GAMUT, gam'iit, in music, a name applied in a three-fold manner :—(a) in its original sense, to the first or lowest note of the scale; (b) to the mediaeval scale* whereon the musical notes are disposed in their several orders; (c) to the whole range of a voice or instrument, in the modern sense of ((compass." Gamut is derived from the Greek letter r, y, yetiqta, gamma, which was combined in the Middle Ages with the Latin adverb or conjunc tion ut. Thus arose "gamma ut,* which was later contracted into gamut. Lit is derived from the first syllable of the mediaeval Latin hymn, eSancte Johannes,* well-known in the history of musical development. The invention of the hexachord, the origin of which is bound up with that of the gamut, when understood to mean the great scale, is usually ascribed to Guido Aretino or d'Arezzo (q.v.) who (about A.D. 1020) designated the notes of the hexa chord by the first syllables of each line of the above mentioned hymn.
Guido d'Arezzo is commonly credited with many musical improvements, mutations, the hexachord and even gamut. But in the evolu tion of musical notation out of the classical alphabetical system, the invention of the medi aeval is more properly assigned to Huc bald (A.D. 840-932). Hucbald used lines and the first letters of the Latin alphabet as a means of fixing the intervals of the scale, and thus may have been an important forerunner of Guido d'Arezzo. (Consult Hans Muller's balds echte and unechte Schriften fiber Musik.' Munich 1884). If by the invention of the gamut (taking the word in what was probably its original sense as employed in music), one is to understand the addition of the note "G," at the bottom of the scale, it is quite certain that this note was sung ages before the time of Guido d'Arezzo. Aristides Quintilianus (fl. circa A.D. 110) tells us that whenever a note was wanted before the frPocaagkia,aevor, or proslambanomenos (added note) (A) of the Hypodorian Mode, it was represented by the recumbent Omega ( 0). And S. Odo, writing in the 10th century, represents it exactly as Aretino did, by the Greek letter r, y, Guido d'Arezzo himself speaks of gamma as in his time a recent addition. He writes: "In
primis ponitur r Graecum a modernis adjec turn? It is thus certain that he was not the first to extend the scale downwards to "1"-ut." Gamut in its second sense, as the name of a plan of the musical scale (from G to t), was early so understood, and the plan to which it was assigned persisted as long as the hexa chords were recognized; that is, down to quite recent times. They are alluded to in Shakes peare. The Greek letter, r, y, was used in this plan to denote the first note, or ut, of the lowest hexachord: the lowest note of the bass stave, where the first hexachord had its start ing point. The gamut (in this second sense), seems indeed to have been employed as a mne monic system whenever it was desired to effect a change from hexachord to hexachord, ac cording to the principles of mutation; and on this account the gamut may be regarded as the ancestor of the Tonic Sol-fa modulator. In modulating with the Tonic Sol-fa system, for example, from the tonic to the dominant, the usoP of one bar becomes the ado* of the next, which illustrates the survival of the very prin ciple for which the gamut once existed. Some times the scale is referred to as the harmonical hand, from Guido d'Arezzo's having used the figure of the hand to demonstrate the progres sion of his system of sounds. The understand ing of the scene between Bianca and Hortensio, in the (Taming of the Shrew' (ii. I.) is possi ble only when one in some measure understands the gamut. There the words "one clef, two notes have,* refer to the fact that note Q13* was expressed by a natural and a flat, being in the former case the third or of the hexachord beginning at "G,* and in the latter the fourth or ((fa* of the hexachord beginning on "F.* "This small circumstance was the commence ment of the system of accidentals, and thus opened the door for modern modulation.* Consult Fuller-Maitland, J. A., on the