Charlotte Mason considered musical training an essential, including Solfa in her curriculum. This interview with Heidi Buschbach reveals the purpose of this method of music training, how Miss Mason employed it in her curriculum, and how untrained teachers can take advantage of resources to include this subject in their own lessons.

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“I should like, in connection with singing, to mention the admirable educational effects of the Tonic Sol-fa method.

“Children learn by it in a magical way to produce sign for sound and sound for sign, that is, they can not only read music, but can write the notes for, or make the proper hand signs for, the notes of a passage sung to them. Ear and Voice are simultaneously and equally cultivated.” (1/314-15)

“Certain subjects of peculiar educational value, music, for instance, I have said nothing about, partly for want of space, and partly because if the mother have not Sir Joshua Reynold’s ‘that!’ in her, hints from an outsider will not produce the art-feeling which is the condition of success in this sort of teaching. If possible, let the children learn from the first under artists, lovers of their work: it is a serious mistake to let the child lay the foundation of whatever he may do in the future under ill-qualified mechanical teachers, who kindle in him none of the enthusiasm which is the life of art.” (1/314)

Tonic Sol-fa, Curwen

Fifty Steps in Sight Singing, Somervell

Musical Ground Work, Shera

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Miss Mason’s Music