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"Solfege" came from French solfège in the 1910s. The French word in term came from the Italian solfeggio, which is a combination of sol and fa. Its equivalent since Early Modern English[?] is sol-fa.
The syllable names come from a formerly well-known medieval hymn, entitled Ut queant laxis, in which each successive verse starts on the next higher scale degree in the major scale; The first word in each verse corresponds to the solfege syllable, with the exception of "Do," which was "Ut" in the hymn.
There are two main types of solfege: moveable Do, in which each syllable corresponds with a scale degree, and fixed Do, in which the syllables correspond to fixed pitches. The advantage of moveable Do is that Do always corresponds to the tonic; the disadvantage is that the singer must do a harmonic analysis of the piece in order to sing the correct syllables. In fixed Do, the pitches are set: the tonic, Do, is C, Re is D, and so on; Fa is easy to remember, since it is F.
There are also other syllables corresponding to notes outside of the major scale. All the solfege syllables are listed in the table below; the syllables in the major scale are shown in bold.
Scale degree | Syllable | Mnemonic |
---|---|---|
Unison, Octave | Do | dough |
Augmented unison | Di | Dee |
Minor second | Ra | "Rah rah rah" |
Major second | Re | ray |
Augmented second | Ri | like reach |
Minor third | Mé | May |
Major third | Mi | like the word me |
Perfect fourth | Fa | 'a' as in father |
Augmented fourth | Fi | like feet |
Diminished fifth | Se | say |
Perfect fifth | Sol | long 'o', like sold |
Augmneted fifth | Si | see |
Minor sixth | Le | lay |
Major sixth | La | 'a' as in large (like Fa, above) |
Augmented sixth | Li | like lean |
Minor seventh | Te | like take |
Major seventh | Ti | tea |
In colloquial language, singers sometimes use "solfege" and "sight reading" as synonyms, though sight reading[?] can also mean reading the piece without benefit of previous study, or numerical sight-singing, where the hard-to-memorize solfege syllables are replaced by the numbers one through seven.
Descending the chromatic scale:
Do Ti Te La Le Sol Se Fa Mi Me Re Ra Do
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