Do Re Mi: If You Can Read Music, Thank Guido D'Arezzo.(Book review)

* Do Re Mi: If You Can Read Music, Thank Guido D'Arezzo, by Susan L. Roth with Angelo Mafucci. Houghton Mifflin, (www.houghtonmifflinbooks; 1(800) 225-3362), 2006. 32 pp. $17.

This is an excellent book to introduce to young children (and the young at heart) about how printed music actually began! While living in Queens, New York, Susan Roth thought that her surroundings reflected a diverse place where people came from many different ethnic backgrounds. The children may not speak the same language, but they could communicate in a universal language by reading music. This is what inspired Roth to write her book and hold tribute to the creator of written music!

For many years, Guido D'Arezzo, a young man from Tuscany imagined that his system of lines and spaces could be used as a written language of music, and he was determined to make his ideas work. The reader will marvel at this historical documentation, which begins with a gracious acknowledgment to the author's friend and scholar Angelo Mafucci, and a foreword admiring Guido D'Arezzo's music writing method, written by Mafucci. The young reader will appreciate the final glossary page, which includes both current as well as ancient definitions. The author's ...