Solfege
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In music and sight singing solfege or solmization is a way of assigning syllables to degrees or steps of the diatonic scale. In order, they are: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So(l), La, Ti (or Si), and Do (for the octave). In India, the origin of solmization was to be found in Vedic texts like the Upanishads, which discuss a musical system of seven notes, realized ultimately in what is known as sargam. Much later in the West it was a pedagogical technique created by (or at least generally ascribed to) Guido of Arezzo; these names are still used for the notes in Latin countries while in Germanic countries the names of letters of the alphabet are used.
"Solfege" came from French solfège in the 1910s.
(In French, solfège refers to musical technical skills as a whole: sight reading, writing the score of the music one hears, singing in tune, etc.)
The French word in turn came from the Italian solfeggio, which is a combination of sol and fa. Its equivalent since Early Modern English is sol-fa.
The syllable names come from a formerly well-known medieval hymn, entitled Ut queant laxis, in which each successive musical phrase, corresponding to a half line of the first verse, starts on the next higher scale degree in the major scale. The first syllable in each half line corresponds to the solfege syllable, with the exception of the first, "Ut," which was changed to the more singable "Do." The original hymn did not start a phrase upon the seventh scale degree. To fill in this gap, at a later time the Ti (or sometimes Si) was added to the repertoire.
In colloquial language, singers sometimes incorrectly use "solfege" and "sight reading" as synonyms; sight reading means reading the piece without benefit of previous study, or numerical sight-singing, where the solfege syllables are replaced by the numbers one through seven.
In English speaking countries, solfege is most commonly used with singers. In countries where the fixed Do system is used (see below), solfege is commonly taught to all musicians.
Variations
There are two main types of solfege: moveable Do, in which each syllable corresponds with a scale degree, and fixed Do, in which the syllables correspond to fixed pitches. The advantage of moveable Do is that Do always corresponds to the tonic; the disadvantage is that the singer must do a harmonic analysis of the piece in order to sing the correct syllables. The shaped note system removes this disadvantage. In fixed Do, the pitches are set: the tonic, Do, is C, Re is D, and so on; Fa is easy to remember, since it is F.
There are also other syllables corresponding to notes outside of the major scale. All the solfege syllables are listed in the table below; the syllables in the major scale are shown in bold.
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Some variations of the syllables are (e.g. the major scale): Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Si, Do, and Fa, Sol, La, Fa, Sol, La, Mi, Fa. The first variation was common in English-speaking countries until John Curwen changed Si to Ti so each syllable would start with a different letter. The second variation uses four syllables and repeats three of them. This system always has a half step before the syllable "fa". It was once common in England, and, via England, in early America. It has survived in American shape note books such as the Sacred Harp and Southern Harmony. The article Shape note discusses assigning shaped noteheads to correspond with the solfege symbols. John Curwen developed the English Tonic Sol-fa system (see below), in which visual aids such as shape notes removed the difficulty of singing the correct syllables in a moveable Do system.
Tonic Sol-fa
Tonic Sol-fa is a system of musical notation based on relationships between tones in a key. The usual staff notation is replaced with solmization syllables (e.g. do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do) or their abbreviations (d,r,m,f,s,l,t,d). "Do" is chosen to be the tonic of whatever key is being used (thus the terminology moveable Do). This is the name of one of the most popular among letter systems which was developed by John Curwen of England.
Some of the roots of tonic sol-fa may be found in items such as
- the use of syllables in the 11th century by the monk Guido de Arezzo
- the cipher notation proposed by Jean Jacques Rousseau in France in 1746,
- its further development by Pierre Galin and popularization by Aimé Paris and Emile Chevé, and
- the Norwich sol-fa of Sarah Ann Glover of England. Reverend John Curwen (1816-1880) was instrumental in the development of tonic sol-fa in England, and was chiefly responsible for its popularity.
B. C. Unseld and Theodore F. Seward, with Biglow and Main publishers, imported Curwen's tonic sol-fa to the United States, though the method was never widely received. Prior to this, the 9th edition of the Bay Psalm Book (Boston, USA) had appeared with the initials of four-note syllables (fa, sol, la, me) underneath the staff. Reverend John Tufts, in his An Introduction to the Singing of Psalm Tunes in a Plaine & Easy Method, moved the initials of the four-note syllables onto the staff in place of "regular notes", and indicated rhythm by punctuation marks to the right of the letters. These may be considered American forerunners of Curwen's system, though he may not have been aware of them. Tufts' Introduction was popular, going through several editions. Nevertheless, his work probably did more to pave the way for shape notes. When Unseld and Steward introduced tonic sol-fa in the late 1800s, it was considered "something new".
Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) of Hungary championed the system in more modern times, building on Curwen's work. He introduced a set of hand signals which correspond to each solfege syllable.
Dr. Edwin E. Gordon, a noted American music educator, in his Jump Right In method and other writings has advanced the solfeggio to perfection. In his method he employs a DO-based major, and a LA-based minor system, therefore eliminating the confusion between major and minor tonalities.
Common scales
Some common scales are given below in solfeggio for reference.
| Ascending the chromatic scale (using sharps): | Do Di Re Ri Mi Fa Fi Sol Si La Li Ti Do |
| Descending the chromatic scale (using flats): | Do Ti Te La Le Sol Se Fa Mi Mé Re Ra Do |
| The major scale: | Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do |
| The natural minor scale: | Do Re Mé Fa Sol Le Te Do |
| The natural minor scale in a "fixed" system: | La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La |
| The harmonic minor scale: | Do Re Mé Fa Sol Le Ti Do |
| The ascending melodic minor scale: | Do Re Mé Fa Sol La Ti Do |
| The descending melodic minor scale: | Do Te Le Sol Fa Mé Re Do |
See also
- Musical note
- Sargam
- GNU Solfege
- Solresol, a constructed language that had the solfege notes as syllables and could be sung or played as well as spoken.
- The Nairobi Trio, a comedy skit, to the tune "Solfeggio" (written by Robert Maxwell and sung by the Ray Charles Singers)
- The Kokiri, a fictional elf-like race from the Legend of Zelda game series who are largely named after blends of Solfege tones.
- Iroha, an ancient poem sometimes used a solfege in Japan.
- Canntaireachd, a means of communicating bagpipe music vocally.
External links
- [The song "Do-Re-Mi"] from The Sound of Music
- [Do Re Mi Web Module]
- [History of Notation] by Neil V. Hawes
- [John Curwen & the tonic sol-fa method]
- [Tonic Sol-fa] by Neil V. Hawes
Tonic Sol-fa examples
References
- The Teacher's Manual of the Tonic Sol-fa Method: Dealing with the Art of Teaching and the Teaching of Music, by John Curwen ISBN 0863141188
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