About the Composer

Anyone who has studied music at a conservatory or college level has taken an ear training class typically called “Musicianship.”  This is where we train our ears to recognize intervals and chord qualities, learn how to perform melodies and rhythms accurately at sight and practice writing down musical examples upon hearing them.  I wonder if, bogged down in the details of teaching those various skills, we’ve lost track of what musicianship really is, and why we would use that name for such a class, as opposed to just, say, “Ear Training” or “Sight Reading”.

I have occasionally seen the class referred to simply as “Solfège.” This reveals a common misunderstanding:  solfège is just one of many tools used in musicianship training—not an end, but a means. We don’t offer the class with the goal of teaching solfège; we use solfége to teach musicianship. It seems the purpose of teaching these skills—musicianship—has been lost.  (More on solfège here.)

Musicianship is about training the student not just to be a player of an instrument, but to be a musician. The best way to do that is to take the instrument away.

So, we teach sight singing. Students are expected to be able to accurately perform melodies and rhythms at sight. One goal—the obvious one—is to master the skill of reading music, which can then applied on the instrument. But are we seeing the larger, but less obvious goal?  Learn to be musical without an instrument. The instrument is basically a machine. It only makes music if the player knows how to make music. As long as the player depends on the instrument to make music, it’s the tail wagging the dog.

This is why, with true musicianship in mind, I rarely touch the piano in my classroom. Almost never. When students sing inaccurately, I correct them by singing accurately myself, showing them the mistake, which in some cases might be an error of intonation that cannot be demonstrated on the piano. When performing sight singing exercises, my students learn how to find any pitch they need relative to the pure “A” offered by a tuning fork. If a teacher sits at the piano, playing along with their students while they sing, they may learn what intervals and triads sound like, but unless they can do it without the crutch of an instrument to lean on, that’s poor musicianship. Musicianship means being able to do this without an instrument.

Similarly to sight singing, we require students to perform rhythm exercises. Again, there is an obvious goal of bringing them to proficiency in reading, but with rhythm, too, there is a larger, less obvious goal: to learn to feel the silent pulse and keep it consistent.  Sometimes there is silence in music. My beginning students have a very hard time with this. They can’t stand even a beat of silence and rush to the next sounding note. Musicianship means “hearing” the silence as well as the notes.

We talk about “ear training”, which is what happens when students learn to recognize and identify musical elements such as intervals and chords, but are we training them to use their “inner hearing”? If you ask a group of students to perform a melody, stop singing at a certain point, continuing the melody in their heads for a measure, will they be together, both rhythmically and tonally? That’s inner hearing, and that’s musicianship.

Training in dictation, which is the ability to write down melodies or rhythms as heard, also has a hidden but important benefit when it comes to musicianship. Typically, students are required to write down a melody or rhythm upon some fixed number of hearings. Now, at an advanced level, this is as it should be, but one has to ask what is the basic purpose of this in the first place? The ability to write down music upon hearing it has many practical applications, to be sure, but a larger purpose is served by practicing this in musicianship class.

The real skill that’s being developed here is musical memory. Not only is the student required to recognize intervals and rhythms, he or she is required to remember them for long enough to write them down coherently and legibly. Dictation is really a memory skill more than anything else, so at the beginning levels, dictation should take the form of memory exercises. It’s also an analytical skill.  Students should learn to recognize patterns and shapes early on, before being asked to write anything down. This is why, rather than having students just write as they’re hearing, I ask them not to even pick up their pencils until we have discussed the form and they can sing it back from memory. This is a stepping stone to becoming able to comprehend larger-scale forms. Musicianship means musical memory and an ear for form.

One day recently, my class was having trouble pulling together to sing a melody as a group. One of my students complained that it was much harder to sing with other people. You may have guessed that this was a student who had mastered the melody. By performing in a group in multiple, or even one part, even the strongest students are put to the test. Can they listen to each other and respond to each other’s strengths and weaknesses? Along with musical memory, sharp inner hearing and the ability to make music without an instrument, that’s musicianship.

Well, I’ve let this blog languish for so long, I’m not sure I can resuscitate it.   In the past I’ve come out of such lulls by throwing together bullet lists of little catch-up items.  So, let’s try that…

Composing
I haven’t done much composing since my string quartet work City Walks was premiered in May, but I’m now starting a new project, which will be a piece for the Slovenian new music ensemble MD7.  I had the privilege of hearing this group play in there home base of Ljubljana when I was there in 2007 visiting there resident conductor Steven Loy, a partner-in-crime going back over 20 years.  This is an unusual ensemble consisting of flute, clarinet, trombone, percussion, piano, viola and cello − a combination that promises a lot of possibilities.  The goal is a premiere in Ljubljana next summer, and hopefully more performances in the future, as they’re cooking some international travel plans. Also on the stove are plans for a Bay Area premiere as well.

Learning

This summer I spent a stimulating and fun three weeks attending the Summer Kodály Institute at Holy Names University right here in Oakland. The Summer Institute offers an intensive three weeks of solfège, conducting, pedagogy and chorus for music teachers who are interested in learning the Kodály Method or, as in my case, already know it and wish to brush up.    I took advanced solfège and conducting, both with the amazing Judit Hartyányi, who’s head of the music education department at the Liszt Academy in Budapest.

The solfège part was a wonderful refresher, both on my own musicianship skills and my way of teaching.  I was reminded of the importance of memory development and inner hearing, which I’m now applying heavily in my current teaching roles.  It was also fun to brush up on choral conducting, although I have no particular aspirations (or talent) in that area.  I got to prepare an old favorite of mine, the chorale “The Blessed Son of God” from the Vaughan Williams Christmas cantata Hodie, and conduct it on the final concert.   (I’m told it went well.)

If nothing else, the Kodály Institute reinforced my conviction that, by and large, music conservatories in this country are only scratching the surface when it comes to musicianship training.   All I can do is sigh.

Teaching
This summer, partly inspired by the Kodály Institute, I finally hung out my shingle and launched my private teaching studio.  I’m offering both composition and a combination of musicianship and theory.  Typically, those interested in the former need help with the latter as a prerequisite, so they get a little bit of everything.    I’m in the planning stages of offering classes in sight reading that will be of interest primarily to choral singers.  Nothing to promise yet, but this might get started as early as the beginning of 2010 here in the East Bay.

In addition to my position on the preparatory musicianship/composition faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory, as of this Fall, I’m now also filling the exact same role at the Crowden School in Berkeley.  Crowden is a very unusual place: the students, grades 4 through 8, all play a string instrument and they spend about 2 hours a day on music.  Two hours!   I thoroughly enjoy working with the kids at both places, and since I’m teaching the very beginning level, I can hope to be setting a strong foundation in musicianship for all of them.

Against my better judgment, I’m jumping into the fray regarding methods used in the teaching of sight singing. Normally I try to stay away from such conflicts, but I can only take so much disparagement of my beloved Movable Do system.  The last straw is the discovery of this web site, which contains misleading information designed to promote the sale of a book.

(Warning: This post is intended for musicianship and theory nerds. If you are not in that category, your eyes will glaze over shortly.)

What are we arguing about?

The age-old argument is this: Do we teach students to sight sing using an absolute system (Fixed Do) or a relative one (Movable Do)?

Using the Fixed Do system, the syllable do corresponds directly to the note name “C”, such that Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti(Si)-Do is a C major scale. Re is D, So is G, etc. Teachers who use this system value pitch memory as a way of learning how to read.  Over time the student should learn from this what each note feels like and sounds like.

The Movable Do system emphasizes each note’s function in the given key.  In the major, Do is always scale degree 1, So is always scale degree 5, etc., no matter what the key. Here what’s important is knowing what each note’s role is in whatever key you’re in. People with perfect pitch have a hard time with this.

I won’t be coy about my own preference. In a classroom musicianship setting, the movable Movable Do system has the most pedagogical value. We have an excellent fixed system in the English language for expressing absolute pitches. It’s called “letter names”. The Fixed Do system is nothing other than what’s used in certain European countries as an equivalent to our letter names. Over time, using it may teach students by rote how to sing the notes, but it will not teach them intervals. It will not teach them anything about harmony or function, to say nothing of voice leading. There are times where musicianship and theory students need to be able to sing and identify specific notes, and in those cases our English-language letter names are at their disposal.

What about scale degree numbers?

Good question. Yes, scale degree numbers accomplish the teaching of intervals and functionality very well. Thumbs up on numbers. Up to a point. What happens when you’re working in a minor key? What happens when it goes chromatic?  Sing me a German augmented 6th chord, please, using numbers.  You can sing “6-1-2-4″, but that comes nowhere near expressing what’s happening in this chord.  At best you can sing “lowered 6 – 1 – raised 2 – raised 4″, but that is unreasonably clumsy.

What’s so great about Movable Do?

The value of the Movable Do system over Fixed Do and scale degree numbers is consistency. In Movable, the interval between do and mi is always a major third no matter what. The student can count on those syllables to mean only one thing. In Fixed, if we’re in C minor, then the interval between do and mi is a minor third.  The aural connection between those syllables and their interval is broken.  Again, the syllables here serve no purpose beyond that of our usual letter names. In Numbers we have the same problem. Depending whether you’re in a minor key or a major key, the meaning of “1-3″ can vary, so they run out of steam pretty early on in the training process.

It becomes clearer when you start talking about minor keys and chromatics.  There are diverging approaches regarding Movable Do and minor, but my particular flavor is the one that uses the syllable “la” as the first scale degree in minor keys.  So, that’s la-ti-do-re-mi-fa-so-la (natural minor).  I’m aware that some advocate sticking with do as the first scale degree in minor, but that just defeats all of the benefits described above.  Now, if la is the tonic, then we still have that consistency: do-mi is still a major third, although now it functions somewhat differently.

In Movable Do there’s a convention for dealing with chromatics.  Let’s get back to that German augmented 6th chord, where there’s a lowered 6,  a raised 4 and a raised 2.  We can sing the 6 as “lo” instead of “la“.  We can sing the raised 4 as “fi” instead of “fa“, and we can sing the raised 2 as “ri” instead of “re“.  Chromatic chords like this are born of moving voices.  This chord is by nature part of a process of “going somewhere” within a chord progression by altering some of the scale degrees.  Altering the syllables accordingly helps students absorb that.  It engenders a sense of voice leading, which makes it easier to hear and sing the odd intervals, such as the augmented 6th from the “lo” up to the “fi“, that come about as a result.

What could anyone possibly have against Movable Do?

That’s always been a mystery to me.  This post began as a response to the site referred to above, run by a  choral conductor who wants his chorus to learn their music more easily, (and who wants to promote the sale of his book), where I read some incoherent assertions regarding the disadvantages of Movable Do, to wit:

1. Does not develop a sense of relative pitch. “Do” is always changing as the key signature changes.
2. Accidentals (sharp, flats or naturals) must still be accommodated by “change.”
3. Modulations to new keys are not easily performed.
4. Harmonic and melodic minor scales as well as modes must also be accommodated by a “change.”

Regarding #1, well, yes “Do” is always changing, sometimes even when the key signature does not; that’s the point.  But a sense of relative pitch is exactly what it does develop.  Students learn to negotiate a descending tritone in context. Fa-ti.  Always a tritone.  They learn that the descending 4th, la-mi in context sounds and feels completely different than the descending 4th that is is do-so.  Or that tricky augmented 6th described in the German augmented 6th example above, lo-fi.

#2 and #4 don’t make any sense to me at all, so I’ll leave them un-rebutted.  They seem redundant to each other and to #1.

I think the key complaint is most clearly expressed in #3.  So, in other words: It’s harder.  The mistake being made here is to think that this would ever be a quick or easy process.  It is in fact a very slow-moving process whose purpose is to bring about deep understanding of the musical processes that drive the music we’re learning to sight read.  It is not meant to be a quick way to get your chorus to learn their material.  In fact, if the process of teaching this way takes any less than three years, you’re not doing it right.

Yes, you have to decide where the do change occurs, and there isn’t always one right answer, but with practice you become adept at analyzing music on the fly and you always know where you are within the big picture.

What about my perfect pitch?

It will help you when you’re singing letter names and hinder you when singing movable do.  I ask my students who have perfect pitch to please leave it at the door when they come in.  I’m sure it comes in handy at parties, but it certainly does not mean you don’t need ear training.  If anything it is an obstacle you need to learn how to deal with so you can learn how to focus on the tonal context of the notes you’re singing.

What about atonal music?

Fair question.  See above: “letter names”.  Actually I have no problem with Fixed do here, other than that it would be unnecessarily confusing for students who have had three years of Movable.  Once tonal sight singing is mastered, students need to learn to negotiate music one interval at a time without the tonal context, and letter names are fine for this.  I don’t buy the argument often made about “singability” of solfège syllables versus letter names.  It’s not a liederabend.  It’s musicianship class.

What have others written about this?

Reams and reams, I’m sure.  In addition to the site mentioned above there are a handful of other interesting discussions of this topic on the web.  I single out Jody Nagel’s article on this for being the most thorough (and neutral) explanation of all the methods and their advantages and disadvantages, plus his fascinating explanation of why this problem is unique to the English-speaking world.

Scott Spiegelberg’s blog Musical Perceptions has an interesting item on this topic.  An anonymous commenter offers what might be the only convincing argument for Fixed Do having to do with how a string player processes music while reading.  It is food for thought, but doesn’t quite apply to the classroom musicianship setting.

Do you disagree?

Please feel free to comment below, but please let’s all be nice.

This may be of interest to very few regulars, but here it is for the future Kodály googler.

More YouTube trolling has turned up this footage of Zoltán Kodály himself interviewed on Hungarian Television in 1953. It was around this time that the ideas about music education he had been putting out in his writings for decades were just starting to be put into practice officially in Hungary’s education system.

I’ve never seen footage of Kodály before, or heard his voice, so this is a real gem for me. Below, I’ve translated the essential part of Kodály’s comments in the interview.

Yes, on a trial basis, the Ministry of Education has allowed about ten schools to teach singing six hours a week. So, we don’t have a lot of experience yet, but we’re seeing a surprising result in these schools. The students are improving in all areas. Their speech has improved; their writing has improved; their reading has improved. They’re learning to read earlier.

All of this goes back to music. For example, writing music down requires such precision that, if the written note is too high up or low down, it means something completely different. So, that influences their penmanship. Math is also going a lot better for them. Music involves constant counting, so it becomes useful to arithmetic as well.

But the most important thing is the effect it has on discipline. We complain about how hard it is to teach children discipline. Generally, in these schools things go a lot more smoothly. Ensemble singing gets them used to discipline and a feeling of responsibility.

Some of this may seem a little forced, but the epilogue is that Kodály’s notions on singing in schools were put into practice in Hungary in the 50’s and 60’s with the well-documented results that Hungarian students excelled in a number of areas as compared with those of other countries.

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”.