an entire range or series
She ran the whole gamut of the emotions from A to B — Dorothy Parker
the whole series of recognized musical notes
run the gamut
to go through the whole range of something
late Latin gamma ut, lowest note in medieval scale of music, from gamma, applied to the lowest note G on the bass clef + ut, applied to the first note of a hexachord, the notes of which were named after syllables of a Latin hymn: Ut queant laxis re sonare fibris Mi ra gestorum fa muli tuorum, Sol ve polluti la bii reatum, Sancte Johannes. In the 18th cent. doh replaced ut, soh replaced sol, and another note, named si from the initials of Sancte Johannes, was added to the scale; si was later changed to te to avoid having two notes with the same initial letter. In the 20th cent. me became a common spelling for mi1, reflecting its pronunciation