Pedagogical Proposal on The Teaching Music Theory 1: Solfege, Marco Alejandro Gutierrez

Marco Alejandro Gutierrez

        This is my view on the ideal teaching of Solfege. It is based on both my studies in various countries with a large emphasis on the work I did with my professor Vladislav Soyfer, and my own experience as a tutor and eventually a teacher of solfege.

 
        What is Solfege? It is the capacity to turn the written score into sounds in one’s mind, and to be able, via the instrument of our voice, to bring those sounds from the world of music and art into the real one through singing. The use of the voice is crucial to help train the ear, but if singing is difficut for the pupil, an alternative can be found. Singing nonetheless, is everyone’s first and most natural instrument.

 
        Solfege therefore is not just about singing but more about hearing acutely! Not with the physical ears but with the mind’s ear. It is through this training of the mind's ear that solfege translates to intrumental practice and performance. Otherwise we train actual "singing" for the sake of singing and not "hearing"! Singing is a secondary but important part of solfege education.

 
        Through a proper course on solfege, as the one that was taught to me by my professor Vladislav Soyfer, the seeds of future essential musical topics are planted. Namely the first steps in harmony, counterpoint, form, and orchestration. At the beginning, pupils may get by with a rudimentary knowledge of piano, but in order to progress further and not meet any roadblocks when studying harmony more thoroughly, piano lessons are a necessity. These can be taught along with the course of solfege with only positive results from the implementation of both at the same time.

 
        Good training in solfege will go a long way in aiding the development of any musician and is easily transferable to any discipline whether performance, or composition.

 
Needs of the students

Instructional Problem

        Solfege instruction in many institutions is generally viewed by students as just another class they are obliged to pass. There is generally little interest in deepening into it and in the end, most students pass the exams by practicing with unnecessary difficulty and effort. Simply memorizing the assigned exercises to be tested is a favorite technique of many, and barely singing the notes in tune while calling the right name is more than enough for most teachers of solfege to give a good grade. Truly then, as Schoenberg says, the evolution of no other art is so greatly encumbered by its teachers as is that of music.

        In my opinion and experience, this type of  teaching ignores the essential purpose of solfege training. Namely the ability to pre-hear a note in the mind’s ear and to be capable to bring said note to the real world through singing (later, through the pupil's instrument of choice). As Yo-yo Ma explained in a joint video with Wynton Marsalis, you should never make a sound unless you hear it first! On a brief side note, uncorroborated hearsay points to Yo-yo Ma's time at Harvard and what he learned from Leon Kirchner (a student of Schoenberg himself) being of great importance to his development. 

        Coming back to our main topic, students do not see the either connection nor importance between these classes of solfege/ear training and their performance or composing practice. I have heard students from all over the world complain of the uselessness of their music theory education. It is crucial from the very first lesson to establish the importance of solfege training and to engage the students’ interest by offering answers to deeply rooted questions about the nature and origin of the wonderful art of music! That is of course, if the course is well made and imparted by a capable teacher.

        Music is the most abstract of the arts or better said, the most immaterial. It is indeed very difficult to teach and explain. It is required from the teacher to present musical material and make comparisons between the different ideas via listening activities and insightful commentary in order for students to grasp the concepts at hand. The ear must be educated and this might be the only way to introduce someone without prior knowledge to some of the musical topics to be discussed in class, by being shown the way a step at a time. Philip Herschkowitz famously used to say that “some concepts in music are so abstract, they might as well be parables”. Proper solfege teaching diminishes this effect, and leaves little if any essential concepts unclear. 

        A very important concept to be trained from the very beginning is the feeling of tension and resolution and its justification in the written music. Too many conservatory courses of solfege don't even mention it and teachers are satisfied by the mere fact that the student sang the notes more or less in tune. Tension and resolution goes far deeper than marked dynamics in a piece. It is looking at music at the cellular level and understanding the relationships that occur between notes. It is the first step to understand the true nature of music, and when talking about tonal music, an essential, much too often overlooked and downright ignored principle.  

 
        Solfege is usually taught in group lessons, yet the speed at which the group advances is often dictated by the slowest student. There is nothing wrong with being the slowest student either, its just someone who maybe needs some additional or highly specific help. This does not mean this person is unsuitable for a career in music, rather it highlights the inadequacies of large class teaching and how impersonal it is. Music education should be personal first and foremost. Students look for and desire meaningful connections which can be more easily established in a 1-on-1 individualized teaching method. In large class teaching, the group advances at an average pace. Leaving slower students frustrated and talented students bored and without exploiting their full potential. On top of this, homework is usually tested one by one in class. Which can be discouraging for everyone not currently doing the exercise, and precious time and youth is wasted away hearing one's classmates sing badly with little improvement week to week. It is here that I wish to highlight that almost all of the greatest musicians, composers such as Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Wagner, Schoenberg, and Webern, and numerous famous performers of the past received 1-on-1 lessons as pupils with a master and not conservatory-style training. There is always a master, education is necessary, but ask any of these great masters for a piece of paper that proves their qualifications and in all likelihood they may not produce it. Conservatory is neither the only way to provide a complete education to a developing musician nor is it the best way. 

 
        Solfege therefore, along with any other music theory class, should be taught individually. If not feasible, then in very small groups whose members are paired together based on both their musical and personal qualities. Not grouped by year of study or instrument as it is so popular even in Europe! 

         I believe it to be redundant to quantify or describe the benefits of 1-on-1 education. The most important things to mention though are that the master and pupil relationship is different and far more personal than the student and teacher one. Music education should be personal if anything. It also goes both ways, the master and pupil relationship is a reciprocal one, in which the master is benefited by the student’s engagement, questions, ideas, and mistakes, and the student benefits from the master’s experience and hunger for knowledge. Their discoveries together right there in class opens the possibility of building knowledge as a team. There should be no tests in this course, the constant support and the work done closely in conjunction with the pupils should be more than sufficient. Evidence of a student's work ethic and progress can easily be gauged with the archival recordings done every week (I'll talk about these recordings further below).

 
        Personally, it is always important for me to keep learning and to explore other methodologies and ideas on the teaching of music theory and solfege. This will help improve my skills and enrich my vision for the benefit of all my future pupils. Nonetheless, I have yet to find anything better than the teachings and philosophy of the Second Vienna School. 

About lesson methodology

        If teaching is carried out in person, the room shouldn't be too large. There should be a table with a table lamp. The teacher will sit opposite the pupil with easy access to an acoustic piano. The room should be comparatively dark, the lamp should point towards the student’s side of the table. The student should print out a large blank staff paper notebook and maybe also bring a small homework book. This setup is particularly effective for the delivery of information and heightens the focus of the student as there are no outside or unnecessary stimuli form the pupil, just the material to be studied in front, isolated by the light from the table lamp and contrasted by the relative darkness around. It is my understanding that in addition to my professor, Vladislav Soyfer, lessons where carried in a similar manner by Herschkowitz (his teacher) and potentially Webern himself (unverified).

 
        It is crucial to insist on the student making “final audio recordings” of every single solfege task done both at home and even in class. This practice and habit has a psychological advantage by which the student obtains discipline to produce a “final product” of every work session even if still in the middle of a learning process. This practice is easily transferable to the stage, in the case of performers, as part of “stage discipline”. Recordings can easily be done with a cell phone as the quality must not be of studio standards. Especially when working on homework, the student should record and quickly send any work done during the week. Work done in a hurry the night before the next class is useless. This near real time feedback for the teacher of the student’s work during the week has several advantages. The teacher can keep track of the student’s thought process and if necessary, assist with feedback during the week rather than waiting an entire week to notice a problem and having to wait yet another one to see if the solution offered worked. Classes should be once a week to begin with. Classes ideally should not be constrained by time, as important things in music take a long time to be explained, and there must be time allotted for questions and discussions. In my experience as a teacher, one hour and a half is the minimum length to properly carry out a 1-1 lesson. In my classes, both as a student and as a teacher, some lessons easily reached three hours. 

        Here I would like to add that I oppose the system of solfege used in North America known as "movable Do". It is the wrong solution, but the right idea to understanding tonal music and the relationships between all degrees in a specific key. For this purpose, I prefer to teach the student how to set the ear on a specific key and to use numbers 1-7, with alterations when needed, to specify which degree a note is and whether it is stable or unstable in nature. 

        At the end of the lesson, I like to do a listening session. Where both teacher and pupil listen together to a piece carefully chosen and prepared beforehand while following the score and discuss it afterwards. This habit of listening while following the score should be introduced and encouraged to students from the very first lesson. 

        Arnold Schoenberg says that it is the teacher’s task to “thoroughly shake a pupil”, especially at the beginning. Once this is done, all the pieces will be more or less in the right place, and a more disciplined, serious, and mature musician shall be born. It is important for me to mention that this is the manner in which I was taught by my teacher, Vladislav Soyfer. He was taught Philip Herschkowitz in a similar way but further developed many ideas on the teaching of music. Herschkowitz in turn, adopted many of his methods from his teacher Anton Webern. 

 
       I personally use two books for the monophonic and polyphonic melodies to be exercised. Dictations I compose myself. The books I use are selections from 1000 Examples of Musical Dictations by Nikolay Ladukhin, and only the chapter on standard repertoire examples from A New Approach to Sight Singing by Sol Berkowitz.

 
       If you are interested in learning more about music, you are welcome to visit my personal website https://www.learningmusicasalanguage.com where you can obtain more information about my courses and approach to music and arts education.