in Music, the naming or pronouncing the several notes of a song by the syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, &c. in learning to sing it.

Of the seven notes in the French scale ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, only four are used among us in singing, as mi, fa, sol, la; their office is principally, in singing, that by applying them to every note of the scale, it may not only be pronounced with more ease, but chiefly that by them the tones and semitones of the natural scale may be better marked out and distinguished. This design is obtained by the four syllables fa, sol, la, mi. Solfaterra. Thus from fa to sol is a tone, also from sol to la, and from la to mi, without distinguishing the greater or less tone; but from la to fa, also from mi to fa, is only a semitone. If then these be applied in this order, fa, sol, la, fa, sol, la, mi, fa, &c., they express the natural series from C; and if that be repeated to a second or third octave, we see by them how to express all the different orders of tones and semitones in the diatonic scale; and still above mi will stand fa, sol, la, and below it the same inverted la, sol, fa, and one mi is always distant from another an octave; which cannot be said of any of the rest, because after mi ascending come always fa, sol, la, which are repeated invertedly descending.

To conceive the use of this, it is to be remembered, that the first thing in learning to sing, is to make one raise a scale of notes by tones and semitones to an octave, and descend again by the same; and then to rise and fall by greater intervals at a leap, as thirds and fourths, &c., and to do all this by beginning at notes of different pitch. Then those notes are represented by lines and spaces, to which these syllables are applied, and the learners taught to name each line and space thereby, which makes what we call solfæing; the use whereof is, that while they are learning to tune the degrees and intervals of sound expressed by notes on a line or space, or learning a song to which no words are applied, they may not only do it the better by means of articulate sounds, but chiefly that by knowing the degrees and intervals expressed by those syllables, they may more readily know the places of the semitones, and the true distance of the notes. See the article SINGING.