All music had to be written by hand and the monks made wonderful parchment copies of works composed for the church services. They soon grew careless about the yellow lines and red lines, so Guido placed the letters C and F at the beginning of the lines instead of using the colored lines. Sometimes there were three lines to a staff, sometimes four, five, and even eleven! The use of clefs showing which line was C or F, made reading of music much easier. At the end of the 16th century the question of the number of lines to the staff was definitely decided, then they used four lines for the plain chant and five for all secular music. By calling the fifth line of the eleven, middle C, two staffs of five lines resulted—the grand staff of today. Here is a table to show you how clefs grew: [Illustration: (from Vincent d’Indy’s “Cours de Composition Musicale”)] Hucbald built his scales in groups of four tones like the Greek tetrachords but Guido extended this tetrachord to a hexachord or six-toned scale, and by overlapping the hexachords, he built a series of scales to which he gave the name, _gamut_, because it started on the G which is the first note of our grand staff (lowest line, bass clef) and the Greek word for G is “Gamma.” F G ab͡♭ c d } ½ step } C D EF͡ G a } This was repeated starting ½ step } an octave higher. G A BC͡ D E } ½ step } (Read from lowest line up.) In the lowest hexachord, the B is natural, in the second hexachord there is no B and in the third hexachord, the B is flattened. Our sign (♭) for flat comes from the fact that this B was called a round B and the sign (♮) for natural was called a square B. The sharp (♯) came from the natural and both meant at first raising the tone a half-step. Guido once heard the monks in the monastery of Arezzo singing a hymn in honor of St. John the Baptist. He noticed that each line of the Latin poem began on ascending notes of the scale,—the first line on C, the second on D, and so on up to the sixth on A. It gave him the idea to call each degree of the hexachord by the first syllable of the line of the Latin hymn, thus: _Ut_queant laxis, _Re_sonare fibris, _Mi_ra gestorum, _Fam_uli tuorum, _Sol_ve polluti, _Lab_ia reatum. HYMN TO ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST [Illustration: _UT que-ant la-xis RE-so ne-re fi-bris, MI ra ges-to-rum FA-mu-li tu o rum, SOL ve pol-lu ti LA bi a re a tumB͡C, Sancte Io-es-nes_] Here is a translation: Grant that the unworthy lips of Thy servant May be gifted with due harmony, Let the tones of my voice Sing the praises of Thy wonders.