Tonic Sol-fa Songs

[Raina Giorno]

Curwenwas commissioned by a conference of Sunday school teachers in 1841 to find and promote a way of teaching music for Sunday school singing. He took elements of the Norwich Sol-fa and other techniques later adding hand signals. It was intended that his method could teach singing initially from the Sol-fa and then a transition to staff notation.

In 1872, Curwen changed his former course of using the Sol-fa system as an aid to sight reading, when that edition of his Standard Course of Lessons excluded the staff and relied solely on Tonic Sol-fa.

In 1879 the Tonic Sol-Fa College was opened. Curwen also began publishing, and brought out a periodical called the Tonic Sol-fa Reporter and Magazine of Vocal Music for the People, and in his later life was occupied in directing the spreading organisation of his system. The Sol-fa system was widely adopted for use in education, as an easily teachable method in the reading of music at sight, but its more ambitious aims for providing a superior method of musical notation have not been generally adopted.

When John Windet printed the 1594 edition of the Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter, he added the initials of the six syllables of Guido (U, R, M, F, S, L) underneath the note. Windet explained, "...I have caused a new print of note to be made with letter to be joined to every note: whereby thou mayest know how to call every note by his right name, so that with a very little diligence thou mayest more easilie by the viewing of these letters, come to the knowledge of perfect solfeying..." Rousseau, Curwen and others would have been aware of this popular psalter.

B. C. Unseld and Theodore F. Seward, with Biglow and Main publishers, imported Curwen's tonic sol-fa to the United States, though the method was never widely received. Before this, the 9th edition of the Bay Psalm Book (Boston, USA) had appeared with the initials of four-note syllables (fa, sol, la, me) underneath the staff. Reverend John Tufts, in his An Introduction to the Singing of Psalm Tunes in a Plaine & Easy Method, moved the initials of the four-note syllables onto the staff in place of "regular notes", and indicated rhythm by punctuation marks to the right of the letters. These may be considered American forerunners of Curwen's system, though he may not have been aware of them. Tufts' Introduction was popular, going through several editions. Nevertheless, his work probably did more to pave the way for shape notes. When Unseld and Steward introduced tonic sol-fa in the late 1800s, it was considered "something new".

Solmization that represents the functions of pitches (such as tonic sol-fa) is called "functional" solmization. All musicians that use functional solmization use "do" to represent the tonic (also known as the "keynote") in the major mode. However, approaches to the minor mode fall into two camps. Some musicians use "do" to represent the tonic in minor (a parallel approach), whereas others prefer to label the tonic in minor as "la" (a relative approach) Both systems have their advantages: The former system more directly represents the scale-degree functions of the pitches in a key; the latter more directly represents the intervals between pitches in any given key signature.

In Curwen's system, the notes of the major scale (of any key) are notated with the single letters d, r, m, f, s, l, and t when in the octave of middle C (or C4). This means, no extra notation will be added to any of the notes when do is anywhere between C4 - B4. Any notes in the octave(s) above will have a superscript, starting with 1 for the first octave above, 2 for the second, so on and so forth, if it were ever necessary. The same goes for the octave(s) below, except it will be notated with a subscript instead. To reference these when talking about them, in the case of do, do1 would be called "one-do", and do1 is called "do-one".[2] Chromatic alterations are marked by the following vowel, "e" for sharp (pronounced "ee") and "a" for flat (pronounced "aw").[3] Thus, the ascending and descending chromatic scale is notated:

Such chromatic notes appear only as ornaments or as preparation for a modulation; once the music has modulated, then the names for the new key are used. The modulation itself is marked by superscript of the old note name preceding its new name; for example, in modulation to the dominant, the new tonic is notated as sd. The music then proceeds in the new key until another modulation is notated.

Dynamic symbols are used the same as in the staff notation more commonly seen.[clarification needed][citation needed] A horizontal line under a single letter means that note is to be sung legato, or smooth.[citation needed] A horizontal line spanning under multiple letters signifies a slur, connecting the letters together.[2] In Curwen's Tonic sol-fa, time signatures are not used, so various forms of notation are used to divide up measures into beats and beats smaller.[2] Vertical bar lines are used to separate measures, like in the more commonly seen staff notation.[2] A double bar line at the end also signifies the end.[2] Colons (:) are then used to separate the beats:[2]

Dashes in place of a letter means to hold out the note until either the next note appears, a rest appears, or the end of the piece comes, whichever may come first.[2] Rests are just notated with a blank space; no letter, no dash:[2]

For music written in, or including, Tonic Sol-Fa notation. This system was devised (after the ancient Guidonian gamut) by Sarah Glover of Norwich, and adapted and popularized by John Curwen in the mid-nineteenth century.

Rather than using a stave, clefs and noteheads, Tonic Sol-Fa uses the initial letters of the solfege scale, thus d r m f s l t (for Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti), with various signs for changes in octave, length of note, modulation to a different key, etc. Because the system uses nothing more complex than normal text type, it had the advantage of being vastly cheaper to print than engraved or typeset music.

Often music was printed in standard notation with tonic sol-fa above or beneath.

Today, the system remains in use (mainly in the context of Protestant Christian music), in Scotland, Wales, South Africa, the Philippines and several other areas.

Is anyone aware of any software that converts either:

1. Sheet Music written in Staff Notation to Tonic Sol Fa (do, re, me, fa, etc.)

2. Digital Music in MP3 or Wav format to Sheet Music in Tonic Sol Fa

I am currently on Windows 10 but am willing to explore any suitable solution on other SW platforms including Mac.

Many thanks

Michael Reidy

For #1, if you mean you have some printed sheet music you want to "digitize" and convert to another format, that's a hard problem. There do exist some tools that can try to work from a PDF to create a usable electronic representation, but it tends to work not very well - think, like what the very first experimental versions of Siri probably were like. But if you'd liek to give it a shot, try File / Import PDF from within MuseScore.

Hi, basically you are saying better do a manual convertion from stuff notation to Sol fa , considering we do not have any technology exists, right?

If this is the case can you share some rules behind this convertion. Like what is from Stuff notation should map with same in Sol fa? etc

Not at all. Converting from staff notation to tonic sl fa is pretty easy - if the staff notation is already in MuseScore (or some other notation program). If all you have is a printed sheet of paper, then the hard part is getting from there into software - that's the part that realistically one may need to do manually. But once it is in the software, translating to tonic sol fa is, again, pretty easy.

Sibelius application is able to typeset only solfa notation. I've posted the steps to doing that on YouTube. Type the following in the search engine :The typesetting of only solfa notation with Sibelius application..

Hi, everyone am Eddie and am new here, i just got elected to take the position of a music director and i need help on how to be able to get the tonic sol fa (do, re, me, fa, etc.) to the songs i will be teaching the choir and i will need it for this song ( HE CARES FOR ME BY EDIFIED GOSPEL) Thanks

Hi. to everyone. Is there a software that can write staff notation at the same time with solfege. For example, the software that can write staff and puts solfege on the top of the notes that is easier for the beginners?

I am currently using forte 11 premium for writing staff but I try to look other things and a fail to locate.

MuseScore should be perfectly capable of this, the details would just depend on how you want to notate the solfege. If it's just plain text, the various plugins for adding the that should work, or at most need slight adaptations for the specific type of solfege you want (there are several different versions).

Open Inspector. Right-Click on a notehead. Select >All Similar Elements. In Inspector, change Head scheme to "Solfge Moveable Do". This will place the Do Re Mi names in the noteheads. Now you can easily enter Staff Text and copy (i.e. you enter it note by note) the Do's, Re's, Mi's etc. You can then change the noteheads back to normal when you are finished.

Thank for your reply, but it does not present all the symbols of solfa notation. If I get you very well, it means I will still have to type the Solfa manually using the do re mi names that appear in the notes head. I was thinking there could be a way to automatically convert what was typed in staff to solfa notation, just like its obtainable with Sibelius. But i do appreciate your reply.

One of the means Curwen used to propagate his method was the publication of a number of textbooks and songbooks including The Standard Course of Lessons on the Tonic Sol-fa Method of Teaching to Sing which was first published in 1858. However in the 1872 edition of The Standard Course, Curwen allowed the tonic sol-fa notation to overstep its former function as a mnemonic aid to sight singing from the staff and to become an end in itself. He took this decisive step by totally excluding the staff system of notation from the tonic sol-fa course, henceforth relying solely on his own notational system in the publication of textbooks, vocal music and even instrumental music (see Figure 3 for an example of Tonic Sol-fa notation). It was this isolation from the mainstream of music printed in staff notation which was to lead to the eventual decline of tone sol-fa as a choral singing method.

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