STEPHEN FRY - OF CLASSICAL MUSIC

Gregorian chant had arrived and the last echoing spoonful of Ambrosian had faded away to nothing.

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ear 600, that is, and up pops another Pope. Step forward… Gregory I. He, as well as despatching St Augustine to Thanet with the words, 'Mmm, Gus, baby, I've got a cute little job for you… go get your brolly…', he it is who decides to get together a school, the Schola Cantorum, in Rome, to have another go at sorting the whole music business out.

Allegedly, it was also around now that a new breed was formed, the mcmagerius brandius or 'brand manager', as they came to be known. Or at least, it was the first known time that anyone used the phrase 'Let's make sure we're all singing from the same hymnsheet.' Greg One, as the numberplate on his horse and cart read, also published

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o. We're officially off the mark. PLAINSONG. Beautiful, generally single-note stuff. Music has arrived, thanks to a mixture of Saints Ambrose and Gregory. The next chap who gets a look-in with regards to the 'Important people in Music History' Stars in Their Eyes Special is a man called Guido. No, not Fawkes.

Sorry to rush but I do have rather a lot of centuries to cover. I've taken the liberty of moving on a few hundred years, if that's OK? King Canute is now boss of Britain Pic, and paddling is in. Bigtime. And just as Mr and Mrs Khayyam put a small ad in the Persian Post announcing the birth of little Omar, the musical world was getting to grips with a new system invented by a man called Guido d'Arezzo. He it was who laid the groundwork for another mythically talented musician, the great aforementioned 'Julie of Andrews'.

As his name suggests, Guido spent a lot of his life in the Italian city of Arezzo, some 30 kilometres north of Lake Trasimeno. He was a Benedictine monk who had moved from his native Paris.

Guido's method invented a series of words to go with the notes, or in the words of Queen Julie herself, 'One shalt commence at the very outset, indeed a goodly place wherein to begin. When one dost peruse, one surely inaugurates the process by means of the initial three symbols, ABC, when thou singest, thou leadest with "Do re mi"'. Er, etcetera.

But, to be fair… it more or less sums it up. So next time you're talking about The Sound of Music, maybe drop into the conversation, 'Ah, yes, the old tonic solfa system, as pioneered by Guido d'Arezzo in the eleventh century. Or was it Steps?'

In fact, old Guido was a busy little sausage. In this same year, just as the Chinese were putting the finishing touches to their pleasant albeit lethal mix of charcoal, sulphur and potassium nitrate - aka gunpowder - and the weird sounding poem on everyone's lips was Beowulf (well, either that, or they were all drunk), our man in the music world was also developing that cute litde five-line thing that all music is now written on, called 'the stave', also known as the staff. This thing. With this litde thing, musicians need never get lost again. Unless they were male and driving with their girlfriends, of course. Anyway, the stave was from year 1000.

It was left to sad music students hundreds of years later to make up mnemonics like 'All Cows Eat Grass', 'Every Good Boy Deserves Favour', and my personal favourite, 'Guinevere Eats Cordelia's Aardvaark for Dinner'", to remember the notes. Guido needed someone to work on his PR though, because most people have never heard of him. Maybe add a power initial to his name… let's see, Guido G. d'Arezzo. That would have done it. That would have made them sit up and take notice. No doubt had he been living today, he would have been called something like the Guid-o-stave, just to make sure his name survived the years.

Guido d'Arezzo died in 1050. Just forty-eight years later, there came another musician working in a similar world - days spent in prayer and thought. This person, too, would make a significant contribution to music - maybe not in quite the same tangible and enduring way as Guido and his five famous lines, but important all the same. This person, born in 1098, really did move music on to new heights, made sure it got noticed. But the truly shocking thing about this particular composer, arranger, poet and dreamer is… she was a woman! fi Which is, of course, the spaces downwards on the treble clef. 'All Cows Eat Grass3 is the spaces upwards on the bass clef, and 'Every Good Boy Deserves Eavour' is the mnemonic for the lines upwards on the table. Glad to have cleared that up.

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ne of the things I've always found curious about the abbess, composer, 'see-er of dreams' and general all round eccentric I lildcgard of Bingen is that, well, she wasn't. From Bingen, I mean. She wasn't born in Bingen, she didn't live in Bingen, and she didn't die in Bingen. If, at this point, you're thinking you may as well, just as.u curately, from now on, refer to her as Hildegard of Basingstoke, or I hklegard Von Symonds Yat, then, well, sorry. No, although she was born in Rheinhessen and died in Rupertsberg, at least Rupertsberg -which is around sixty kilometres south-west of Stuttgart - is near ltingen. Good. Glad to clear that up.

Hildegard was clearly a remarkable woman, someone just as happy doling out advice to bishops - popes even - as she was preparing a soothing poultice of plant extracts, mixed to her own recipe. She had visions from an early age, and was sent off to become an 'anchor' very early on. An 'anchor' was a sort of cross between a nun and an SAS survival expert - Ray Mears meets Sister Wendy - and Hildegard would have experienced a last rites ceremony before being shut off in solitary confinement.

When she was forty-two, she had a vision which she said gave her total understanding of religious texts, and, from this point on, she wrote down everything she saw in her dreams and visitations. Today, her major contribution is considered her musical one. She left behind her a large number of plainchants, often to her own texts, rather than the existing settings so common at the time. I still find it sad that Hildegard is famous now not only because she was one of the first important composers of whom we have any record, but also because she was one of the ONLY female ones. Still. As Mr Brown said, it's a man's world. Verily, be it the globe of a gentleman. But, moreover, he would, amounteth to little…

…NAUGHT, indeed,… minus a woman or a nun. At least I think that's what he said. Hard to tell, when he shouts so much.

Her story is all the more remarkable when you stop for a moment and think how hard it must have been not just to be a female composer in those days - jeepers, that's hard enough now - but, well, how hard it must have been to be a female ANYTHING! 'Yes, I am a woman. Yes, I am a composer. Yes, as it happens, I do have visions, which I write down as soon as I can. Er, no, actually, I'm not a witch, thank you very much!'

I say we clasp a picture of her in one hand, a full goblet of wine in the other, and zoom on to 1179 to toast her non-witchly, eccentric musical-ness. Or whatever. Actually, is that a wart on her left cheek?

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o. 1179, the year of the death of Hildegard of Bingen, or Rupertsberg, depending on how much of a control freak you pride yourself on being. It was also the year, in fact, that the world's first musical joke started doing the rounds. It lives on now as a Bing Crosby/Walt Disney joke, but the original, as you can see below, was about Hildegard herself. It went something like this. Interrogate: 'Quod differentum est trans Hildegard von Bingen et Waltus DisniusV Repondatum: 'Bingen singen, sed Waltus Disnius!' Mmmm… Maybe you had to be there. The twelth century, I mean. It was probably around this time that early jokes about drummers and percussionists were born. Jokes such as, 'What's the range of your average drum? About ten feet with a good throwing arm.'