Singing for Schools and Congregations
A Grammar of Vocal Music, with a Course of Lessons and Exercises Founded on the Tonic Solfa Method, and a Full Introduction to the Art of Singing at Sight from the Old Notation ...

This revised and expanded 1848 textbook includes exercises for class practice of the tonic sol-fa system of teaching singing.

John Curwen (Author)

9781108065191, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 September 2013

208 pages, 1 music example
21.6 x 14 x 1.2 cm, 0.27 kg

John Curwen (1816–80), minister and music educationist, is remembered for his promotion in Britain of the tonic sol-fa system of teaching singing. He had an innate understanding of the social value of music in education, and it was in response to being asked in 1841 to recommend the best way of teaching music in Sunday schools that he developed Norwich schoolteacher Sarah Glover's system from her Scheme for Rendering Psalmody Congregational (1835). He would spend the rest of his life refining it. Not to be confused with John Hullah's 'fixed doh' system, Curwen's method spread rapidly and by the 1860s over 180,000 people in Britain were learning tonic sol-fa. First published in 1843 and reissued here in its revised and expanded edition of 1848, this thorough textbook sets out Curwen's method, complete with a wide range of exercises for class practice.

Introduction
1. Of musical sounds and the management of the voice
2. Of replicates
3. Of accent, rhythm, and measure
4. Of the standard scale, the metronome, and the small-letter solfa notation
5. Of the character and mental effect of notes in key
6. Of the character and proper mental effect of the notes fah and lah
7. Of the character and proper mental effect of the notes ray and te
8. Of transition and the notes tu and fi, and of chromatic noted
9. Of minor tunes and the notes ne, bah, ni, and nu
10. Of melody, its nature, its styles, its structure
11. Of the different kinds of voices
12. Of harmony and counterpoint
13. Of the chant and the practice of chanting
14. Of the anthem and the hymn tune, and of congregational singing
Index to the tunes and songs.

Subject Areas: Classical music [c 1750 to c 1830 AVGC4]