Will future generations castigate us, as I chastise past generations for Not providing Italian and Italian American Studies programs in every Italian Community.

I didn't know the following. I had no idea, and I like to consider myself well read.
But in fact, it happens to me every week, discovering another important aspect to
my RICH Italian Heritage!!!!!  We MUST make Italian/Italian American Studies a TOP Project in each of our Communities. Not Language, BUT Studies!!!!!

Envious and Jealous people try to demean Italy and Italians by constantly focusing on imperfections and ignore the enormous contribution, so that Italian American youth (feel shame), and the General Public (feel repulsion) know only the Negative.

Did you know that the Entire Architecture of Music was Italian originated!!!

The Staff, the Notes, the Scale, the Tempo, the Mood, the Dynamics descriptions.
Even the teaching method of the "Guidonian Hand". Its fascinating!!!

This fall the hills are still alive with the "Sing-A-LongSound of Music". Based on the classic film that was nicknamed "The Sound of Money" due to its record-breaking run, the movie musical began an exclusive engagement at the Ziegfield Theatre in Manhattan's theater district last week.

Attend the ultimate interactive movie event of the century!" reads the advertisement for an event that's been a smash hit at the Prince Charles Cinema in London since last summer. Part Rocky Horror Show, call-and-response, part karaoke, and part drag show, performance-goers don costumes evoking their favorite personalities in the original movie, sing along to subtitled lyrics, and scream back at the screen.

With all this revelry revolving around the revival of a stage play based on a German film, "Die Trapp–Familie," that told the true-life story of the von Trapps, an Austrian family that had fled their homeland following the Nazi Anschluss of World War II and found haven in America, it would be doubtful if audience members realized that one of the most famous songs from the production originated with an Italian monk over 1000 years ago.

Latin Hymn to St. John

In one well-known scene in the "The Sound of Music" which takes place in the Mirabell Gardens, Maria and the children dance around the statue of Pegasus, the winged horse, singing "Do-Re-Mi." During the song, one of the children complains that the nonsensical syllables"...don't mean anything..."

What she doesn't realize, of course, is that the lyrics have their roots in medieval choral music, drawn from syllables of each of the first six phrases of the text of a hymn to St. John the Baptist.

Written by Paolo Diacono (ca 720 - 799) the Latin words "Ut queant laxis, Resonare fibris, Mira gestorum, Famuli tuorum, Solve polluti, Labii reatum," translate to "So that Your servants may sing at the top of one's voices the wonders of Your Acts, absolve the fault from their stained lips."Using the syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la as names for the six tones, C to A, an Italian monk named Guido d'Arezzo (990-1050) created the System of Solmization (sometimes called, after him, Aretinian syllables or the Guido System of Syllables).

Later ut was replaced by the more singable do and another syllable, si or ti, was added, giving the scale seven syllables called do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti to form the present system of singing names for the tones of the scale. The syllable sol was later shortened to so, making all syllables uniform in spelling and ending with a vowel.

When You Know the Notes to Sing, You Can Sing Most Anything

The first phrase of the hymn begins on c and each of the other phrases begins one scale degree higher than its predecessor. Guido discovered that using syllables to teach chants made it possible for his singers to learn new chants more quickly (although he probably didn't expect Julie Andrews to know that either.) Those seven syllables sound remarkably similar to the Italian pronunciation of the same words.

The Italian language also factors into musical notation in other ways. The sound of music is the domain of tempo or the relative speed of a composition. The words to describe tempo are traditionally in Italian and number into the hundreds. When the practice of specifying a particular tempo evolved during the Renaissance, Italy was the center of musical learning.

As many musicians came to study the state of the art practices, they carried those advanced practices back to their own countries. Centuries later, Italian remains the universal musical language for tempo and dynamics, among other things.

Tempo markings are found above the score at the beginning of a composition, or above the score where a change is specified. One term or occasionally a few of them is sufficient to not only govern the tempo, but the general mood of the music.

The Hand of Music

Guido d'Arezzo also made other significant contributions to musical notation and theory. Around 1025 he created a system of musical notation using a 4-line staff which has evolved into the system used today, and was the author of a major theoretical work, Micrologus.Guido even created a method to teach the musical syllables by pointing to sections of the hand that was used widely as a teaching tool. He assigned different pitches to the knuckles and curves in the hand and pointed to the spot and had the singers sing that note. In the illustration of the "Guidonian Hand" each Latin symbol represents a different pitch. Guido's innovative teaching methods garnered attention from the Papacy in Rome where he gave a demonstration of his teaching techniques to Pope John XIX in 1028.

Sing Along With Guido

So, when you think "Sound of Music" don't forget that an Italian monk originally came up with the words to that "Do-Re-Mi" ditty. Better yet, for authenticity, when attending the Sing-A-Long Sound of Music, dress up as a medieval monk and tatoo Latin musical notations on your hand. Then, when the audience starts that immortal first line: "Doe, a deer, a female deer..." jump up and lead them in a raucous cheer that will have Guido d'Arezzo spinning in his grave.

TEMPO MARKING VOCABULARY LIST

AADAGIO — faster than largo, but still slow and peaceful or thoughtful, sometimes sad
ADAGIETTO — slightly faster than ADAGIO
ALLEGRO — fast and/or lively
ANDANTE  — a medium pace, not slow, not fast—sometimes referred to as a walking pace
LARGO  — very slow
LARGHISSIMO — as slow as reasonably possible
MODERATO  — a moderate speed, similar to ANDANTE
PRESTO  — very fast
PRESTISSIMO — as fast as possible
ACCELERANDO — going faster
RITARDANDO — slowing down
A TEMPO — cancels RITARDANDO and ACCELERANDO and directs the performer to return to the original speed

Thanks to About.com and From Michael San Filippo
The Origin of Musical Notation
http://italian.about.com/library
/weekly/aa092700a.htm