Do-Re-Mi... so, the Romans sang it first
Published: 4 February 2007
JULIE ANDREWS frolicked across the Alps singing it in The Sound of Music and generations of children have learnt their musical scales by remembering it.
Now Do-Re-Mi has been traced back more than 2,000 years to one of the greatest poets of ancient Rome.
According to a book to be published next month, the origins of the song lie far from the female deer and ray of golden sun in the Rodgers and Hammerstein version sung by Andrews to the von Trapp children.
Instead, it was penned by a medieval Italian monk, Guido D’Abruzzo. He wrote most of the words for the mnemonic himself. But he used a different tune, although with a similar system of ascending notes. D’Abruzzo based his tune on a melody which accompanied Horace’s Ode to Phyllis, written in the 1st century BC.
The research has been carried out by Stuart Lyons, who won a classics