12/13/07 Language, Culture, and Solfege
NewsBlog Editor’s Note: This post is the sixth of a series written by CMIE Research Fellow Anthony Green, as part of the documentation for Green’s CMIE Research Internship. See other posts in this series here.
It is always exciting to observe or be pleasantly surprised by behaviors and phenomena that are unexpected in research projects. With that, it would never have occurred to me before commencing this project to examine the relationship between language, culture, and solfege. This relationship, which made itself pleasantly obvious throughout the semester, is something which, in my opinion, should be explored in a second installation of this guided internship. For now, I can only recall the nucleic observations which will hopefully spawn a larger organism in the future.
It is a well-known fact that learning a language is best done at a young age, when the mind unconsciously soaks in information without formally “studying” it. The mind is simply immersed in a new, unfamiliar environment, and is forced to adapt to its surroundings for survival. In this case, when you are young, and you are hungry, and you are in an English and French speaking household, you know that you can say, “I’m hungry” or “J’ai faim”, and something will come of it. The best part about learning a language through immersion at a young age is that you do not “study” the grammar, the article agreement (if any), the tenses, the cases, the vocabulary, the idioms, and the other idiosyncrasies of language. You just learn it. You speak it. People correct you, and you rarely make the mistake again. This is how fluency is gained.
When studying a language for the first time as an older person, especially after the age of 12 or 13, it is harder to keep everything together. Learning a language then becomes more of a process of memory rather information-soaking and internalizing. When speaking, the learner more often then not thinks of what he or she wants to say first in English and then translates. The learner doesn’t simply know how to think in that language. When learning a language at the university level (at least this has been my experience), immersion is attempted by having language classes three times per week. A language student should have as much exposure to the new language as possible to guarantee the highest amount of immersion necessary.
One can easily start to find parallels from the above. At Boston University where I learned solfege (in a rather haphazard way because the “ear-training and sight-singing program at BU, which teaches “fixed do” solfege, is mostly ignored and taught by ill-trained graduate students), I did not even think to relate learning a language to solfege. But retrospectively, I can truly say that my lack of immersion in solfege before BU has definitely hindered my ability to truly internalize it as a fluid language. At BU, I used a process of translation to get through my exercises. This process may actually be beneficial, and it is popular: whenever I sang my melodies, I played the piece on the piano in my head while singing it, and figured out the solfege syllables in that manner. This is nothing new or unique. Students use this technique all the time, most of the time developing it on their own, such as myself, Eric Smith (a student at NEC) and many of my friends, and perhaps some of you readers.
But is this a good thing or is it a process that truly blocks the internalization process? If personally this process is quick enough for a sight-singer to execute melodies at correct tempi, then this process should be utilized. In essence, this translation process is not, nor ever will be, the same as being able to look at a note on a staff (or ledger line) and say its correct syllable without visualizing an instrument, hands, tables, etc … The translation process becomes even more demanding when reading in different clefs. Not only is the language of solfege getting in the way, but the pattern-language of the clef is shifted. This can perhaps be related to reading books in written in different accents, like Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Or better yet, being a native of Korea, learning English for the first time at the age of 15, and attempting to read The King James version of The Holy Bible.
When a student is immersed in solfege, then the ability is completely, COMPLETELY different! There were students in the “Solfege for Singers” class who learned solfege at an early age. These students were not American. This is where the cultural element comes into play. In my student interviews, so far all of the Americans had little next to no exposure to “fixed do” before post-secondary instruction. Additionally, the little solfege exposure received was usually in passing, and of course in “moveable do”. Admittedly, my only exposure to solfege was singing that annoying popular song from The Sound of Music. Culturally, English is one of the only languages where the names of the notes are letters rather syllables. Other cultures, when it comes to solfege, do not separate between ‘a’ and ‘la’. In other languages, ‘a’ is just a letter and ‘la’ is the pitch. That’s that.
In other words, other cultures internalize the syllables naturally. There is no process of translation occurring. Listening to the students in class who have internalized these syllables was a source of inspiration to other students, and me as well! It is always magical to see people solfeging at superhuman levels of speed. At the same time, observing these students really made it clear to me how much solfege is linked to language and culture. I have heard stories about the rigorous solfeging exercises at the Paris Conservatoire, and have thanked my lucky stars that I did not have to undergo such training. In the same breath, I wonder why America has not yet picked up on this solfeging tradition. I wonder what type of musician I would be if I was as good at solfege as the students who have internalized the syllables. But I must say, I am not questioning my musicianship, just my solfeging abilities.
One final thought: the Solfege for Singers class at New England Conservatory is held three times a week.
December 13th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
What an interesting analogy! Perhaps someday someone will look further into this phenomenon and teach solfege as a language of song rather than a technique.
December 14th, 2007 at 12:48 am
It is interesting you should write that. In my recent interview with Professor Scripp (which most of the audio was lost, unfortunately), he explains how much of his teaching methodology comes from altering methods of teaching other things, like language. I am not sure if there are solfege teachers that make it clear to the students that they are learning another language, but now I am question this approach’s effectiveness.
December 17th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
I think this is a great idea for discussion. I firmly believe that solfege is a musical language, which allows the musician to access the music in a new medium. Solfege helped me see the inner workings of the music without playing them on the piano. I was able to learn how to hear the music in my mind with the syllables and conducting. This class helped me learn a new language of music for sure!
December 22nd, 2007 at 10:36 pm
It’s funny you should use the term specifically, “without playing them on the piano.” In my mind, I always play the melody on a piano in my head before I name the syllables. I was recently talking to the mother of one of my piano students about right and left-brain learners. Right-brain learners usually visualize things. Not necessarily everything. Joshua, are you more of a left-brain learner?