On Feb 3, 2006, at 3:01 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
On 3 Feb 2006 at 14:41, Arkady wrote:
Dear Finale List,
Can anyone point me to a good explanation on this topic, preferably
with a few web links:
Si Do vs Ti Do?
I grew up with Si, and never heard of Ti unTil:) I got to NYC from
Ukraine.
If you use movable Do solfege with chromatic alterations, where Fa#
is Fi, then Sol# would be Si, and thus there's a single syllable
being used for both #5 and the leading tone. Thus, the leading tone
is rendered as Ti instead of the French/European Si.
My experience is that those who don't use chromatic alterations to
the syllables are either using fixed Do, and/or are trained in a
European tradition, and those who use them are more likely to be
American-trained.
So, I do see "Ti" as an Americanism.
And the above was the explanation I was given at Oberlin during my
first semester of ear training/sight singing, and it was the way
sight singing was taught at Oberlin at that time (movable Do with
Ti).
My solfege teacher called it the German System, though I never knew if
it was or not really, but that would be historically congruous with the
Sound of Music. I know it was associated with Kodaly, along with
syllables for rhythm and hand signs for scale degrees, as I learned it
as early as grade 5 in an Ontario, Canada public school.
I don't think Ti for the 7th note was an Americanism. It seems to have
first appeared in the UK in the mid 1800's. Here is an excerpt from
http://www.theory.physics.ubc.ca/dolmetsch/musictheory1.htm
*****************
Guido of Arezzo (Paris, c.995 - Avellano, 1050), a Benedictine monk,
showed his pupils an easier method of determining the sounds of the
scale than by the use of the monochord. His method was that of
comparison of a known melody with an unknown one which was to be
learned, and for this purpose he frequently chose the well-known melody
of the Ut queant laxis. Against a common view of musical writers, Dom
Pothier contends that Guido did not actually give these syllabic names
to the notes, did not invent the hexachordal system, etc., but that
insensibly the comparison of the melodies led to the syllabic naming.
When a new name for the seventh, or leading, note of our octave was
desired, Erich van der Putten suggested, in 1599, the syllabic Bi of
labii, but a vast majority of musical theorists supported the happier
thought of the syllable Si, formed by the initial letters of the two
words of the last line ( Si because J and I were then both written I
).
Si was much later changed to Te by a Miss S. A. Glover and John Curwen
so that each degree of the scale would have a unique single letter
abreviation used for written notation. This was the start of the
movable doh method of teaching which lasted in the UK for a hundred
years (see Tonic Sol-fa ).
In the 16th century Hubert Waelrant replaced the Ut by a Do as he
judged the ut syllable difficult to pronounce. (The Latin u was
pronounced differently by the French, Flemish, Germans, English and
others). In some countries (particularly France and Belgium) the Do
(and the other syllables) became fixed replacing the orginal note
names. Others have suggested that Ut was replaced by Do, the first
syllable of Dominus, in 1673, at the suggestion of Giovanni Maria
Bonocini.
**************
Me again.
I remember the rising chromatic scale as
do dee ray ree me fa fee so see lah lee tee do
and the descending chromatic scale as
do tee tah lah low so saw fa me mah ray rah do
(Spelling altered so as to show pronunciation.)
This seems to be at odds with Curwen's and Kodaly's pronunciation, as I
have seen on the above website, but the one I learned may have been a
local variant. I took the last university movable-do solfege class ever
offered in Quebec, as the entire province, English and French, is now
entirely fixed-do since 1979. We were four in the class at McGill and
the course was discontinued the next semester, never to appear again,
in favour of fixed-do. I have often maintained that the movable do
system is superior to the fixed do system, but since the French
fixed-do students were solfeging circles around the McGill students,
and still are, it is a hard argument to back up.
Christopher
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