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Brief History of Solfege

Guido d’Arrezzo

(born c. 991-1050)

Benedictine monk, teacher, and music

theorist.



Guido taught his students to sing Gregorian chants. He found that his students had difficulty
learning them because there was not an easy way of notating music at that time.

He first invented a method for students to use fingers on the hand to remember notes.
(This was actually the beginning of all music notation and the reason our staff has five
lines!)

To aid his students further, Guido developed a system of teaching that associated the notes
of the major scale with standard syllables.

This system was known as solmization. The syllables are derived from the chant hymn
tune that was widely known during Guido’s lifetime, “Ut queant laxis.”


“Ut queant laxis” (from Liber Usualis, p. 1504)


Each phrase of the hymn started with a distinctive syllable of text as follows: ut–re–mi–fa–
sol–la. By associating the sound of the syllable to the sound of a particular scale note,
students were able to learn new chant tunes more efficiently, and Guido became famous as
a music teacher.

He described his teaching process in his theoretical writings. In modern day, this system
has been modified to use the syllable “do” in place of the original “ut.” We also use “so”
instead of “sol.”

The system is also known as solfège or solfeggio and is what we as choral singers use to
learn to read and memorize music.

Monument to Guido in his hometown of Arezzo, Italy.


Later in the 1800’s, John Curwen developed corresponding hand signs to help with solfege
pitch and interval recognition. The solfege hand signs used today are based on Curwen’s
work.