THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL MUSICIANS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential Musicians of All Time 7

with his name and widely used in the Middle Ages, had
any connection with Guido d’Arezzo.
Guido is also credited with the composition of a hymn
to St. John the Baptist, Ut queant laxis, in which the first
syllable of each line falls on a different tone of the hexa-
chord (the first six tones of the major scale); these syllables,
ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la, are used in Latin countries as the
names of the notes from c to a (ut was eventually replaced
by do). His device was of immense practical value in teaching
sight-reading of music and in learning melodies. Singers
associated the syllables with certain intervals; mi to fa, in
particular, always represented a half step.
Before Guido an alphabetical notation using the letters
from a to p was used in France as early as 996. Guido’s system
used a series of capital letters, small letters, and double
small letters from a to g. Guido’s system also came to be
associated with the teaching of the gamut—the whole hexa-
chord range (the range of notes available to the singer).
In addition to his innovations Guido also described a
variety of organum (adding to a plainchant melody a second
voice singing different pitches) that moved largely, but not
completely, in parallel fourths. Guido’s work is known
through his treatise the Micrologus.

Josquin des Prez

(b. c. 1450, Condé-sur-l’Escaut?, Burgundian Hainaut [France]—d.
Aug. 27, 1521, Condé-sur-l’Escaut)

J

osquin des Prez was one of the greatest composers of
Renaissance Europe.
Josquin’s early life has been the subject of much scholarly
debate, and the first solid evidence of his work comes from
a roll of musicians associated with the cathedral in Cambrai
in the early 1470s. During the late 1470s and early ’80s, he