“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:
For information on sight singing standard notation: