Art & MusicGreek → English
Hexachord
/ˈhɛksəkɔːrd/noun
A six-note scale segment, the unit medieval singers were taught to read music by.
The Greek roots
ἕξ
héx
six
χορδή
chordḗ
gut, string
Literally: “six strings”
The story of the word
Guido of Arezzo built his teaching system on it around 1030, naming the six degrees ut re mi fa sol la after the opening syllables of successive lines in a hymn to John the Baptist. Ut later became do because singers wanted a vowel they could open on. Twentieth-century set theory took the word back for any collection of six pitches, which is how analysts of Schoenberg use it.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
hexagonhexametertetrachordchord
In a sentence
He drilled the hexachord until the boys could pitch mi and fa without thinking.