At Greekbouzoukitab.com we also endeavor to contribute historical and theoretical information to help those of you interested in developing a greater understanding of music.

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Ancient Origins

Music evolved thousands of years ago. In fact, historians credit Pythagoras with creating the chromatic scale approximately 2,500 years ago. The chromatic scale divides the octave into twelve equal steps. Then nearly 1,000 years later these notes were named.

 

Today, some of the oldest examples of written Western music are the Gregorian chants, named after Pope Gregory the Great, 540 - 604. (a computer generated sample here). Later, small marks called neums were added to the texts of these chants to emphasize the direction of the melody.

 

Nearly four hundred years later (c. 991 - c. 1050) a single line was used to indicate a particular pitch. Italian monk Guido of Arezzo invented the four-line staff in the first half of the 11th century. The five-line staff has been in place since the 13th century. Musical notation as we now know it has remained essentially unchanged since the 17th century. And in order to make learning easier, Guido of Arezzo used the words from a hymn to Saint John, pairing them with the various pitches (ut, re, mi fa, sol, la). Meanwhile, a seventh note (si) was added in around 1600. Later on sol became so, si became ti, and the church changed the syllable ut to do, saying that God (Dominum) was the root - the beginning and the end of all things.