The Sound of Music and St. John the Baptist

One of the most beloved musicals films of all time, even by people who don't normally like musicals, is "The Sound of Music," the mostly-true story of the Von Trapp family singers and their daring escape from Nazi Germany. And one of the most iconic numbers from the film was when Fräulein Maria was teaching the Von Trapp children how to sing using the Do - Re - Mi method which is the simple C-major scale. What I bet you don't know is that this Do - Re - Mi method came from the Catholic Church, and specifically from today's Solemnity of St. John the Baptist. Here's the story.

In the 8th century a deacon named Paolo was tasked to sing the Exultet for Easter Vigil, which deacon do today. Poor Paolo, though, found himself with a bad head cold and went hoarse. He couldn’t sing. So, like every good Catholic he prayed immediately, and he prayed specifically to his favorite saint, St. John the Baptist. Well, his voice would recover in time for the Easter Vigil and so Dcn. Paolo decided to write a hymn in honor of St. John.

Now, that hymn became was so widely enjoyed by priests and religious that it was officially added to the Divine Office or the Liturgy of the Hours which is prayed by all clerics and religious throughout the Church. Today it is the hymn sung for Evening Prayer I the night before June 24th. 

In Latin, the opening of the hymn goes like this: Ut queant laxis resonare fibris mira gestorum famuli tuorum, solve polluti labii reatum, Sancte Iohannes. Which means, "So that your servants may, with loosened voices, resound the wonders of your deeds, clean the guilt from our stained lips, O Saint John."

Fast forward now to the early 11th century and a monk named Guido d’Arezzo realized that the hymn was a perfect candidate for his effort to systematize chant. It was perfect because he could use the syllables from a hymn that all clerics and religious knew in order to teach them the basic C-major scale. You see several of the syllables mapped onto the C-major scale in exactly the rigth order:

UT queant laxis REsonare fibris MIra gestorum FAmuli tuorum, SOlve polluti LAbii reatum, Sancte Iohannes

Each bolded syllable corresponds to a note on the C Major scale in order. The UT was changed later to DO to remove a syllable that started with an open vowel sound although some Europeans don't learn the Do- Re- Mi but the Ut - Re - Mi. Later, SI was added from the Sancte Iohannes for the missing note in the scale, but that too was later changed from SI to our now familiar TI.

And that's how we have this simple teaching method made famous by "The Sound of Music."

The deeper lesson is that Catholic culture is all around us, and we don't even know it. Part of what we do at the Evangelium Institute is teach folks about that culture and how to live it in authenticity as we all try to raise our next generation of Catholics. Please consider supporting our work.

Have a blessed Solemnity of St. John the Baptist.