CHAPTER IV

THE SOL-FA METHOD

To those who are not accustomed to the Sol-fa notation it appears at first sight a useless encumbrance.  Excellent arguments are produced for this view.  Many musical people can scarcely remember when they could not sing at sight and write melodies from dictation.  They picked up this knowledge instinctively, and cannot see why others should not do the same.  Unfortunately everybody has not proved able to do so, hence a multitude of ‘methods’ for teaching them.

The most familiar of these consisted in trying to teach the pupil to sing intervals, as intervals, at sight.  Thirds, fifths, sixths, &c. were diligently practised.  But pupils did not always find it easy to sing these intervals from all notes of the scale, unless in sequence.  The major third from doh to me seemed easier than that from fah to lah, and so on.  Thus in the majority of cases sight-singing in classes resolved itself into the musical children leading, and the others following.  It is rare to find a large class in which there is not one musical child, and the only sure test of progress is to make the less musical children sing at sight alone from time to time.

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.  The child is taught to think of all the notes of the scale in relation to the key-note.  A very sensible objection is sometimes raised to this, i.e. that it must surely entail a great deal of detachment from the matter in hand if the mind has to grope for the key-note between every two consecutive notes of a melody.  But this process becomes automatic very quickly.  We are not conscious of references to the multiplication tables every time we do a sum, yet we could not do the sum without these.  And it is the same with the Sol-fa system.  The child need very rarely actually sing the key-note when considering another note, she refers the latter to it unconsciously.

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.  When singing