Solfege

[sherry-lenox]

We used materials by French publishers as part of the freshman sight reading and ear training course when I was

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

New Orleans has a long history of harpists. Lucile Lawrence began her studies there with Lucienne Lavedon, who was teaching for a long time afterward. Miss Lawrence’s female relatives were harpists also and taught.

[sherry-lenox]

The more I brood about this subject the more it intrigues me. The other day at my lesson my teacher, a fine harpist whom I greatly admire, was working on something with me and she sang a measure or two of it under her breath in syllables.
Unfortunately, I forget just what the context was, but my point is that even as a distinguished instrumentalist, she automatically reverted to solfege to answer some question about a passage she was playing.

I think it would seem on the surface that a chordal instrument would be less apt to use solfege directly, but then perhaps it would be rather that the solfege would be useful and the insturmentalist might not think of using it.

As a beginner attempting to establish kinesthetic sense of the placement on the strings, without looking at the strings, I’m using syllables all the time. I may not accurately reach the interval between C-F kinesthetically, but I surely do know the difference between do and fa, and if I hit the strings around the F, I know where to put my fingers to correct the error.

I’m sure there are harpists who didn’t learn solfege first, and who have developed the aural sense of intervals so that their primary sense is of the sounds of the individual strings but for me at least, solfege is a useful tool when playing harp.

Does that make any sense at all?

[Briggsie B. Peawiggle]

My teacher and I were talking about solfege a couple of lessons ago. She sings fixed Do and told me to just sing (I was a singer before I began harp) while I played once I learned something pretty well. She told me they had to study solfeg while working on her degree at Indiana U. When she told me they learned fixed Do, suddenly the idea of singing solfeg became sooooooooooooo easy!!! I learned moveable Do, and to me that always made sense, but fixed Do seems so much easier to me. I don’t want to get into a debate about fixed vs. moveable Do — that one’s been done to death…..but I did want to say that fixed Do on harp just makes a world of good sense to me while moveable always made a world of good sense when singing in different keys…..curious that.

Anyway, singing even lalala makes phrasing better to me, but singing solfeg locks in the actual notes you are playing, and say you have a memory lapse……it seems to me that if you know it in solfeg, you could get out of it a little easier…..kind of one more way to add to memorization skills, maybe. My only problem is to stop worrying about how I sound technique-wise when singing and focus on the harp technique. 🙂

[Dwyn .]

Go to http://used.addall.com and type “solfege” into the title line of the search box (and separately, you might try it in the keyword box).

[kimberly-houser]

I have been emphasizing the solfege more, both with myself and my students, it does help.

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