I've never heard the term "solfeggio" actually, but solfege is indeed the do-re-mi. Did you not do sight singing in college? All our music majors, both instrumental and vocal had to have 2 years of sight singing. It was part of Aural theory. I thought it was a standard thing, so I figured you'd know.
I'm a bit concerned about my daughter's music teacher. She's in a dual immersion program in which 60% of her classes are in English. Music is one of those classes. But she already speaks fluent English and she says her teacher's English is terrible and he's really hard to understand. ("Open your mouse" mouth. "One two tree") But last year, she asked me to quiz her on theory, and she handed me her book. It had a Treble Clef and it was labeled "Violin Clef". So I showed her a picture and asked what it was called, she said Violin Clef. I had NEVER heard it called that in English. So I asked all my music friends from college and even my Theory Professor, and I asked a professional musician in the UK just to make sure it wasn't a difference between British English and American English. I asked for every term they've ever heard for that symbol...no one had ever heard of a violin clef, and a google search of violin clef only came up with the Treble Clef being the one used for Violin. So I told my daughter that actually, that was incorrect, told her the correct term, and told her she might want to let the teacher know, because I was giving him the benefit of the doubt and assumed it's probably called violin clef in Dutch and he translated it literally instead of looking up the term in English. So she went to him and told him that her mom was American, and thus a native speaker and that she had a degree in music and that the term was actually Treble Clef. He said "Yes, it's sometimes called that, too." This year's book was edited to add Treble Clef as a 3rd term for it, after violin clef and G clef, but he can't admit that Violin Clef doesn't exist in the English language and insists it is the main term for it.
Then she came home after a test and said the test had 3 parts: Written Theory, Listening, and Solfege. I said "Oh! You're learning sight reading?" And she said no. And I was like..."But you said solfege." And she says yeah, that's one of the parts of the test. I told her solfege is do-re-mi...it's sight reading. She said that's not what her teacher calls solfege. So I asked her what he calls solfege. She says she doesn't really know, but it's not sight reading. So then she came home a few days ago and said she got a 9.6 on what he calls solfege. I asked her if she knew what it was now, and she said not really. She has to do written theory, has to do a listening section where he plays a part of a song and they have to tell him if it's Jazz or classical or pop, etc. And then there's the solfege and she mentioned something about him tapping out rhythms and they have to notate it, and something about finding differences in written notation and what he plays, so it sounds like Aural theory/notation maybe. But it's not solfege, whatever it is. I'm kind of thinking maybe I should look over her book and check what he's teaching them. He wrote the book himself, and he obviously isn't proficient in his English. It's not important in the grand scheme of things, except if they choose music as one of their subjects for the upper grades because then the test is made by a national pannel, not the teacher. So anything HE has it wrong, the kids will have wrong and it will count against them on the exam. And where he can't admit to making a mistake with the Treble Clef, I have to wonder what else he's got wrong. I can't blame him for making a mistake in his Engligh, but I can blame him for not being willing to correct it when he finds out he was wrong. But before I say he's wrong, I want to make sure that my other musician friends haven't heard of the terms in the context he is using....I want to make sure it is HIM that has it wrong and not me, because I certainly don't know everything. But so far, everyone agrees with me that they've never heard of a violin clef, and that solfege is a system of naming the notes in a scale for teaching sight reading. So I'm farely confident that it's not me.
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