A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Si

by William Smyth Rockstro

SI. The syllable used, in the musical terminology of Italy and France, to designate the note B; and adapted, in systems of Solmisation which advocate the employment of a movable starting-point, to the seventh degree of the Scale.

The method invented by Guido d'Arezzo, in the earlier half of the 11th century, recognised the use of six syllables only—ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la—suggested by the initial and post-cæsural syllables of the Hymn, 'Ut queant laxis'; the completion of the Octave being provided for by the introduction of certain changes in the position of the root-syllable, ut.^[1] Until the mediæval theory of the Scale was revolutionised by the discovery of the functions of the Leading-Note, this method answered its purpose perfectly; but when the Ecclesiastical Modes were abandoned in favour of our modern form of tonality, it became absolutely necessary to add another syllable to the series. This syllable is said to have been first used, about 1590, by Erycius Puteanus, of Dordrecht, the author of a treatise on Music, entitled 'Musathena'; and tradition asserts that it was formed from the initial syllable of the fourth verse—'Sancte Joannes'—of the Hymn already alluded to, by the substitution of i for a. This account, however, has not been universally received. Mersennus^[2] attributes the invention to a French musician, named Le Maire, who laboured for thirty years to bring it into practice, but in vain, though it was generally adopted after his death. Brossard^[3] gives substantially the same account. Bourdelot^[4] attributes the discovery to a certain nameless Cordelier, of the Convent of Ave Maria, in France, about the year 1675; but tells us that the Abbé de la Louette, Maître de Chapelle at Notre Dame de Paris, accorded the honour to a Singing-Master, named Metru, who flourished in Paris about the year 1676. In confirmation of these traditions, Bourdelot assures us that he once knew a Lutenist, named Le Moine, who remembered both Metru and the Cordelier, as having practised the new system towards the close of the 17th century—whence it has been conjectured that one of these bold innovators may possibly have invented, and the other adopted it, if indeed both did not avail themselves of an earlier discovery.

Mersennus tells us that some French professorsof his time used the syllable za, to express B♭, reserving si for B♮. Loulié, writing some sixty years later, rejected za, but retained the use of si.^[5] The Spanish musician, Andrea Lorente, of Alcala, used bi to denote B♮;^[6] while in the latter half of the 17th century, our own countryman, Dr. Wallis, thought it extraordinary that the verse, 'Sancte Johannes,' did not suggest to Guido himself the use of the syllable sa—and this, notwithstanding the patent fact that the addition of a seventh syllable would have struck at the very root of the Guidonian system!

[ W. S. R. ]

1. See Hexachord; Mutation; Solmisation.
2. 'Harmonie Universelle (Paris, 1636), p. 183.
3. 'Dictionaire de Musique,' (Amsterdam, 1703.)
4. 'Histoire de la Musique,' compiled from the MSS. of the Abbé Bourdelot, and those of his nephew, Bonnet Bourdelot, and subsequently published by Bonnet, Paymaster to the Lords of the Parliament of Paris. (Paris, 1705 and 1715. Amsterdam, 1725, 1743.)
5. 'Elements ou Principes de Musique.' (Amsterdam, 1691.)
6. 'Porque de la Musica.' (1672.)