The Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, which we celebrate on June 24, provides us with two important additions to the musical repertoire of the Church. The first comes from the Biblical telling of the story of Zachariah, Elizabeth and their child John’s unusual conception and birth. When Zachariah doubted the angel’s prediction that Elizabeth would conceive a son in her old age, he lost his voice only to recover it at the birth of the boy. Then Zachariah sang the beautiful words of the Benedictus Dominus (“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people.”). These words, which we sing at Matins, acknowledge that God fulfills his promises and that John would be the “forerunner” of the Messiah – that he would “go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.”
The second example is the evening Office Hymn for this feast, Ut queant laxis (#206 in the St. Ambrose Hymnal). The hymn and its tune are thought to have been written by Paul the Deacon (720-799) and it became well known in the Church. One of its peculiarities is that the beginning note of each phrase of the text begins one note higher than the phrase before. A legend regarding this composition says that Deacon Paul, preparing to sing the Exultet at the Paschal Vigil, developed a case of laryngitis. This reminded him of St. Zachariah losing his voice at the conception of St. John and he was inspired to write the hymn. Two hundred years later, the musician Guido of Arezzo (990-1050) used this hymn to help his students learn the pattern of the scale. From that time on, the first syllable of each phrase was associated with the first note of each phrase, producing what we call “solfegio”. Ut (which was later changed to the more musical “do”), re, mi, fa, sol, la, to which was later added “ti”, are known to every music student and every fan of “The sound of Music”.