1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Curwen, John

CURWEN, JOHN (1816–1880), English Nonconformist minister and founder of the Tonic Sol-Fa system of musical teaching, was born at Heckmondwike, Yorkshire, of an old Cumberland family. His father was a Nonconformist minister, and he himself adopted this profession, which he practised till 1864, when he gave it up in order to devote himself to his new method of musical nomenclature, designed to avoid the use of the stave with its lines and spaces. He adapted it from that of Miss Sarah Ann Glover (1785–1867) of Norwich, whose Sol-Fa system was based on the ancient gamut; but she omitted the constant recital of the alphabetical names of each note and the arbitrary syllable indicating key relationship, and also the recital of two or more such syllables when the same note was common to as many keys (e.g. “C, Fa, Ut,” meaning that C is the subdominant of G and the tonic of C). The notes were represented by the initials of the seven syllables, still in use in Italy and France as their names but in the “Tonic Sol-Fa” the seven letters refer to key relationship and not to pitch. Curwen was led to feel the importance of a simple way of teaching how to sing by note by his experiences among Sunday-school teachers. Apart from Miss Glover, the same idea had been elaborated in France since J. J. Rousseau’s time, by Pierre Galin (1786–1821), Aimé Paris (1798–1866) and Emile Chevé (1804–1864), whose method of teaching how to read at sight also depended on the principle of “tonic relationship” being inculcated by the reference of every sound to its tonic, by the use of a numeral notation. Curwen brought out his Grammar of Vocal Music in 1843, and in 1853 started the Tonic Sol-Fa Association; and in 1879, after some difficulties with the education department, the Tonic Sol-Fa College was opened. Curwen also took to publishing, and brought out a periodical called the Tonic Sol-fa Reporter, and in his later life was occupied in directing the spreading organization of his system. He died at Manchester on the 26th of May 1880. His son John Spencer Curwen (b. 1847), who became principal of the Tonic Sol-Fa College, published Memorials of J. Curwen in 1882. The Sol-Fa system has been widely adopted for use in education, as an easily teachable method in the reading of music at sight, but its more ambitious aims, which are strenuously pushed, for providing a superior method of musical notation generally, have not recommended themselves to musicians at large.