Solfa - what is it, and why is it so important in music education?
To say that Relative solfa (also known as Solfege) is a system of learning and reading music is really only scratching at the surface. For those who feel they have not come across solfa before, it's use was immortalized in the film 'The Sound of Music' in the scene on bikes when the children learn to use it, and with the song they subsequently sing - 'Do a deer'. See link below, particularly the section between 2:20 - 4:40:- Solfa use in The Sound of Music
Let's start by exploring briefly how and when it was developed, and the key figures involved in this work. An 11th Century Italian monk, Guido D'Arezzo first invented a form of Solfege; - The Hymn Ut Queant Laxis, shown below, has the Solfa names of the day highlighted in bold.
These ideas were developed into a full Relative Solfa system by Sara Glover who was a late18th - early 19th Century educator in Norwich. In her early twenties, as a vicar's daughter, she taught at Sunday school. These pupils were predominantly poor children who had to work during the week, so weren't able to attend school then, so this was their only formal education, however they soon became known for their singing prowess. She was a keen amateur musician, and it was during this time that she developed her solfa system which became known as Norwich Sol-fa. Her system had a different hand sign for each note, similar names for the solfa notes that we use today, as well as other aspects such as alphabetical note names from J to Z which have since fallen by the wayside. Sara Glover published a book about her methodology, which was then taken up and further developed by the addition of hand signs by John Spencer Curwen, who was a congregationalist minister. This method became well established in England, used widely in singing in churches and schools in the 18th and early 19th Centuries, and it was this method of Relative Solfa and its use in primary schools that so impressed Zultan Kodály when he visited England in the 1920s as part of a pact finding tour of Europe, that he took it back with him to Hungary and instigated its use as the fundamental part (along with French rhythm names) of the music education within his homeland. So sad, then, that this methodology is no longer in common use in the UK, although it is still an important part of every Hungarian child's education.
There are 7 basic notes of the scale, all given a name (do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti,). With relative solfa, these will be the same relative to each other whatever note you start on ie starting on a C, you would sing do re mi fa so la ti, but also if you started on a D, you would still sing do re mi fa so la ti, as the relationship between do & re, re & mi etc is always constant. It would therefore sound the same to the ear, but just be slightly higher in pitch. The tonic, or home note, for a major scale is Do, and for a minor scale it's La. This gives those who know Solfa a deeper understanding of key structure and the relationship between a major key and its relative minor.
By singing in music lessons, using solfa in a regular and systematic way, pitching and the inner ear (hearing things in our head, without having a sound played to guide us) improves. Pairing this with hand signs reinforces this in a kinaesthetic or tactile way, providing a multisensory approach and the hand signs show pitch movements up and down as well as identifying the particular note. This approach develops musicians with a much deeper aural awareness and therefore a more developed understanding and appreciation of music.
