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The most important writer upon music in the
eleventh century, and one
of the most famous in the history of the art, was a monk named Guido,
living at Arezzo, in Tuscany, a Benedictine in the abbey of Pontose.
He was a remarkably skillful teacher of ecclesiastical singing, both
in his own monastery and at Rome, and in the effort to systematize the
elements of music he introduceda number of
important reforms, and is
credited by later writers with many others which he did not himself
originate, but which grew out of some of his suggestions. He is
generally credited with having invented the art of solmization, the
introduction of the staff, the use of the hand for teaching intervals,
and the introduction of notes. He was not the first who introduced the
staff.
Hucbald, as we have already seen, employed the spaces between
the lines for designating pitch. Between his time and that of Guido,
one or more lines were introduced in connection with the neumae. Guido,
however,
employed both the lines and the spaces, but instead of notes he wrote
the Roman letters upon the lines and spaces according to their pitch.
The notes were invented shortly after his time. For determining the
correct pitch of the notes of the scale he
explains the manner of
demonstrating them upon the monochord. He mentions organum and
diaphony, and remarks that he finds the succession of fifths and
fourths very tiresome. The last treatise of the thirteenth century was
written by John Cotton, an English monk, whose entire theory of music
is made up from the Greek works.
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