Musikgarten Blog: A Short History of Do-Re-Mi
Anyone who has seen Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1965 hit The Sound of Music remembers the catchy song that Baroness Maria uses to teach the Von Trapp children to sing. The lyrics are “Doe, a deer, a female, deer, Ray, a drop of golden sun, Me, a name I call myself..,” and so on. While the syllables of Solfege, a system designed to teach the major musical scale, is assigned to do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti in English speaking countries, the sounding of each is cleverly used in the adored song. But the history of solfege dates way back to the turn of the 11th Century, and has been used by many early childhood music programs to teach the major musical scale.