GUIDO D'AREZZO. - I. LIFE. - The date of G.'s birth and death is uncertain. Since in 1027 or 1028 G. was summoned to Rome by Pope John XIX, eager to learn of the monk's innovations in the field of musical teaching, it is thought that G. might then have been about 40 years old, and he is therefore said to have been born around 990. The year 1050 as the year of his death is pure conjecture. Some authors (Morin, M. Brent and, most recently, F. Schmitz) have advanced the hypothesis that G. was born in France; but the subscriptions to the manuscripts (more than 50) that reproduce G.'s works do not agree among themselves; to the mention G. a Sancto Mauro (=St-Maur des Fossés, near Paris) and G. Augensis (Eu, in Normandy) are opposed the titles of G. Cantuariensis (=Canterbury) and, more frequently, G. Aretinus (Arezzo).
The information given by G. himself in his works - the only ones recognized as of undisputed value - leads one to admit that the celebrated monk was born in Italy, and precisely at Arezzo, especially when, having returned to Arezzo, G. writes «tornatus ad patriam». Moreover, the word exile would make no sense with regard to France, if G. had been born there.
A question by now clarified regarding G.'s life is that of knowing whether he was a Camaldolese or a Benedictine. First of all it is well to observe that the Camaldolese are also a branch of the Benedictine Order, and therefore it is not a mistake to number G. among the ranks of the Benedictines. But one can also specify that G. was a hermit or at least a monk of the Romualdine family, which took the name of Camaldoli half a century after the death of the holy founder, which occurred in 1027. From the compact bundle of arguments that support the ever-living Camaldolese tradition, only this need be recalled: G. was certainly a monk; the two Benedictine monasteries that contend for him, namely Pomposa and Camaldoli, had certainly embraced the observance of St. Romuald when G. entered them as a novice around 1010. Moreover, a testimony of Abbot Donizo (ca. 1090) attests that G. had been a hermit; the particulars given by him about Bishop Theodald are important to this historical truth, such that they do not permit rejecting those given about G., friend of the same bishop. «Musica seu cantus istum laudare Tedaldum - Non cessant semper; renovantur eo faciente - Micrologum librum sibi dictat Guido peritus - Musicus et monachus necnon heremita beandus» (Donizo, Vita Mathildis, ed. F. Davoli, Reggio Emilia 1888, p. 77).
G.'s exile has also been one of the points on which criticism has found fault, doubting that in so small and so holy a community, as a hermitage can be, jealousy might find a way to drive out a confrere and above all to oblige him to take refuge beyond the borders of Italy. But it is truly demonstrated that G. crossed the Alps: the text «me vides prolixis a septentrionalibus finibus exulatum» is explained very well if G. went to northern Italy; the expression «nobis alpestribus», found in some manuscripts, with which G. alludes to his difficulty in staying in Rome during the heat of summer, and the fact that he was accompanied to Rome by a Milanese abbot Grunvaldo, confirm this hypothesis. It then suffices to recall the danger in which the monastery of Pomposa found itself when G. had to leave it, in order to understand the motives that spurred Abbot Guido Strambati to hasten his departure: the patriarch of Ravenna Eriberto, taking advantage of the dissensions of the hermits, had moved, by armed force, to destroy the monastery and appropriate its goods. That G. may have been one of the causes of these dissensions is not in doubt, since he repeats it several times; envy could have been aroused by the excessive frequency of admirers and by the aversion and hatred of novelties, always suspect to monks, as well as by the continual demands for his work. That G. then had no occasion in the hermitage to sing, to have others sing, to invent and apply a new musical pedagogy, this does not hold up against the facts: the Camaldolese monastery differs little from the Benedictine one, where there is much singing; the liturgy of the hermitage is minutely described by Bl. Martin III, in the Liber Divinorum Officiorum, where one sees that at least one of the three Masses celebrated each day was sung (1253). The number of novices at Pomposa then gave a singing master the possibility of exercising his zeal: it is known that in 1040 the monks and hermits surpassed a hundred! (cf. J. Mabillon, Annales O. S. B., IV, Paris 1685, p. 115).
Of G.'s life after his journey to Rome (1028), which he had to leave for reasons of health, all sure trace is lost. He went to Pomposa, where he was reconciled with Abbot Guido Strambati, «father of his soul». He returned to Arezzo and was received again by Bishop Theodald; from there he went almost certainly to Camaldoli several times together with this bishop, so devoted to the hermits; indeed a document of 1033 existing in the curia of Arezzo suggests that G. remained in the hermitage long enough to become vice-prior. The painting of 1600 preserved at Fonte Avellana is not sufficient proof of G.'s death in this hermitage, but it likewise bears witness to an uninterrupted tradition in the Order of Camaldoli, where, rather than glorying in extraneous names, it is customary to hide every personal glory under anonymity.
II. WORKS AND INFLUENCE
The works of G., or those attributed to him, have been collected by M. Gerbert (Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica, II, St. Blasien 1784; anastatic reproduction, Milan 1931, p. 178) and by Ch. E. H. De Coussemaker (Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series, II, Paris 1867, anastatic reproduction, Graz 1908, pp. 78-116). The following are considered authentic: 1) the Micrologus, id est brevis sermo de musica, with the prologue prefixed to it. 2) The letter to Bishop Theodaldus, to whom G. dedicated the Micrologus. 3) The Regulae musicae rhythmicae. 4) The Epistola Michaeli monache de ignoto cantu. The critical edition of these works, written at Arezzo, was planned for the ninth centenary of the death of G.
The doctrine contained therein displays originality in comparison with that of the theorists before G., whom he indeed knew, but from whom he consciously broke away. In the first place, the pedagogical innovations, the reason for so much fame, are set out in the letter to Michael. The opening sound of the hymn to St. John the Baptist "Ut queant laxis Resonare fibris..." rises by a tone or semitone at each phrase; G. retains the syllable beneath it ut re mi fa sol la with the ascending progression of the degrees and fixes this hexachord in the pupil's memory; the instant comparison with this pattern fixed in the memory will allow whoever reads precise intervals on the parchment to reproduce them with the voice. In a month more progress will be made with this method than in ten years with the system in use until then, which, in order to make the melody to be learned heard, required the help of a teacher or at least an instrument, usually the monochord; in every case one did not succeed in deciphering at first sight as G. achieved, and in this consisted his true revolution.
This presupposed that the reading of the notation suggested precise intervals, and in this too G. achieved a new advance. It is not true that G. invented the whole staff, which later took the name of "Guidonian staff": shortly before him there existed the practice of writing neumes above and below a line drawn dry (Aquitanian school), and perhaps G. will have had knowledge of it on the hypothesis of a stay in a French monastery of the Cluniac reform, or more simply from the accounts of St. Romuald, who spent ten years in the abbey of St. Michael in Aquitaine (978-88). The improvement brought about by G. was to add one or two lines according to the case and above all to fix the value of each, that of fa with the letter-key F in red, that of da with the letter-key C in yellow, that of fa remaining drawn dry. These are the two inventions of G. The entire system of solmization with the mutations and the three hexachords has also been attributed to him. The so-called Guidonian hand, or harmonic hand, does not seem to go back as far as G., although some figure of it is found at the end of the 11th century.
The influence of G. has at times been exaggerated, at times excessively minimized. If the introduction of the third in the rudimentary polyphony of the 11th century, called organum vocale, is truly the work of G., the horizon opened by this ancient musician is broader than has been believed. But it is enough for his renown to have created a method of solfeggio which, barely modified, has remained in use down to our own days. The importance of G.'s invention is appreciated by comparing Western music with Eastern music, which did not emerge from the state in which it found itself at the time of G.: once the elementary difficulties of the symbolization of sound and of its mental representation were overcome, it became possible to orient musical invention toward combinations no longer merely linear but on various planes, of vocal and instrumental polyphony.
Bibliography13 works
Pietro Thomas