tonic solfa

Music: A system of musical notation by which the staff, clefs, key-signatures, and time-signatures of music are dispensed with, and the sounds are represented by initial solfeggio-letters, placed be. tween upright bars, subdivided as required for the various rhythms. In modern music there is but one diatonic scale, and "key" may be defined as the position of a scale, and "modulation" as the shifting of a scale in pitch. Many attempts have been made from time to time since the seventeenth century to provide singers with a notation by means of which the diatonic scale could under one form be used for all keys. Mi Glover, of England, suggested the use of a movable doh , and the represen tation of the sounds by initial letters. The late John Curwen devoted his life to the development and propagation of the system and method of teaching it. The scale stands thus ( te representing the Italian si ): drmfsltd, . By writing at the head, Key c, Key C, Key Db, ., the singer finds a true representation of the scale in any key. For example, the tune "America" may be written in fifteen different keys (each with a different signature) on the staff, whereas it can only be written one way in tonic sol-fa, the direc tion for key being simply written above and altered when required: ddrt1 drmmfmrd, . As modulations occur, one note of the old scale is linked to a note of the new scale, thus forming a "bridge"-e. g., to modulate from key c into key G, the s of the old key becomes the d of the new; from key C into key F, the f of the old becomes the d of the new, and so on. The minor scale starts from the note lah . The time-notation of the tonic sol-fa goes back also to first principles-e. g., by dividing the upright bars by a colon thus, |: | any duple time is represented, from two semibreves in a bar to two dem i-semiquavers. Similarly, |: | is all that is required for the triple times, |: | | for the quadruple times, and so on. It will be at once seen that the "up and down" of pitch is not rep resented to the eye as on the staff; but on the other hand, the tonic sol-fa signs display the relationship of every note to the scale from which it is taken; this is not nece arily expre ed on the staff. The value of tonic sol-fa as a basis of musical education is not generally acknowledged. Particularly in this country it is objected that it does not, like the com mon notation, indicate pitch directly to the that its applicability to instrumental music is lim ited; and that its acquirement is not like that of the ordinary notation, an introduction to the gen eral wealth of musical literature.