Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2011-07-01 17:36
This bit of whimsy is a spin off of a thread in which I discovered that the octave nomenclature suggested at the top of this page (C4 = "middle" C) increments at C (B3 is a half-step below C4) rather than at A. The logic of this escapes me, although I suppose it's because the C Major scale, containing no chromatics, is in its way the basic scale of Western music ("the key of the destitute"). But the discovery led me to wonder...
When Guido d'Arezzo used the first letters of each line of Ut queant laxis to name the scale degrees (ut, re, mi, la, etc.), the 7-note diatonic scale he described was presumably the standard scale (mode?) for music of the church.
I'm wondering (I don't know why I've never thought seriously about it before):
(a) whether the actual interval relationships among the scale ut through si were those of the modern major scale (ionian mode in the Greek system) or the intervals of some other mode (dorian seems to characterize a good deal of traditional chant that survives). Did a dorian hymn or chant begin on ut or on re (as our modern "moveable do" systems do)?
(b) why, when some Europeans (the Germanic musicians?) first began to identify notes with alphabetic names, ut or by then do in some places, became C and not A, the beginning of the alphabet. Why does our basic diatonic scale with no chromatic alterations begin on C rather than A?
I'd be interested in pointers to literature that might detail both the evolving use of Guido's Latin names and the transition to alphabetic names. Were alphabet letters substituted by the German followers of Luther and other German Christians whose break with the Roman church included the rejection of Latin as the liturgical language?
Are my facts completely off-track?
Whimsically,
Karl
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