While the below is taken from a Wikipedia article called The Guidonian Hand, it explains my understanding of the musical B and H (soft B and hard B respectively) from a book by Gardner Read called Music Notation. I stumbled across this book many years ago when I was trying to find out why a Bach work I had seen had "H molle" in its title.

The following quote is found in the above article's section called "The Hexachord In The Middle Ages". As I understand them, hexachords were very important in the aural teaching of singing when the availability of instruments was scarce and notation was just beginning to develop.

Quote:
Each hexachord could start on G, C or F and the adjacent table, reading upwards from the bottom, shows the notes in each hexachord for each of three octaves. Reading from left to right could, within certain limits, permit notes within different octaves to be distinguished from each other. Thus, C (modern c) was "C fa ut" (or "Cefaut"), c (modern c′) was "C sol fa ut", and cc (modern c″) was "C sol fa". Since the lowest pitch was designated by the Greek letter Γ (gamma, for 'g'), the pitch was known as "Gamma ut" or "Gamut", a term which came to designate the range of notes available, and later, a complete range of anything.

The hexachordal system also distinguished between B♭ (fa in the F hexachord, and known as "B molle" for 'soft B') and B♮ (mi in the G hexachord, and known as "B durum" for 'hard B'). Over time, the soft and hard variants of 'b' were depicted as a rounded '♭' and a squared-off '♮' which gradually developed into the modern flat and natural signs (or, in Northern Europe, into the letters 'b' and 'h')

Regards,
Noel

MY SONGS...
Audiophile BIAB 2025