Solmization after 1600: missing, presumed dead

Modern scholars have never paid much attention to solmization, especially in its
relation to practice. The few important exceptions are all concerned with Medieval and
Renaissance theory and seldom venture beyond the year 1600. Indeed, many appear to regard
this date as a natural cut-off point, after which hexachordal solmization faded into
insignificance – in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as we shall see.
In addition to being artificially restricted by the year 1600, the majority of these
studies discuss solmization only tangentially, as one of several means for dealing with issues
surrounding musica ficta or “false music.” This term refers to pitches lying outside the usual
system of musica recta or “correct music,” whether indicated on the page with sharp and flat
signs or left for the performer to add. One of the central aims of this line of research is to
shed light on the supposed rules that determined when and where an unwritten accidental was
to be applied in performance: from the “lost traditions” sought by German writers in the
1900s, through Lowinsky’s provocative claim to have discovered a “secret chromatic art” in
the Netherlands motet (1946), to the comprehensive survey of sources in Berger (1987), the
exploration of precise pitch indications in lute and vilhuela notation in Toft (1992), and the
carefully balanced debates set out in Bent (2002). Because solmization has had only mixed
success as a tool for answering key questions relating to musica ficta, it has been
marginalized or downplayed in these studies, often in favor of an emphasis on polyphony.
Brothers (1997) goes so far as to doubt the relevance of solmization for musica ficta in the
late middle ages.
Writings that focus on topics other than musica ficta helped to consolidate my
knowledge of solmization before 1600, but offered few pointers for solving the problem
posed by Leo’s melody in Ex. x. Pike (1998) explores the alleged connections between
solmization syllables and actual texts in late-Renaissance music. Bornstein’s dissertation on
published didactic duos (2001) provides a useful overview of early seventeenth-century
solmization, but it stops short of explaining the methods used to cope with the heavily
chromatic and rapidly modulating solfeggio encountered in eighteenth-century collections.
Indeed, Bornstein avoids the issue by making the demonstrably false claim that it is not
possible to solmize chromatic passages or music in keys with sharps or more than one flat.1

1
Bornstein (2001), 153. Bent (2002, 67–81) explains how this was possible even before
1600, through the use of coniunctae and disiunctae.
 Other studies of Medieval and Renaissance music seemed equally unhelpful at the
time. In hindsight, however, some of them turned out to foreshadow aspects of the Galant
solmization system I was later to discover. Allaire (1972 & 2003), for instance, puts forward
a controversial hypothesis, in which the “hexachordal octaves” G-C-g and C-g-c, made up of
combinations of “hard” and “natural” six-note scales starting on G and C, are said to be
subject to transposition through the “flat and sharp sides of the system,” in a way that
resonates with the eighteenth-century practice of transposing octave scales through the circle
of fifths.
Similarly, a common fifteenth-century explanation for the use of a twelve-note octave
(containing seven white notes plus flats on B, E, and A and sharps on F and C), as a practical
way to avoid clashes between mi and fa by “having fa in every place which in the hand has
mi, and mi in every place which in the hand has fa,”2 appeared to suggest tantalizing parallels
with the eighteenth-century practice of modulating between keys in solfeggio, to be explained
in Chapters xx. So too did the “chain reactions” of un-notated inflections identified in many
Renaissance compositions. The flatward circle of fifths traversed in mm. 1–21 of Willaert’s
puzzle motet Quid non ebrietas (c. 1519), for instance, results from changing mi into fa by
way of an accidental <flat> sign, to avoid dissonant intervals.3 Cerone’s (1613) discussion of
the theory underlying such “accidental formations” corresponds, as I later discovered, to the
technique for modulating described in eighteenth-century treatises.4
Another study that appeared to share some of my concerns was Afonso de André’s
dissertation on medieval pedagogy (2005). It seeks to challenge the prevailing emphasis on
counterpoint in studies of musica ficta by claiming that the solmization of individual melodic
lines was of greater significance to real musical practice. Analogously, by deciphering
solfeggio manuscripts and assessing their importance for teaching fundamental musical
concepts, I seek to argue that melody has been sidelined in historical research into eighteenth-
century music, in favor of a preoccupation with harmony and form. Afonso de André’s
comments on the significance of solmized melody to practical music-making in the 1400s
might, I suspected, apply equally well to Galant music:

2
Berger (1987), 49.
3
The debate over this musical curiosity is summarized in Hu (2013), 60–72. The fact that
<flat> and <sharp> signs retained their meaning as fa and mi into the eighteenth century leads
me to side with Bent (1984) contra Berger (1987, 39–41 and 118–21) in the dispute.
4
Cerone (1613), Book XVI, Chapter XXV, 925.
 many of the so-called ‘rules of musica ficta’ (according to modern scholarship) have
been based on contrapuntal concerns, particularly causa necessitatis (‘for the sake of
necessity’) [i.e., to avoid tritones and other dissonances] and causa pulchritudinis
(‘for the sake of beauty’) [e.g., to sharpen the leading-note at a cadence], as
commonly understood. I will argue, however, that most of the basic concepts of
musica ficta were already applied consistently to monophonic music, and were
initially more dependent on the understanding of solmization and of purely melodic
contexts (over which the individual performer had greatest control), than on
polyphonic/contrapuntal ones (properly controlled by composers, theorists, or perhaps
even scribes).5

One final source that appeared to offer at least faint parallels with my research was
Mengozzi’s revisionist account of the Renaissance reform of medieval music theory (2010).
Questioning traditional assumptions of a “4-6-8” course through music history, from
tetrachord through hexachord to octave, Mengozzi argues for the primacy of the octave and
its “seven letters of Gregory” throughout the Medieval period. The octave governed real
music-making, he claims, while Guido’s six syllables existed merely as a discretionary
pedagogical tool for teaching the basics. The idea that the hexachord formed a foundation for
composition first arose in 1482, in Ramos de Pareja’s Musica pratica. Although Ramos
intended to critique and replace the ancient method, he unwittingly strengthened it, by
reframing Guidonian solmization less as a soft pedagogical tool and more as a hard theory of
diatonic space. This “structural-paradigmatic” view of the hexachord was taken up by later
theorists, such as Gafori (1492 & 1496), and became widely accepted from the eighteenth
century onwards. Mengozzi’s thesis thus prefigures and reinforces the claim put forward in
this book, that professional musicians in the eighteenth century conceived the Guidonian
system in terms similar to Ramos and Gafori, as a fundamental structural framework for
music-making. Although, or rather because, solmization was used for teaching the rudiments,
it imprinted an indelible musical map onto the minds of initiates. Why else would maestros
have spent several years teaching them fundaments, if they were not to remain fundamental
throughout their careers?
Although these and many other insights drawn from late-Medieval and Renaissance
practice seemed to offer a potential model for adding syllables to Leo’s melody, as well as

5
André (2005), xxvii.
providing valuable clues on the origins of Galant solmization, there was little evidence to
justify such an anachronistic appropriation. I realized, moreover, that any attempt to discover
a demonstrable historical connection between the many (and fiercely debated) theories on
solmization in early music and what musicians learned in 1730s Naples would take me far
beyond the scope of my research.
Despite the uncanny historical echoes to be found in writings on early music, these
sources turned out to be of limited use in my quest to sing Leo’s solfeggio as an apprentice of
the time may have sung it. Medieval and Renaissance music is simply too far removed. For
one thing, it makes use of a plethora of “tonal types” (cf. Powers (1981)) which cannot easily
be reconciled with the key signatures and scales of a later age. For another, it assumes
radically different attitudes towards harmony and the treatment of dissonance. One of its most
strictly enforced prohibitions, for instance, forbids the singing of mi against fa so as to avoid
the dreaded interval of the tritone.6 Yet this so-called “devil in music” lies at the very heart of
the Galant style. It is essential to the sonority of the dominant seventh chord, by way of a
simultaneous mi and fa between its third and seventh notes.

6
Hughes (1972) makes the point that in early music, plainchant as well as polyphony,
melodic tritones were acceptable in some contexts. Berger (1987, 118–21) cites passages
from Tinctoris and Giovanni Del Lago to argue that a melodic tritone was tolerated if its
correction would create a dissonance between parts.