The Curwen hand signs are a method of solfeggio invented by John Curwen in the 19th century. The son of a non-conformist minister, Curwen had reached the conviction that the music of the church should be accessible to everyone. However, music education was not popular at the time so Curwen developed his now eponymous hand sign method and spread it through Sunday School teachers.
This new system, which evolved from Sarah Ann Glover's Norwich Sol-fa method, added the concept of moveable tonics: the unison octave's hand signal represents the first note in whichever key is being sung. This development eliminated the need to be able to read music and analyze the chordant structure of printed music. Curwen accordingly named his new system Tonic Sol-fa.
Years later, Hungarian musicologist Zoltán Kodály would adopt the Curwen system for use in his music education method, which stressed ethnically significant music for young children and emphasized singing and playing rhythm instruments. This development still manifests itself in music education today, namely in the Suzuki Violin Method, the Kodály Society's system, Solresol (the synthesized music language developed in France), and even makes an appearance in Close Encounters of the Third Kind as an a priori language for communicating with the aliens.
The Curwen hand signs are traditionally performed with the left hand. This is so that a teacher leading a class may play the piano with their right hand over the keys needed to play a major scale at the Middle C octave.
The Curwen hand signs
- DO (Unison, Octave) : Fist at forehead.
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- TI (Major Seventh): Hand at eye level, index finger pointing upwards
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- TA, TE (Minor Seventh) : Hand at eye level, index finger down
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- LA (Major Sixth) : Relaxed hand, hanging down from chin level
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- SI (Augmented Fifth) : Open hand slanted up, palm to chest
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- SO, SOL (Perfect Fifth) : Palm towards chest
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- FI (Augmented Fourth) : Thumb upwards, abdomen height
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- FA (Perfect Fourth) : Thumb downwards, abdomen height
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- MI (Major Third) : Flat hand horizontal, just above navel
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- MA (Minor Third) : Index finger downward from palm, just above navel
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- RI (Augmented Second) : Flat hand, palm down, slanting upward, index finger elevated, at navel height
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- RE (Major Second) : Flat hand, palm down, slanting upwards, navel height
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- DI (Augmented Unison) : Lift wrist, making a fist at belt height.
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- DO (Lower Octaval Unison) : Fist at belt height.
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..
Pictures ASCII'ed from http://www.kodalysocietyofcanada.ca/curwin.html using IMG2TXT at http://www.degraeve.com/gif2txt.php.
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