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Guido
d'Arezzo's Body Found!
Remains
Exhumed
Found to have Six Fingers
Scholars Agog
|
Famed
archeologist and orchestra conductor Alton Indiana Johnson has made a discovery that is sure to shake the music
education superstructure to its very core. While digging for manuscripts of early Italian internet mailing list
management under the floors of Our Lady of Ether church in Rome, Dr. “Listma”Johnson discovered a secret passageway
that led to the Lost Catacombs of Great Music Educators. After digging through twenty-three inches of decomposing
Orff instruments he discovered a headstone marked “Gvido d'Areeza [sic] / Great Teacher / and Even Better Lover
/ 995-1050 / Give or Take a Few Years.”
Could this mark the grave of Guido d'Arezzo, the Medieval theorist who developed four-line notation, the solfege
system, and a method of pointing to the hand as an aid to solmization? Or was this Guido d'Arezzo, eleventh-century
coach for the Rome Prestissimos, ten-time winners of the Medieval World Cup? Upon opening the coffin he received
his answer.
Laying on top of the remains were aged copies of the Italian
Music Educators Journal,
the Journal
for Research in Italian Music Education,
and a laser-printed monograph entitled How
Many Mailing List Subscribers Does it Take to Screw in a Light Bulb?
Upon close examination of the skeleton Dr. Johnson noticed the six fingers in each hand, as shown in the above
illustration. For once in his life he was at a loss for words.
At this point Listma was faced with an ethical dilemma of totally awesome proportions: should he release the results
of his work—an action that would overturn the understanding of every serious music student in the Western world
of the last thousand years, force music educators to reevaluate the basis of their profession, and cause every
music history text to be rewritten? Or should he just keep his damn mouth shut?
Dr. Johnson then emailed Professor Inigo Montoya at the University of Madrid. Professor Montoya, a specialist on
six-fingered historical figures, was then vacationing in the Mediterranean on the cruise ship Princess Bride, but
later wrote back that he supported the release of Dr. Johnson's findings.
Manuscripts found in the coffin show a six-line staff, a discussion of the octochord, a scale with the syllables
ut,
re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, ni,
and to, and
a discussion of the necessity of avoiding the quatone, the
interval from ut to sol-sharp (the “doubla-diabolos en musica”).
Discussions with Podium
Notes editor
Jokanaan Verdi, along with noted French conductor and teacher Paulo Vermicelli, convinced him that this information
should be published, and thus this article.