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Updated: April 30, 2025
On that occasion I ventured, by way of encouraging the French school, to point to the peculiar significance of Auber, and particularly to his Stumme von Portici, drawing attention, on the other hand, to the overloaded melodies of Rossini, which often resembled sol-fa exercises.
There is one curious anomaly in the orthodox Sol-fa system, which has caused a good deal of amusement to its critics, and has ended by causing a cleavage on the part of many who are otherwise in cordial agreement with the broad lines of the method. This is concerned with the treatment of the minor key.
The orthodox Sol-fa teacher relates the notes of the minor scale, not to the key-note, but to the third of the scale, i.e. to the key-note of the relative major. The confusion which this plan produces in the sense of tonality can readily be imagined.
Thus, if the class be given the doh of G major, they can sing low te, low lah, low soh, and low fah, or, as these notes are written in Sol-fa notation, t, l, s, f,. These points are sometimes overlooked by mistresses, and the early training loses in thoroughness.
Get it to sing the phrase it has written to Sol-fa names in this way it will find out its own mistake. In writing notes, either on the blackboard or on manuscript paper, it is not necessary to fill up all the space between the lines, as is done in printed music. If children are allowed to do this, they will spend a long time over their exercises.
Now, if those who have 'picked up' the knowledge of sight-singing without knowing how they did it be asked to explain how they arrive at their intervals, it will be found that tonality plays a large part in their consciousness. In other words, they are perfectly certain of their key-note, and at any moment could sing it, even after complicated passages. This fact is the root of the Sol-fa system.
Give the hand sign for this note, according to the Sol-fa plan, and tell the children that the note is called doh. Now repeat the scale, but this time play it from high C to middle C, repeating the high C at the end. The children will see at once what has happened, and that the high C now 'finishes' the passage.
It has pitch-pine benches and map-cases, and a thermometer to be kept at not less than 58 and not more than 62 , and ventilators which the Inspector is careful to examine. When I stumbled in last week the teacher was drilling the children in Tonic Sol-fa with a little harmonium, and I left on tiptoe.
Modes of expression need not begin till after five, or later. With regard to music, every child should begin to undergo a simple course of ear-training on the sol-fa system as elaborated and taught by McNaught, because the faculty of so learning is lost atrophied by the age of twelve or fourteen.
In addition to singing from the hand signs, and from the Sol-fa 'modulator' which is gradually being constructed on the board, the children can now sing from the horizontal Sol-fa notation, and from the staff notation. The first of these is invaluable in the early stages, as it absolutely precludes guessing.
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