Guido of Arezzo (992–1050)
Born 992 CE, died 1050 CE.
Guido of Arezzo (Italian: Guido d'Arezzo; c. 991–992 – after 1033) was an Italian music theorist and pedagogue of High medieval music. A monk from the Order of Saint Benedict, he is regarded as the inventor—or by some, developer—of the modern staff notation that had a massive influence on the development of Western musical notation and practice. Perhaps the most significant European writer on music between Boethius and Johannes Tinctoris, Guido wrote the Micrologus, the most widely distributed medieval treatise on music, after Boethius's De institutione musica. Biographical information on Guido is only available from two contemporary documents; though they give limited background, a basic understanding of his life can be unravelled. By around 1013 he began teaching at Pomposa Abbey, but his antiphonary Prologus in antiphonarium and novel teaching methods based on staff notation brought considerable resentment from his colleagues. He thus moved to Arezzo in 1025 and under the patronage of Bishop Tedald of Arezzo he taught singers at the Arezzo Cathedral.
Text from the Wikipedia article Guido_of_Arezzo, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.