Frank Brown
At one time, if you bought a piece of sheet music, you would find the melody in tonic solfa along with the words. Based on an invention by Guido D'Arrezzo, a monk who lived about a thousand years ago (and who also invented staff notation), the tonic solfa system was developed by Curwen and others during the 19th century. It became enormously popular among amateur musicians and singers and remained so well into the twentieth century.(My father, who took up the violin at the age of twenty, first learned to play from tonic solfa before becoming a good sight reader of normal notation.) The system has now all but disappeared, which I think is a great pity because for many purposes it is so much less cumbersome than other ways of naming notes.
For those interested I give the essentials below, related to the major scale.
| Degree of scale | Technical name | Tonic solfa name | Abbreviated tonic solfa name |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | Tonic | doh' | d' |
| 7 | Leading note | te | t |
| 6 | Sub-mediant | lah | l |
| 5 | Dominant | soh | s |
| 4 | Sub-dominant | fah | f |
| 3 | Mediant | me | m |
| 2 | Super-tonic | ray | r |
| 1 | Tonic | doh | d |
No doubt you all know that bit from school days. Not so many people know about sharps and flats though. The rule is simple. When a note is sharpened it takes an ee sound, spelt "e", and when a note is flattened it takes an aw sound, spelt "a". Thus a sharpened fah becomes fe, pronounced fee and a flattened te becomes ta, pronounced taw. The sharpened and flattened notes are never abbreviated so if you are reading a tune in tonic solfa (which is always abbreviated in use) you notice straight away where the accidentals occur. Notice that la is not lah. It is a flattened lah, pronounced law. The Curwen system includes conventions for key changes and a somewhat arcane notation for rhythms. There are other little oddities too but you are not likely to encounter them unless you are seriously considering trying to read music written in tonic solfa.