The leading anthems, services, and psalters are now published in the Tonic Sol-fa notation, so that boys who have learnt to sing from the letters at school may quickly be put to sing their parts in the church choir. The late Alfred Stone, of Bristol, who used the Tonic Sol-fa notation for his choir boys, found it a great time-saver. So quickly was the service music got through at the weekly practice that there was nearly an hour to spare for singing glees and getting up cantatas. Mr. Stone arranged his boys in two grades. The upper grade all held a Tonic Sol-fa certificate, and they received higher pay than the lower grade. The result of this arrangement was that the lower boys got the upper ones to teach them Tonic Sol-fa in their playtime, and thus saved the choirmaster a great deal of trouble.
A serious disadvantage of the ordinary way of learning to sing from the staff notation is that practice usually begins in, and is for several months confined to key C. For boys' voices this is the most trying of all the keys—the one most likely to lead to bad habits in the use of the registers. The keys for boys to begin in are G and F, where you can get a cadence upon the tonic in the thin register. A German choirmaster, whose choir is greatly celebrated, has sent me a little book of exercises which he uses, and I find that, as in most English publications of a similar kind, there are pages of exercises in key C, before any other key is attempted. In Tonic Sol-fa all keys are equally available from the first.
I have had a wide experience of boys taught on all systems, both in this country and abroad. I have been present, by the courtesy of choirmasters, at rehearsals in all parts of the country. And I have noticed that boys taught by ear, or taught the staff notation by the fixed do, make mistakes which boys trained by Tonic Sol-fa and singing from it, or applying their knowledge of it to the staff notation, could not make. The class of mistake I refer to is that which confuses the place of the semitones in the scale. A sight-singing manual which I picked up the other day says that the whole matter of singing at sight lies in knowing where the semitones come. And from one point of view this is true, but to the Tonic Sol-faist the semitones always come in the same places, i.e., between me and fah, and between te and doh. He has only one scale to learn, and as to modulation, that is accomplished for him by his notation, while the time marks, separating and defining the beats or pulses of the music, make rhythm vividly clear.
If choirmasters wish to save themselves trouble, and get confident attack and good intonation from their boys, they should teach them the Tonic Sol-fa notation, and let them sing from it always. The staff notation they can easily learn later on.
CHAPTER VIII.
FLATTENING, AND SINGING OUT OF TUNE.
The trainer of adult voices has constantly before him the problem of making his pupils sing in tune. With boys this matter is less of a trouble, for this reason. Many adults have fine voices which, if their intonation can be improved, will do great things. Others have incurably bad voices, but possessing the ambition and the means for studying singing, they come under the hands of the professor. In the case of boys, however, there is a preliminary process of selection by which the teacher rejects at the outset any defective ears and voices. The trainer of boys chooses his pupils; adult students of singing, as a rule, choose their teacher.
Even, however, when a good set of boys has been chosen and trained, every choirmaster is troubled from time to time by the evils which I have named at the head of this paper.
What are their causes? Probably no cause is so fruitful as a misuse of the registers of the voice, a straining upwards of the lower register beyond its proper limits. This may be placed in the front as a perpetual cause of bad intonation and loss of pitch. This straining is usually accompanied with loud singing, but boys who have formed this bad habit will not at once sustain the pitch if told to sing softly. Their voices, under these circumstances, will at first prove weak and husky, and will flatten as much with soft singing as they did with loud. A slow process of voice training can alone set them right. But as boys' voices last so short a time this treatment is not worth the trouble. Boys who have fallen into thoroughly bad habits should therefore be dismissed, and a fresh selection made.