About the Composer

My latent, inner musicianship nerd has resurfaced lately. I am lucky to have had a very high level of musicianship training, largely based on the Kodály Method, which actually is more of a philosophy than a method. It’s mostly associated with the teaching of small children, but I encountered it first as a college freshman. I’ve been trying to rebuild my memories of how I was taught, and how I might use similar techniques as a teacher.

Sight singing exercises are executed using the movable do system, whereby “do” represents the tonic, as opposed to just being another way of saying “C”. The benefit to me was that intervals were learned in the context of tonality. The ascending fourth do-fa has a completely different implication tonally than the ascending fourth of so-do, for example. The tritone is notoriously difficult for students to hear and sing, but I think of it as fa-ti and have no trouble. The syllable ti is always a leading tone. Do-fa is always a perfect fourth. You can count on it. With fixed do, where the syllables are the same as note names, you get no help with intervals, and you just have to learn them by rote. Do-fa could be a tritone. You’re on your own.

In cases where sight singing exercises change key, it’s necessary to change the meaning of do. If you start out in D, do is D, but then when you modulate to A, do becomes A. It’s tricky, but it keeps you constantly aware of what key you’re in. Sometimes it’s a philosophical choice where to change the do. It’s also fun. (I did mention that I was a musicianship nerd.) Using this system, singing becomes a big help in learning diatonic harmony.

Hungarian composer and educator Zoltán Kodály advocated beginning with pentatonic scales (eg. do-re-me-so-la) because he had observed that children have trouble singing half steps in tune. The fourth (fa) and seventh (ti) scale degrees are left out to avoid the problem until students are more secure. The first interval taught is a descending minor third (so-mi), as this is the easiest to hear and sing. Think of all the nursery rhymes that start this way, to say nothing of the child’s taunting “nyah nyah” song. Then la is added, then do and re. The idea is that singing should be fun and natural.

Teach music and singing at school in such a way that it is not a torture but a joy for the pupil; instil a thirst for finer music in him, a thirst which will last for a lifetime. Music must not be approached from its intellectual, rational side, nor should it be conveyed to the child as a system of algebraic symbols, or as the secret writing of a language with which he has no connection.

Movement is used from the beginning, which means clapping, marching, conducting or whatever while you’re singing. This promotes an awareness of pulse, which ensures that notes and rests are given their full value. At later stages, students can clap one rhythm while singing another, or perform a three-part exercise with two parts on the piano and singing the other.

Mastering these skills without an instrument will make the student a better musician, no matter what their instrument will be. Musicianship is more than sight singing and dictation. It’s singing in tune. It’s inner hearing. It’s feeling the pulse. It’s listening to your partner. It’s making music.

Poking among some neglected subscriptions in Google Reader, I just came across this interesting approach to learning how to sing atonal, or otherwise difficult, music. This is from The Concert, the blog of a New York soprano.

In a nutshell, the idea is to break the piece into smaller tasks, the first being to concentrate on one small section at a time. Within each section, strip the material of text and rhythm, only focusing at first on the pitches. Basically, learn the string of pitches one interval at time.

But, here’s the part that, for me, makes this so smart: in learning this string of intervals, sing against some held note on the piano. Our soprano suggests finding the closest thing to a tonal center, or just “C”. I would suggest looking at the accompaniment to the material you’re learning, and find something prominent there to sing against, so you’re ahead of the game when you actually get to the point of singing with accompaniment. If the music is well-crafted, there should be all kinds of things in the accompaniment to support the singer.

Now, personally, I don’t write (or like) atonal music in general, and I think it’s particularly problematic for the voice as an instrument, but I really admire this soprano for being willing to take these careful measures to get it right!

I’m also not a huge fan of Modus Novus, that bain of musicianship students everywhere, which contains atonal sight singing exercises, but I recognize it as a necessary evil. Along those lines, I think the technique described here is a great approach to doing those exercises, not only for singers, but all musicians, no matter what their instrument is.

Frank Pesci raised an interesting question on his interesting blog today. I wanted to comment, but his site doesn’t allow comments from non-”Blogger”-ers. The basic question is:

Why is “do”, “C.” Meaning, why has the default understanding of the solfege syllable “do” become synonymous with the English character “C” (and not “A”)?

And some related points are:

A few things need to be sorted out before we begin. First is the fact that only English speaking countries use the English alphabet (A through G with accidentals) to delineate pitches. Next, we will forego the initial usage of Guido of Arezzo’s system of, essentially, movable “ut,” and focus on the common acceptance of the fixed “do” system, with “do” corresponding to the note associated with the English letter “C.”

First, a correction: It’s not true that only English speaking countries use letter names for pitches. They do so in Germany and in Central/Eastern Europe as well. You may sometimes see “B” for what we call “B Flat” and “H” for what we call “B”.

As for the main question, I don’t have all the answers, but I suspect it has something to do with the letter names system being based on the minor scale (in movable do, the minor scale starts on “la”). If we equate “la” to “A”, the relative major is “C”, or “do”. There’s no real significance to the letter “C”, and the answer lies not in fixed “do”, but actually in movable “do”. So, whereas Guido d’Arezzo’s system of syllables uses the major scale as a basis (do [ut], re, mi, etc.), letter names use the minor scale.

I’m no musicologist; this is just a guess. Please comment if you have a more thorough explanation.

By the way, the origin of those solfege syllables is explained pretty well here.

If you know Frank, please pass this along. Meanwhile, I’m adding him to “Other Blogs”.