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It's a way of saying wether something is a good method or isn't. For instance, it will be way too complicated to sing solfege with something like Debussy. Possible, but hard.

I'm sorry, I still don't get the point, but it doesn't really matter.

There are obviously many things which cannot be "solfed", and you don't have to wait until Debussy to encounter them. Just take "Tartine au beurre" which has no new scales or tonal structure and try solfing those glissandos and those jumps.

In any case, solfège is a pedagogique methodology, the objective of which is not singing but reading. Reading as we read literature, with a cognition of the score that is not necessarily linked to playing a particular instrument.

There is more than one way of approaching this, and probably more than one way is needed. Imagine a piece that consists of harmonies & disharmonies with no melodic line, for example. I do generally read music like one reads words, hearing it. But for some kinds of piano music that doesn't work.


A glissando has a beginning and an end, which is the interval. Tartine de beurre [Mozart]

Listening to it:
The first glissandos each go up a full octave from Do to Do, Re to Re, Mi to Mi, with the phrase ending on Fa. This can, in fact, be solfed. Additionally, this has a melody (is singable) which is built along a standard major scale.

The Debussy uses a whole tone scale, consisting of 6 notes within the octave, instead of 7. That is the first problem. You also end up with no Dominant, and no circle of fifths. There is no perfect fifth anywhere from any note to any other note. That is part of the impossibility.

Elissa - having stumbled on this - isn't there a pure physicality to this such as you mentioned? "rote" or not, in pure motion?
A different Tartine (Butterbrot)

My point is that a system that ONLY is practical for music that is mainly major and minor scales, or modes was useless to me because it had built-in limitations that I can't live with.

That's not what I think of as solfege. To me, that is just another way of naming of notes. For instance, B=Si and flat=bemol.

My questions are about the usefulness of *moveable do*, which is quite a different matter.

By the way, solfège exercise is best done standing, and beating out the measure with the right hand.

In any case, getting back to the question at hand, the famous "rote-teaching", what NWL describes here ...



is effectively a solfège exercise.

Are you still there, NWL, or have you flown the coop? Are you saying the note names and singing the tones ? Or just doing scat?

Landorrano, could you say that solfege is effectively an exercise in rote learning then?

Well, I'm still baffled by this term "rote learning".

The axis of solfège is reading.

Solfège is the study of the elements permitting to read, write, play or sing a musical score. It is to be distinguished from the learning of an instrument or of singing.

While it is evident that the study of an instrument in the context of written music involves many elements of solfège, all the more so in countries where teaching is done privately and individually, solfège is not the same as the study of an instrument.

The archtypical solfège exercise is singing the names of notes from a score, while standing and beating out the measure with the right hand. This is part of solfège, but solfège is not limited to these exercises.

There are many types of exercises: reading out loud the names of the notes without singing them; beating rhythms from a score; visual recognition of intervals; aural recognition of intervals; rhythmic dictations; tonal dictations; rhythmic and tonal dictations; written transposition; aural transposition. In group solfège classes: singing (solfing) polyphonic voices; singing in canon, beating out polyrhythms or rhythms in canon. And so on, and so on.

The point is to form musically literacy; the ultimate objective of solfège is to be able to hear a written musical work without other support than, shall I say, one's mind's ear.

This "rote learning" then, is, insofar as it is a ruse aimed at learning reading, certainly in the spirit of solfège. But to say that solfège is "rote learning" is false because solfège is not limited to the sort of exercises that you are speaking as "rote learning".

That said, I can't swallow this term "rote learning".

In the book of solfège exercises "Solfège des Solfèges" by Danhauser, Lavignac and Lemoine, level 1B, the table of contents of exercises:

Do major
4/4 = C: Whole notes and rests
Half notes and rests
Whole notes and half notes
Quarter notes and rests
Whole notes and quarter notes
Half notes and quarter notes
Whole notes, half notes and quarter notes
EIghth notes and rests
Whole notes and eighth notes
Quarter notes and eighth notes
Whole notes, half notes, quarter notes and eighth notes
3/4
2/2 = C\
2/4
Dotted half notes and dotted quarter notes
Sixteenth notes
3/8
6/8
The triplet
The syncope
Sharp
Flat
A minor
G major
E minor
F major
D minor
D major
B minor
B-flat major
G minor
F-clef

shouldn't this be translate as
la minor
sol major
etc....

in Solfege book?

Apparently, in English speaking countries the solfège syllables are used only during the solfège exercises. One will say "sing the C-scale" and then sing "do-re-mi ...".

Thanks, now I understand