John Curwen

John Curwen (14 November 1816 – 26 May 1880) was an English Congregationalist minister and diffuser of the tonic sol-fa system of music education created by Sarah Ann Glover.

[1] John Curwen was a descendant of the Curwens of Workington Hall in Cumbria, one of the oldest families in England, the male line proper being a direct descent from Eldred, a pre-Norman Englishman, whose son Ketel held lands in the Barony of Kendal.

Her Sol-fa system was based on the ancient gamut; but she omitted the constant recital of the alphabetical names of each note and the arbitrary syllable indicating key relationship, and also the recital of two or more such syllables when the same note was common to as many keys (e.g. C, Fa, Ut, meaning that C is the subdominant of G and the tonic of C).

Curwen felt the need for a simple way of teaching how to sing by note through his experiences among Sunday school teachers.

Stemming from his religious and social beliefs, Curwen thought that music should be easily accessible to all classes and ages of people.

Apart from Glover, similar ideas had been elaborated in France by Pierre Galin (1786–1821), Aimé Paris (1798–1866) and Emile Chevé (1804–1864), whose method of teaching how to read at sight (the Galin-Paris-Chevé system) also depended on the principle of tonic relationship being taught by the reference of every sound to its tonic, and by the use of a numeric notation.

Curwen also began publishing, and brought out a periodical called the Tonic Sol-fa Reporter and Magazine of Vocal Music for the People, and in his later life was occupied in directing the spreading organisation of his system.