This week's episode offers a crash course in the evolution of the written language of Western Art Music from composer/conductor/broadcaster Howard Goodall.

The question is: How do I live without Ut?

Didn't LeAnn Rimes sing that?

Anyway...

It all started because a choir conductor named Guido from a place called Arezzo was fed up with trying to decipher the melodies hidden in little squiggles scribbled above liturgical text. These neumes were the directional arrows on list of street names; there was no real map. Our friend Guido, out of a desire to stretch the boundaries of melodic possibilities, constructed a new syllabic tonal framework consisting of sets of six notes each. These hexachords became the basis for a new standardized system of tonality all the way back in the 11th century. He even wrote a little ditty to help the singers he conducted to remember the names of these new sonic syllables he dreamed up (along with a hand-y map). Each phrase of his song Ut Queant Laxis began on a new note of the hexachord; first Ut, then Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, and finally, La.

They weren't fond of hot beverages with their jam and bread back then, I guess...

Now, Ut didn't last very long. The core of sound is found in the sung vowel; consonants are unfortunate interruptions (just listen to anything Joan Sutherland recorded). An open-ended monosyllable soon replaced it. I agree that Do is much more pleasant to sing.

And where would Maria be without her female deer? Seriously.

Soon, the establishment of an anchor for pitch relationships came in the form of a thin red line. Noteheads scattered above and below sculpted ornate Melodies. Music was no longer doomed to continue its convoluted game of telephone. There was a way to preserve, to standardize. There was a way to plan.

It was this new science of melodic (and harmonic) architecture that allowed the musically-minded to build ever more elaborate and complex sonic edifices. Join me and Howard Goodall in these revolutionary moments in Western Music History.

 

 

The next episode in Goodall's Big Bangs series features the standardization of temperament: totally worth checking out if you're still hungry for more music history trivia!

Tune in every Wednesday for a new episode of Mid-week Musicology on Classic107.com!