South African Choral Music (Amakwaya): Song, Contest and the ...

6.2 The Content ofMusic Education 169
symbol of music literacy. John Curwen established this College in 1869, which was just over a hundred
years later transformed into the Curwen Institute. In 1905 a growing interest among Africans
in studying for a Tonic Sol-Fa College certificate led to the nomination of Charles Holy, at that time
director of the Durban Musical Association, to act as a representative of the Tonic Sol-Fa College. 84
The use of tonic sol-fa gained momentum in the twentieth century as many composers were
convinced that the repertoire "aimed at Africans, particularly the Southern Africans... had to be in
tonic sol-fa notation".85 Despite some critical voices, coming particularly from white educators and
musicians, there was common agreement with the views expressed by Alexander Sandilands:
...this system, so foolishly disregarded and disused in many quarters to-day, has been the immense boon
to Africa that it was to great numbers of simple people in England, Scotland, and Wales in late Victorian
and Edwardian times. In Africa, it has done, and is still doing, what nothing else has done or could do: it
has put good music within the reach and ability and comprehension of Africans. 86
Though Curwen did not actually invent tonic sol-fa, he is to be credited with developing a distinctive
method of applying it to music education, in respect of both rhythm and pitch. Tonic sol-fa
is a system of musical notation without staves and notes, which uses a combination of letters and
other symbols to indicate pitch and rhythm, and is based on the principles of solmisation (French:
solfege; Italian: solfeggio) in order to simplify the sight-reading and teaching of music. 87 The use of
syllables to represent the sounds of the notes of the scale goes back to the eleventh century when
Guido d'Arezzo used the initial tones of the Hymn to St. John (ut, re, mi, fa, so, la) as a mnemonic
device to train singers. The hymn proceeds from one note of the scale to the next at the beginning
of each line of the text. Thus an association between each scale tone and the syllable at the begin­
ning of the line is made:
utqueant laxis
resonarefibris
mira storum
famuli tuorum
solve polluti
labii reatum
Sancte Joannes!
Guido's idea was adapted into two different systems of solmisation: one that uses the absolute
(fixed doh) form, and another in relative (moveable doh) form. Whereas in England, Sarah Glover
and John Curwen popularised the moveable doh sol-fa, KodaIy and his associates used the tonic
sol-fa system in Hungary in the fixed doh form, where the name for each note of the scale is sung
without regard to the modulations that occur during the piece. In the movable doh system, the doh
can be moved to any pitch throughout the piece. In other words, when a modulation occurs, the
location of the doh is shifted and the new doh is indicated above the notation. The idea is that doh
should be the current tonic with the other notes being related to this tonic. Thus, Curwen's sol-fa
treats the different positions of doh in a relative manner, not as a fixed-pitch. The strong point of
this system is that it emphasises the relationship between the degrees of the scale and therefore
develops a feeling for tonality even when the tonal centre shifts.
84 I1anga (February 24, 1905): 4.
85 A. Sandilands, 1951: 9.
86 Ibid.
87 Solmisation refers to the application of the sol-fa syllables to the degrees of the scale.