Ut queant laxis

"Ut queant laxis" or "Hymnus in Ioannem" is a Latin hymn in honor of John the Baptist, written in Horatian Sapphics[1] with text traditionally attributed to Paulus Diaconus, the eighth-century Lombard historian.

The first stanza is: Ut queant laxīs resonāre fibrīs Mīra gestōrum famulī tuōrum, Solve pollūtī labiī reātum, Sāncte Iohannēs.

A paraphrase by Cecile Gertken, OSB (1902–2001) preserves the key syllables and loosely evokes the original meter: Do let our voices resonate most purely, miracles telling, far greater than many; so let our tongues be lavish in your praises, Saint John the Baptist.

[2] In the nineteenth century, Sarah Glover, an English music teacher, renamed "si" to "ti" so that every syllable might be notated by its initial letter.

But this was not adopted in countries using fixed do solfège: in Romance languages "si" is used alike for B and B flat, and no separate syllable is required for sharp "sol".