As a Future Educator of Music, I am Inspired by the Benedictine Monk, Guido Arentinus

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Educators are set in place to guide us through a thorough understanding of a subject, and give us enough information to suffice without their immediate guidance. In piano class, our Professors have been taught to use specific methods on breaking down the skills to becoming a pianist. From scales to score reading, all of the lessons are used to gain a sustainable amount of self knowledge to plunk out notes for our future choirs or assist our own rehearsals in a practice room. Guido of Arezzo, musical therapist, pedagogue and author of Micrologus suggested a lack of common knowledge is one of the main causes for an individual to not put forth the appropriate efforts to achieve a perfect understanding of the task. Guido Arentinus began his musical and educational journey as a monk at Benedictine in Italy, and established a reputation for his ability to study and teach music. Approximately around 1025, he moved to Arezzo and was offered the responsibility of training the boy singers of the city's cathedral to sing chants from memory, and eventually gain the ability to understand his innovations. After Guido realized the singer’s were not able to sing through a chant without the guidance of their own master, he began to construct a method to encourage the boy singers to read and relate the chants they have been singing, and expand their repertoire at a faster pace. His final goal at the end of the day was to improve the musical learning process of his time. At that time, the current formula to learning a new chant was to create a muscle memory in the singers voices for the different intervals at which the notes, played by the monochord, changed and simple repetition. Guido believed this process may be beneficial to beginners, but ... ... middle of paper ... ... Solmization syllables were used to create new melodies that were in tune and sequenced in a organized way, just as educators would do today if they needed to change a voice part due to vocal range for harmonization purposes. Solmization syllables is a language for music that helps us clearly define intervals to sight read in choirs and bands. Guido's passion for music and educating the people will continue to be recognized throughout music history. His techniques to mold the minds of young and old to understand a brand new concept will forever be used in the classrooms of future musicians. Guido paved the way for music to be interpreted by all in the simplest way he believed could happen. His dedication to not only fulfilling his duty of training these singers but to future singers and musicians allowed the expansion of music and the growth of musical intuition.

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