So, what is Solfège?Solfège, which is also called
solfa, or
solfeggio, provides a framework for melodies by establishing recognizable relationships between pitches, and helps train our ears to hear patterns in music.
Italian "solfeggio" and English/French "solfège" derive from the names of two of the syllables used, namely
sol and fa.
The generic term "solmization", referring to any system of denoting pitches of a musical scale by syllables, including those used in India and Japan as well as solfège, and comes from French solmisatio, from the Latin solfège syllables of
sol and mi.
The verb "to sol-fa" simply means to sing a passage in solfège.
Take a look at this hymn, and compare the Latin words and translation.
Do you spot anything, that may register with your knowledge of solfège?
There is more than one idea for the origin of this system, but the common one goes back to the eleventh-century in Italy, where the music theorist Guido of Arezzo invented a notational system that named the six notes of the hexachord after the first syllable of each line of the Latin hymn
Ut queant laxis, the "Hymn to St. John the Baptist", yielding
ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la.That is what you've just seen above.
Notice that each successive line of this hymn begins on the next scale degree, so each note's name was the syllable sung at that pitch in this hymn.
In the music score above
Ut queant laxīs
resonāre fībrīs
Mīra gestōrum
famulī tuōrum,
Solve pollūtī
labiī reātum,
Sancte IōhannēsThese words were written by Paulus Diaconus in the 8th century.
They translate as:
So that your servants may,
with loosened voices,
Resound the wonders
of your deeds,
Clean the guilt
from our stained lips,
O St. John.Ut was changed in the 1600's in Italy to the open syllable
Do, at the suggestion of the musicologue Giovanni Battista Doni, wich he based on the first syllable of his surname, and
Si from the initials for
Sancte
Iohannes was added to complete the diatonic scale.
In Anglophone countries,
Si was changed to
Ti by Sarah Glover in the nineteenth century so that every syllable might begin with a different letter.
Ti is used in tonic sol-fa, as you recall from the famed show tune
Do-Re-Mi.
This, to me at least, seems a logical and most likely possibility for its origin.
There have been some alterations and variations to the system over the centuries, but Solfège is still used for sight reading training, to this day.
In the U.S., traditional American country music was first recorded in the 1920's by solfège-trained singers, often too poor to afford a piano, who used sight reading as a way of making printed music into entertainment.
Flanders Bays and "Singing Bob" Leonard were traveling music teachers who trained hundreds of students, among them The Carter Family, who recorded the first nationally distributed recordings of regional "country" music.
In the next Reply, we find out why solfège is advantageous.
Peter