Re: Solfege [Was Re: Spanish gender & a Santa Fe restaurant [was: Re: stay/keep interchangeable?]]

jerry_friedman@xxxxxxxxx filted:
>
>Bob Cunningham wrote:
>
>> I never thought much more about it until yesterday when I
>> happened to come across Julie Andrews singing selections
>> from "The Sound of Music" on a show-tunes channel on cable
>> TV. We saw the movie when it was new, and I've listened to
>> the piece more than once since then, but it never struck me
>> before that one of the lines is "So, a needle pulling
>> thread". Which of the two, "so" or "sol", is considered
>> preferable these days?
>
>The original form was ut re mi fa sol la si, from a medieval hymn, "Ut
>queant laxis", addressed to Saint John the Baptist; those were the
>initial syllables of the lines, each of which started one note higher
>than the last (except that no line started on "si", which is said to be
>named after Sancti Iohannes--the first acronym in a European
>language?). The changes of ut to do, sol to so, and si to ti were made
>in English for better singability, consistency in being a consonant
>followed by a vowel, and distinction of initial letters. Other
>languages have versions closer to the original.

The incorporation of accidentals into the system was also helped by the change
of "si" to "ti"...each scale degree gets its vowel changed to "-i" when raised a
half step...sharping "mi" and "ti" yield notes already in the diatonic scale so
there's no conflict there...had the subtonic retained its original name, there
would be confusion with the note above "so(l)"....

(Lowering the original notes a half step is usually accompanied by a change of
the vowel to "-e"...the only potential troublemaker there is "re", which becomes
"ra" when flatted)....

The rest of the song from "The Sound of Music" reveals Rodgers and Hammerstein's
sympathies in other areas..."so, a needle pulling thread" is clearly better than
"sol, ejected from the dead"..."fa, a long long way to run" exposes someone's
non-rhoticity, although it's hard to see any other way of constructing a useful
mnemonic for this syllable...using the older name for the subtonic would have
been troublesome too: "si, why eyes are in your head"?...

And they simply threw up their hands in despair on "la"...it's just lucky they
didn't have *two* syllables for which there were no English homophones...imagine
trying to start the song with "ut"....r

.

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