" for naming the notes of the scale, and the first thing that came to mind was the Christmas carol "Joy to the World," of which the first eight notes run down the major scale. Of course it wouldn't really work because two of those syllables are the same (the), and because world, with its consonant-heavy rime, has ut's problem in spades, but it is an interesting coincidence that some of the lyrics recall Dominus resonare mira: "Repeat the sounding joy / Repeat the sounding Joy / Repeat, repeat the sounding joy."
⁂
Note added: About five hours after I posted the above, I was teaching a children's English class. Their book featured the following phonics exercise:
Although the focus here was on pronunciation, I also checked that the students understood what all the words meant. One boy didn't know what sew meant, and a girl said, "Oh, you know! You sew with a needle," miming the action as she said it. And then, apparently having been reminded of the line "So, a needle pulling thread," she began singing: "Do, a deer, a female deer! Re, a -- uh, I don't remember the rest."
I'm reasonably sure that, in my 20 years of teaching, this is the first time "do-re-mi" has ever come up in class.
7 comments:
I'm listening to an owl hoot outside as I'm watching this Monty Python video with an owl hooting at the start
Are you sure this is the right post? See, I've been having a mystical moment for a little while and at some point I got up out of bed expecting a post but it's not really clicking... Except for the owl hoot.
Sorry to disappoint! I do have lots of other things in my drafts folder, but this was the one that got posted today.
One random note: ut ("hoot"?), the original do, also appears in Qui ut Deus? ("Who is like God?" a translation of the name Michael).
I have never heard of this Medieval origin of do re mi - I vaguely guessed it was invented by an American back in 1800s; apparently I was mixed up with shape-note singing, or more likely the invention of tonic sol-fa from England of the same general period.
Of course, do re mi it was *really* invented by Julie Andrews; and all the rest is fake history...
Well this was one of those posts that's interesting anyway, even if the syncs don't click
Wow, I knew something about music history that Bruce Charlton didn't! That doesn't happen very often.
Many of the details were researched just now for this post, of course, but I did know already know that it came from a medieval hymn to John the Baptist and that the tonic was originally ut.
I didn't know until today where si came from or that it wasn't part of the original hymn. I also assumed that the reason it was changed to ti in Anglophone countries was to avoid confusion with C, which of course would not be an issue in other European languages, which still use si. That the change was made as far back as the 19th century means that the do-si-do of square dancing is older than I would have guessed.
". . . and the rest is fake history" -- a potentially useful mutant cliche!
Post a Comment