Music As A Language | Page 7

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 in major keys the pupils are told to refer all notes to the
key-note for 'mental effect', but in the minor key this is strictly
forbidden. To take an instance. In the scale of C major the child has
been trained to feel the sharp, bright effect of the note G, the fifth from
the key-note C. It would naturally feel the same effect for the note E in
the key of A minor, when related to the key-note A. But the orthodox
Sol-fa teacher says: 'No. You must feel the calm, soothing effect of E in
relation to C!' Can the child be really trained in this way? If it were
merely a difference in detail of the treatment of the two modes this
error could be forgiven, but it is a difference in fundamental principle.

One of the many difficulties caused occurs in transposition on the piano.
When transposing from, say, C minor to F minor, the child must first
think in E[b] major, so as to get the pivot of reference, then in A[b]
major for the new pivot A[b]. Yet all the time its real sense of pivot,
which, be it noted, has been admirably trained by the Sol-fa treatment
of the major scale, is in favour of C and F respectively.
The method evolved for the minor key by those who wish to uphold the
fundamental principle of the key-note being the pivot of reference for
all keys, major and minor, is a very simple one. It consists in giving to
the third and sixth of the harmonic form of the scale their logical names
of maw and taw. The sixth of the ascending scale in the melodic form
will of course be the same in the minor as in the major.
There are two other points in the orthodox Sol-fa system which are
modified by those who wish to use it as a crutch to staff notation. The
first of these concerns the rather