The hymn uses classical
metres: the
Sapphic stanza consisting of three Sapphic
hendecasyllables followed by an
adonius (a type of
dimeter). The chant is useful for teaching singing because of the way it uses successive notes of the
scale: the first six musical phrases of each
stanza begin on a successively higher notes of the
hexachord, giving
ut–re–mi–fa–so–la; though
ut is replaced by
do in modern
solfège. The naming of the notes of the
hexachord by the first syllable of each
hemistich (half line of verse) of the first verse is usually attributed to
Guido of Arezzo. Guido, who was active in the eleventh century, is regarded as the father of modern musical notation. He made use of clefs (C & F clefs) and invented the
ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la notation. The hymn does not help with the seventh tone as the last line,
Sancte Iohannes, breaks the ascending pattern. The syllable
si, for the seventh tone, was added in the 18th century. The first stanza is:
Ut queant laxīs
resonāre fibrīs
Mīra gestōrum
famulī tuōrum,
Solve pollūtī
labiī reātum,
Sāncte
Iohannēs. It may be translated:
So that they may, with loosened voices, resound the wonders of your deeds, clean the guilt from our stained lips, O Saint John. A paraphrase by Cecile Gertken,
OSB (1902–2001) preserves the key syllables and loosely evokes the original meter:
Do let our voices
resonate most purely,
miracles telling,
far greater than many;
so let our tongues be
lavish in your praises,
Saint
John the Baptist.
Ut is now mostly replaced by
Do in
solfège due to the latter's
open sound, in deference to Italian theorist
Giovanni Battista Doni. The word "Ut" is still in use to name the
C-clef. The seventh note was not part of the medieval hexachord and does not occur in this melody, and it was originally called "si" from "
Sancte
Ioannes" (
Johannes). In the nineteenth century,
Sarah Glover, an English music teacher, renamed "si" to "ti" so that every syllable might
be notated by its initial letter. But this was not adopted in countries using
fixed do solfège: in Romance languages "si" is used alike for B and B flat, and no separate syllable is required for sharp "sol". ==Liturgical use==