What is "solmization"

Solmization \Sol`mi*za"tion\, n. [F. solmisation, fr. solmiser to sol-fa; -- called from the musical notes sol, mi. See Sol-fa.] (Mus.) The act of sol-faing. [Written also solmisation.]

Note: This art was practiced by the Greeks; but six of the seven syllables now in use are generally attributed to Guido d' Arezzo, an Italian monk of the eleventh century, who is said to have taken them from the first syllables of the first six lines of the following stanza of a monkish hymn to St. John the Baptist.

Ut queant laxis Resonare fibris Mira gestorum Famuli tuorum Solve polluti Labii reatum, Sancte Joannes. [1913 Webster] Professor Skeat says the name of the seventh note, si, was also formed by him [Guido] from the initials of the two words of the last line; but this is disputed, Littr['e] attributing the first use of it to Anselm of Flanders long afterwards. The syllable do is often substituted for ut.

"act of using certain syllables to name tones of a music scale," 1730, from French solmisation, from solmiser, from sol + mi, two of the syllables so used (see gamut).

n. (alternative spelling of solmisation English)

1. n. a system of naming the notes of a musical scale by syllables instead of letters [syn: solmisation]

2. singing using solfa syllables to denote the notes of the scale of C major [syn: solfege, solfeggio]

Solmization is a system of attributing a distinct syllable to each note in a musical scale. Various forms of solmization are in use and have been used throughout the world, but solfège is the most common convention in Europe and North America. The seven syllables normally used for this practice in English-speaking countries are: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and si (with a chromatic scale of ascending di, ri, fi, si, li and descending te, le, se, me, ra).

The syllables are generally accepted to derive from The Hymn of St. John written by Paulus Diaconus in the 8th century. An alternative explanation, first proposed by Franciszek Meninski in Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalum (1680) and later by J.-B. Laborde in Essai sur la Musique Ancienne et Moderne (1780), is that the syllables were derived from the Arabic solmization system درر مفصّلات Durar Mufaṣṣalāt ("Separated Pearls") (dāl, rā', mīm, fā', ṣād, lām, tā') during the Middle Ages, but there is no documentary evidence for it.

In India, the origin of solmization was to be found in Vedic texts like the Upanishads, which discuss a musical system of seven notes, realized ultimately in what is known as sargam. In Indian classical music, the notes in order are: sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, and ni.

Byzantine music uses syllables derived from the Greek alphabet to name notes: starting with C, the notes are ni (eta), pa (alpha), vu' (beta), ga (gamma), di (delta), ke (epsilon), zo (zeta).

In Han people's music in China, the words used to name notes are (from fa to mi): 上 (siong or shang4), 尺 (cei or chi3), 工 (gong), 凡 (huan or fan2), 六 (liuo or liu4), 五 (ngou or wu3), 乙 (yik or yi3). The system is used for teaching sight-singing.

In Japanese music, the first line of Iroha, an ancient poem used as an "ABC" of traditional kana, is used for solmization. The syllables representing the notes A, B, C, D, E, F, G are i, ro, ha, ni, ho, he, to respectively. Shakuhachi musical notation uses another solmization system beginning "Fu Ho U".

In Indonesia, Javanese musicians derive syllables from numbers; ji-ro-lu-[pi]-ma-nem (siji, loro, telu, [papat, normally skipped in pentatonic scales], lima, enem).

In Scotland, Canntaireachd was used as a means of communicating bagpipe music verbally.