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 ...
- Author: Curwen, John
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 ...
- Author: Curwen, John
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About
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.
Contents
- 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.
