Music's Guiding Hand: A Novel Inspired by the Life of Guido d'Arezzo

It was too big a secret to keep and too great a price to pay.

Though few details are known of 11th-century Benedictine monk Guido d'Arezzo, he is widely recognized for inventing the language of music. The Hand of Music offers a fictional account as to how an unlikely friendship between two medieval monks might have inspired one of the most important and enduring innovations of the Western world.

When a fellow monk continually struggles to learn the sacred songs by rote, Brother Guido devises ...