Guido D'Arezzo, a monk of the 13th century, in the solitude of his
convent, made the grand discovery of counterpoint, or the science of
harmony, as distinguished from melody; he also invented the present
system of notation, and gave those names to the sounds of the diatonic
scale still in use:--_ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si_; these being the
first syllables of the first six lines of a hymn to St. John the
Baptist, written in monkish Latin; and they seem to have been adopted
without any special reason, from the caprice of the musician.--_Foreign
Rev._
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It is said that the first church was erected at Glastonbury; and this
tradition may seem to deserve credit, because it was not contradicted in
those ages when other churches would have found it profitable to advance
a similar pretension. The building is described as a rude structure of
wicker-work, like the dwellings of the people in those days, and
differing from them only in its dimensions, which were threescore feet
in length, and twenty-six in breadth. An abbey was afterwards erected
there, one of the finest of those edifices, and one of the most
remarkable for the many interesting circumstances connected with it. The
destruction of this beautiful and venerable fabric is one of the crimes
by which our reformation was sullied.--_Southey_.
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