Its author, Justine Bayard Ward, was a newcomer to the Catholic Church and to the field of education, yet her approach proved successful and spread throughout the United States, Europe and other parts of the world.
John Young, S.J., had combined bel canto vocal technique with Chevé exercises and, under Shields's guidance, Ward reshaped it.
Separation of musical elements, principally rhythm and pitch, and graduated exercises were key ingredients Ward inherited from Chevé.
Students learned accurate pitch discrimination through daily sight-singing drills where numbers corresponded to the sung solfège syllables in moveable "do."
Justine Ward's contributions lie in skillfully incorporating the Galin-Paris-Chevé sight-singing drills, Young's vocal training, and Shields' theories of aesthetics and childhood development to attain her goal of teaching children music of quality.
Its predecessors were Rousseau and Galin-Paris-Chevé, who developed a method of reading music in numbers for solfege, rather than beginning with the traditional staff.
[1] In 1944, the Order of Malta awarded her the Croce di Benemerenza, and from Pope Pius XII, she received the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifica.
[1] Located just behind the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the School of Music building of the Catholic University of America was partially[9] donated by and named for her.