"Ut queant laxis" or "Hymnus in Ioannem" (English: "So that they may be free" or "Hymn toJohn") is aLatinhymn in honor ofJohn the Baptist, written inHoratianSapphics[1] with text traditionally attributed toPaulus Diaconus, the eighth-centuryLombard historian. It is famous for its part in the history ofmusical notation, in particularsolmization. The hymn belongs to the tradition ofGregorian chant.
It is not known who wrote the melody.Guido of Arezzo possibly composed it,[2] but he more likely used an existing melody. A variant of the melody appears in an eleventh-century musical setting of Horace's poemOde to Phyllis (4.11) recorded in a manuscript in France.[3]
The hymn uses classicalmetres: theSapphic stanza consisting of three Sapphichendecasyllables followed by anadonius (a type ofdimeter).
The chant is useful for teaching singing because of the way it uses successive notes of thescale: the first six musical phrases of eachstanza begin on a successively higher notes of thehexachord, givingut–re–mi–fa–so–la; thoughut is replaced bydo in modernsolfège. The naming of the notes of thehexachord by the first syllable of eachhemistich (half line of verse) of the first verse is usually attributed toGuido of Arezzo. Guido, who was active in the eleventh century, is regarded as the father of modern musical notation. He made use of clefs (C & F clefs) and invented theut-re-mi-fa-sol-la notation. The hymn does not help with the seventh tone as the last line,Sancte Iohannes, breaks the ascending pattern. The syllablesi, for the seventh tone, was added in the 18th century.
The first stanza is:
Ut queant laxīs
resonāre fibrīs
Mīra gestōrum
famulī tuōrum,
Solve pollūtī
labiī reātum,
SāncteIohannēs.
It may be translated:So that your servants may, with loosened voices, resound the wonders of your deeds, clean the guilt from our stained lips, O Saint John.
A paraphrase by Cecile Gertken,OSB (1902–2001) preserves the key syllables and loosely evokes the original meter:
Do let our voices
resonate most purely,
miracles telling,
far greater than many;
so let our tongues be
lavish in your praises,
SaintJohn the Baptist.[4]
Ut is now mostly replaced byDo insolfège due to the latter'sopen sound, in deference to Italian theoristGiovanni Battista Doni.[5] The word "Ut" is still in use to name theC-clef. The seventh note was not part of the medieval hexachord and does not occur in this melody, and it was originally called "si" from "SancteIoannes" (Johannes).[2] In the nineteenth century,Sarah Glover, an English music teacher, renamed "si" to "ti" so that every syllable mightbe notated by its initial letter. But this was not adopted in countries usingfixed do solfège: in Romance languages "si" is used alike for B and B flat, and no separate syllable is required for sharp "sol".
In theRoman Rite, the hymn is sung in theDivine Office on June 24, the Feast of the Nativity ofJohn the Baptist. The full hymn is divided into three parts, with "Ut queant laxis" sung atVespers, "Antra deserti" sung atMatins, "O nimis felix" sung atLauds, anddoxologies added after the first two parts.
