Guido of Arezzo

Guido of Arezzo (Guido d'Arezzo; 991–992 – after 1033) was an Italian music theorist and pedagogue of High medieval music. A Benedictine monk, he is regarded as the inventor—or by some, developer—of the modern staff notation that had a massive influence on the development of Western musical notation and practice. Perhaps the most significant European writer on music between Boethius and Johannes Tinctoris, after the former's De institutione musica, Guido's Micrologus was most widely distributed medieval treatise on music. Biographical information on Guido is only available from two contemporary documents; though they give limited background, a basic understanding of his life can be unraveled. By around 1013 he began teaching at Pomposa Abbey, but his antiphonary Prologus in antiphonarium and novel teaching methods based on staff notation brought considerable resentment from his colleagues. He thus moved to Arezzo in 1025 and under the patronage of Bishop Tedald of Arezzo he taught singers at the Arezzo Cathedral. Using staff notation, he was able to teach large amounts of music quickly and he wrote the multifaceted Micrologus, attracting attention from around Italy. Interested in his innovations, Pope John XIX called him to Rome. After arriving and beginning to explain his methods to the clergy, sickness sent him away in the summer. The rest of his life is largely unknown, but he settled in a monastery near Arezzo, probably one of the Avellana of the Camaldolese order. Information on Guido's life is scarce; the music historian Charles Burney asserted that the paucity of records was because Guido was a monk. Burney furthered that, in the words of musicologist Samuel D. Miller, "Guido's modesty, selfless abandon from material gain life, and obedience to authority tended to obscure his moves, work, and motivations". The scholarly outline of Guido's life has been subject to much mythologization and misunderstandings.