or solfeggio
System of designating musical notes by syllable names.
It may have been invented by the 11th-century Italian monk Guido d'Arezzo when training his cathedral singers. The syllables
ut , re , mi , fa , sol , la
were derived from the first syllables of the lines of a hymn, each phrase of which began one note higher than the previous phrase. This six-note series, or hexachord , facilitated the sight-reading of music by allowing the singer always to associate a given musical interval with any two syllables. The syllables are still in use, though ut is usually replaced by the more singable do , and ti or si has been added for the seventh scale degree. Compare shape-note singing .