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Guido of Arezzo developed the four-line staff and sight-singing syllables. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

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Do-re-mi traces back to an 11th-century monk

Guido of Arezzo developed the four-line staff and sight-singing syllables

Guido of Arezzo, a Benedictine monk working in the early 11th century, popularised a staff of lines for writing pitch and a set of syllables, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, taken from the opening words of lines of a Latin hymn. This system is the ancestor of modern sight-singing.

Where this comes from

Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Tags: notation, history, solfege

Do-re-mi traces back to an 11th-century monk: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Guido of Arezzo developed the four-line staff and sight-singing syllables. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a music fact?: Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.