Defending the Straw Man: Modulation, Solmization, and What to Do With a Brain Once You Get It

Gary S. Karpinski, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Pitch solmization systems used in Western music fall into two broad categories:

(1) functional systems, which label each pitch in terms of its scale degree or position within a diatonic collection; and

(2) fixed systems, which label each pitch in terms of its absolute pitch or position on the staff.

Colleges and universities in the United States teach functional systems more often than fixed ones. Despite this popularity (or perhaps in part because of it), functional solmization has its detractors. Many of the arguments against its use center on the question of its efficacy during modulation. For example, The Juilliard Report on Teaching the Literature and Materials of Music complained about students who "have been 'contaminated' by the very limited 'movable do' system used in public schools and cannot cope with modulations" (Juilliard School of Music 1953, 112). Walt Multer argued that the simplest of modulations "tests the movable-do singer rather severely. What will happen in a passage of greater tonal ambiguity?" (Multer 1978, 47). Louis Martin opined that "identifying pitches by scale-degree numbers raises . . . questions. How does one find the 'one' in order to establish the functional hierarchy? . . . When does a chromatic excursion indicate a modulation and when does it not?" (Martin 1978, 24).

In this paper, I first show that any case against functional solmization made on the basis of its usefulness during modulation is little more than a straw man, set up by detractors in order to be knocked down easily. But then, although one is usually tempted to leave straw men where their detractors have left them, I will prop this one up again in order to defend him. What does the functional reader or listener do during modulation? What do other types of readers and listeners do? Which systems best model the cognitive processes that occur during modulation? And if functional systems are found wanting at any point during a modulation, is this cause for abandoning them in all other passages? Finally, I will discuss appropriate uses of both fixed and functional solmization systems, what they represent in music and our perception of it, and what they can inculcate in developing musicians.