>At 5:27 PM +0200 7/26/04, Giovanni Andreani wrote: >>you all probably already know that >>Italian musicians don't use alphabetical names for absolute pitches; we >>once did, up on a time, but alphabetical names unfortunately got >>substituted by the sol-fa nomenclature, which was a marvellous system (as >>first used by Guido d'Arezzo) for the identification of the single note's >>tonal properties. > >Actually, Guido's system was movable do rather than fixed do. That's >what his hexachordal system is all about. Do (or "ut" in Guido's >time) could be on C, F, or G.
> Johan Howell That is exactly what I meant when writing: "...which was a marvellous system (as first used by Guido d'Arezzo) for the identification of the single note's tonal properties". Even though (talking about Guido d'Arezzo) we are not exactly talking about tonal music as we intend it today, the movable do system or sol-fa system or, again, the relative solmisation how it's called over here, tends to focalize our perceptive attentions on the properties of each single grade of tonal and modal systems (and other systems to, possibly); thus, "do" (sounds doh) would translate the meaning, the feeling of the finalis, and, in a tonal system, it's related to the tonic feeling. It all automatically send back that if the finalis property is perceived on the G pitch, then G is UT (or, later in Italy, Do); if perceived on F, then Do = F; if, in tonal music, if the dominant feeling is perceived on Bb, then Eb = Do, et cetera. In this way, as I was writing, it automatically sends back that Guido's system was (and still is) movable do. No one ever stated the contrary. The problem over here, in Italy, is that (since Napoleons domination on Italy) actually, the sol-fa names are used to determine the absolute pitches and, actually (since Napoleon), there's no use of letter names for pitches and there's no application of relative or movable do system in Italian music schools Giovanni Andreani _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
