תָּו (tav) — musical note; דּוֹ-רֶה-מִי-פָה-סוֹל-לָה-סִי — solfège scale
Etymology
The Hebrew word תָּו for "musical note" has a double history: the ancient word and the modern musical system it came to represent.
Guido d'Arezzo was a Benedictine monk who around 1025 moved to Arezzo to train cathedral choir singers. Memorizing a full choral repertoire by ear took roughly a decade. Guido developed two revolutionary tools: a five-line staff system for writing music (predecessor of modern notation), and a mnemonic system for teaching the six notes then used in church music. He reset an 8th-century Latin hymn to John the Baptist so that each successive line of the hymn began on the next note of the scale. The opening syllables of the six lines — Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La (from Ut queant laxis, Resonare fibris, Mira gestorum, Famuli tuorum, Solve polluti, Labii reatum) — became the names of the notes. In the 17th century, Italian musicologist Giovanni Battista Doni persuaded contemporaries to replace "Ut" with "Do," claiming it was easier to sing and was an abbreviation of Dominus (Lord) — though it also happened to be the opening syllable of his own name. Around the same time, the seventh note "Si" was added from the initials of Sancte Iohannes (the last line of the hymn).
The notation system reached Jewish musicians slowly. Salamone Rossi (Shlomo ben Moshe min ha-Adumim), court musician to the Duke of Mantua and the first Jewish composer to use staff notation, published HaShirim Asher liShlomo — the first Hebrew-language book with musical notation — in the early 17th century. He likely used the Italian word note for the notation marks. Among Ashkenazi Jews who learned to read music, the Yiddish word noten prevailed. During the Haskalah, writers searched for a Hebrew alternative, trying phrases like "signs of music," "symbols of song," and "letters of melody." By the 1890s the term תָּו (in combinations like "tavei zimra" and "tavei negina") had taken hold and became standard.
The word תָּו itself is a rare Biblical hapax found in Ezekiel 9:4 ("put a mark upon the foreheads of the men") and in Job. The context clearly indicates a marking or sign. One theory holds that it referred specifically to an X-shaped mark, since the letter tav had that form in ancient Hebrew script, but the original meaning cannot be determined with certainty. In later rabbinic literature it was understood as a synonym for סִימָן (sign), itself borrowed from Greek.
Key Quotes
"וְהִתְוִיתָ תָּו עַל מִצְחוֹת הָאֲנָשִׁים הַנֶּאֱנָחִים" — יחזקאל ט', ד'
Timeline
- c. 1025: Guido d'Arezzo develops solfège system; notes named Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La
- Early 17th century: Salamone Rossi publishes first Hebrew book with staff notation
- 17th century: Giovanni Battista Doni replaces "Ut" with "Do"; "Si" added for seventh note
- 1890s: The term תָּו begins to appear in Hebrew for "musical note" (in "tavei zimra," "tavei negina")
- Late 19th century: תָּו becomes the established Hebrew term, displacing Yiddish noten and Hebrew periphrases
Related Words
- סִימָן — sign, mark (from Greek; synonymous with Biblical תָּו)
- בֵּמוֹל — flat (from Italian b molle, "soft B," the medieval name for B-flat)
- דִּיאֵז — sharp (from Italian, from Latin, from Greek diesis, "smallest musical interval")
- נגינה — music, melody (classical Hebrew)