When La is Re: Parallel use of absolute and relative solmization

AbstractIn an increasingly mobile Europe, many students take the opportunity to do (a part of) their studies abroad. Music education systems, including solfege pedagogy, can differ extensively from one country to another, and migrating students are often expected to adjust. In The Netherlands, where this research is done, a number of conservatories use relative solmization. Most of our international students are coming from European countries where absolute solmization is the main (or even only) note-naming system. The first months of learning relative solmization is, for these students, paired with certain amount of frustration or even deprecation. Being a kind of musical mother-tongue, absolute solmization cannot (and should not) be unlearned; it remains active at least in the background. The students in focus, thus, use both ‘languages’ in parallel. Without the intension of advocating for any of the solmization systems, in this research I am investigating the cognitive challenges that students can experience in this situation. With the aim of a better understanding of what happens in the first months of the learning process (in the context of parallel use of both solmization systems), I have analyzed the situation from the perspective of cognitive psychology, learning theories and theories of bilingualism. Several aspects come to fore: 1) verbal association, as a core principle in the pedagogical effect of relative solmization, but at the same time also active in absolute note naming, 2) importance of automatization of verbal associations (audiation), 3) competing naming systems, language (solmization) activation, and 4) high cognitive load in reading tasks. Next to this, I have conducted (preliminary) interviews with students of the first and the second year, in which the main focus was on the student’s experience in parallel use of the two solmization systems. Among other things, the students reported the ways they ‘calculate’ the relative note names, their awareness of the relative pitch within the process of reading, and the reading strategies that they find efficient. keywords: solfege, solmization, automaticity, cognitive load, bilingualism, KonCon Lectorate