What Precisely Is the Purpose of Solfege?

“What precisely is the purpose of solfege?” It’s all about sight singing:

• The Benedictine monk Guido d’Arezzo invented solfege in the 11th-century to help his monks sing chants they’d never heard before.
• He wrote a hymn, Ut Queant Laxis, to help his singers remember the sound of the notes in the scale.
• Then, he used a four-line, graph-like staff to help them track the notes.

Each phrase of the hymn starts on the next higher note of the scale.

• The first phrase starts on the note C and has the Latin word Ut.
• The syllable Re from the word Resonare has the note D.
• Mi from Mira has E.
• Fa from Famuli has F.
• Sol from Solve has G.
• La from Labii has A.
• Later Do replaced Ut and Ti was added.

This gives us: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti (or Si), Do.

Basically, if you want to sight sing, you do it with solfege.

• You memorize a song (such as Do, Re, Mi) as a sound model to help you imagine what the scale notes should sound like.
• As the notes go from line to space up or down the staff, you’ll switch from one solfege syllable to the next.
• However, it gets tricky when you’re figuring out what key you’re in, or when you need to sing sharp/flat notes. Why? Because this impacts what syllables you’ll sing.

For a practical example of singing with solfege using shape notes:

• Shape Note Sight Singing Success

For information on sight singing standard notation:

• How Do I Switch from Singing Shaped Notes to Standard Notation
• How Do I Switch from Minor Key Shaped Notes to Standard Notation
• How Do I Switch from Chromatic Shaped Notes to Standard Notation