2353: Origin of Solfège Sounds May 28, 2021

Solfège, i.e. pairing notes of a scale to syllables did not draw these syllables entirely out of nowhere. It comes from the medieval hexachord scale associated with words from a Latin hymn for St. John the Baptist's Day:

(Ut) queant (la)xisresonare fibris

(Mi)ra gestorum (fa)muli tuorum,

(Sol)ve pollutis (la)biis reatum,

(S)ancte (I)ohannes.

Notably, the 'do' and 'ti' are missing, and 'ut' is included. Indeed, 'ut' was actually preferred in solfège later into the 17th century but was changed to make for the sake of the preferred sound. 'Ti' was added originally as 'si' from the name of the saint himself at the end, but in the anglophone word became 'ti' for ease of discernment.