History of Tonic Solfa: From Norwich to West Africa
The history of tonic solfa: how Sarah Glover and John Curwen built it, how churches and schools spread it, and why West African choirs still sing from it.
You hand round a new hymn in solfa, and someone who learnt music only from staff notation asks why the page is full of letters instead of notes. Or a young chorister who has read solfa since primary school asks where it actually came from. It is a fair question, and the answer explains a lot about how your choir reads today.
The history of tonic solfa begins in nineteenth-century England. Sarah Glover, a music teacher in Norwich, devised a letter-based method to help children sing in tune, and John Curwen, a Congregational minister, refined it, named it Tonic Sol-fa and promoted it. It spread through churches, Sunday schools and missions, and remains central in West African choirs.
In this post I will walk through that story without the myths, show you why each part of it still matters in rehearsal, and finish with a short exercise borrowed straight from Curwen's classroom that you can use at your next practice.
Before Tonic Solfa: syllables from a medieval hymn
The syllables are much older than the notation. In medieval Europe, singers learnt pitches using syllables taken from the opening of each line of a Latin hymn to St John: ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. Over time ut became do in many places, and a seventh syllable was added for the note below the top doh.
Those syllables could be used in two ways. In some traditions do came to mean one fixed pitch, the note C, whatever key the music was in. In others the syllables moved with the key, so do was simply the home note. That second idea, movable doh, is the heart of everything that followed in England. If you want the difference laid out side by side, I have written about movable doh and fixed do separately.
What singers did not have was a cheap, simple way to write the syllables down and read music from them. That is the gap Sarah Glover filled.
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Who was Sarah Glover?
Sarah Glover was a music teacher in Norwich who wanted ordinary children to sing well and to read music, not just copy it by ear. Staff notation, with its lines, spaces, clefs and key signatures, asked a lot of a beginner before a single note was sung. Her answer was to work from the syllables themselves.
She wrote the music using the initial letters of the syllables, and she taught pitch with a vertical chart of the syllables, often called her Sol-fa Ladder, so pupils could see the steps of the scale rising and falling as they sang. The idea was simple and powerful: if you know where doh is, every other note is a known distance from it, in any key.
That is still the first thing I tell anyone learning to read. Find doh, and the rest of the page makes sense. The scale she was teaching is the same one we sing today:
| dG-rA-mB-fC- | sD-lE-tF♯-d'G- |
Notice that the letters under the solfa change with the key, but the syllables never do. In G major doh is G; move to F major and doh is F, and the singer reads exactly the same letters. That one feature is why the system travelled so well.
How did John Curwen change Glover's method?
John Curwen took Glover's idea and turned it into a complete teaching system that anyone could follow. He was a Congregational minister looking for a way to teach Sunday school children and congregations to sing, came across Glover's work, and adapted it. He acknowledged her as the source, and her contribution deserves to be remembered alongside his.
Curwen's main changes and additions were:
- A name that stated the principle. "Tonic" Sol-fa put the tonic, doh, at the centre. Every note was taught by its relationship to home.
- A graded course. Rather than presenting the whole scale at once, learners met the strongest notes of the key first and built outwards, step by step.
- The modulator. A tall chart of the syllables, developed from Glover's ladder, which the teacher pointed at while the class sang. It also showed how one key leads into a neighbouring key.
- Hand signs. A shape for each syllable, so a teacher could direct pitch silently and singers could feel the pull between notes. These are still in use, and I describe each one in my guide to Tonic Solfa hand signs.
- Rhythm written into the notation. Bar lines, colons and dots marked the beats and parts of beats, so a solfa sheet carried pitch and time together.
- Publishing. Curwen and his family firm printed tune books, hymn books and teaching manuals in solfa, so choirs had something to read.
The minor key fitted the same logic. Instead of renaming everything, a minor tune was read with lah as its home note and doh staying where the major key would put it. That is why a song in A minor has doh on C. I explain the details in la-based minor explained.
The history of tonic solfa in churches and schools
The method spread because it solved a practical problem for the people who most needed it: congregations, Sunday schools, singing classes and day schools with no money for instruments and no time for years of theory.
Think about a psalm tune that every congregation of that era would have known, the Old Hundredth:
| dAll---dpeo--t,ple- | l,that-s,on-dearth-rdo- |
A class taught by Curwen's method could look at that line and sing it, because each letter names a step they had already practised on the modulator. They did not need to know what key it was printed in. A choir leader could pitch doh by ear or from a tuning fork, and the whole room was ready.
Several things made this work at scale:
- Cheap printing. Solfa could be set with ordinary letters and punctuation, so books and leaflets were far cheaper to produce than engraved staff notation.
- Easy copying. A teacher could write a part on a blackboard or by hand on paper in minutes.
- Teacher training. Curwen's movement trained teachers and offered graded certificates, so the method was passed on consistently rather than reinvented in every parish.
- Church backing. Because it began among ministers and Sunday school workers, it fitted naturally into worship and Christian education, and it travelled with them.
If you have ever wondered why old hymn books print solfa with all those colons, dots and key marks, this is where it comes from. My guide to reading solfa in a hymn book decodes the older printed style.
How did Tonic Solfa reach West Africa?
Tonic Solfa reached West Africa largely through missionaries, mission schools and the churches they founded. The same qualities that made it useful in English Sunday schools made it ideal there: it needed no instrument, it could be written by hand, and it could be taught to large groups quickly.
Hymn books came with the notation, and as hymns were translated into local languages, the solfa stayed the same above the new words. Teachers trained in mission schools and colleges used it in classrooms, and church choirs used it every week. Over generations it stopped being an import and became the normal way to write and learn choral music.
Why is Tonic Solfa still so strong in West African choirs?
It remains strong because it still does the job better than anything else for the way these choirs work. I see the same reasons again and again:
- Choirs sing unaccompanied and in parts. Movable doh lets a leader pitch a song wherever it suits the voices on the day, and every section still reads the same letters.
- Transposing costs nothing. On staff notation a new key means a new copy. In solfa you simply announce a new doh.
- Parts can be written by anyone. A choirmaster can write out an alto line on paper the night before, and the altos can read it.
- Composers write in it. New anthems, choruses and arrangements are produced directly in solfa, so the repertoire keeps growing in the notation.
- It is passed on in the choir itself. Older members teach newer ones in the same rehearsal, the way Curwen's classes did.
That is why so many West African choristers, and the congregations they have built in Europe, North America and elsewhere, still read solfa first and staff notation second, if at all.
What the history means at your next rehearsal
The best thing about knowing this history is that Curwen's teaching order still works. Here is a ten-minute exercise built on it, using a tune your choir already knows:
| s,A-- | dmaz----mingd_ | mgrace!---rhow- | dsweet---l,the- | s,sound,---s,That- |
- Draw a modulator. Write the syllables in a tall column on a whiteboard or large sheet, with the low soh and lah below doh. Leave bigger gaps for whole tones and smaller gaps between me and fah, and between te and the top doh.
- Start with the strong notes. Point to doh and soh and have the choir sing them back and forth, then add me. These are the notes Curwen taught first.
- Add the hand signs. Ask the choir to make the sign for each note as they sing it. It slows everyone down in a helpful way.
- Point the tune. Point out the first line of Amazing Grace on the modulator without telling them what it is. Notice it uses only a handful of notes, mostly the strong ones, and dips to s, below doh. See how quickly someone recognises it.
- Read it from the page. Now show the solfa above. The choir will read it more confidently because they have already sung every step.
If your choir is new to reading altogether, my guide on how to read Tonic Solfa covers the syllables, octave marks and rhythm from the beginning, and the hymn library gives you plenty of familiar tunes to practise on.
One last thought. Glover and Curwen built solfa so that ordinary singers could learn music without waiting for a trained musician to teach every note. That is still what most volunteer choirs need.
When you have a song only as a recording, NoteFusion carries on that idea: hum it, upload it or paste a YouTube, Spotify or Apple Music link, and it writes the melody in movable-doh Tonic Solfa with staff notation, asks "Which doh is it?" when a tune could sit in two keys, and lets you play it back slowly on a piano or transpose it for your choir.
Frequently asked questions
Who invented Tonic Solfa?
Sarah Glover, a music teacher in Norwich, England, devised the original letter-based method to teach children to sing. John Curwen, a Congregational minister, later adapted it, named it Tonic Sol-fa and promoted it widely.
What did John Curwen add to Sarah Glover's method?
Curwen built a full teaching course around Glover's idea, stressed doh as the tonic or home note, published books and sheet music in the notation, and popularised the hand signs and the modulator chart that teachers still use.
Is Tonic Solfa the same as do re mi?
They share the syllables, which go back to medieval singing practice. Tonic Solfa uses movable doh, so doh is always the home note of the key, and writes the music with the initial letters of the syllables.
Why is Tonic Solfa so popular in West Africa?
Missions, churches and schools brought it with their hymn books, and it suited choirs that sing unaccompanied and in many keys. It is cheap to write and copy, so it became the everyday language of church and school choirs and has been passed down ever since.
Is Tonic Solfa still taught in the UK?
It is far less common in UK classrooms than it once was, but solfa syllables and hand signs remain in use through methods influenced by Curwen, and many church choirs with members from West Africa read it every week.