It Started with "The Sound of Music"

I'm not sure if it was because I first watched it when I was six years old...and was allowed to stay up until 10PM to see the whole thing, or if I liked the music or characters or story, but throughout my school age years, "The Sound of Music" was my favorite movie. It was in this movie that I first became familiar with Solfege...come on, you know it "Do a deer a female deer. Re a drop of golden sun..." So I knew all the basic solfege syllables, but didn't really learn much more until my college Ear Training Sight Singing class. In case you were wondering, that was four semesters of tapping rhythms and singing solfege exercises. Not my favorite tasks, but an amazing professor made it bearable. Anyway, solfege syllables are used as the names of the notes in lots of places around the world. In fact, Americans may be the odd ones out when it comes to using A B C instead of do re mi to name the notes. Or so it would seem. By teaching online, I have had the opportunity to work with music students from South America and now France. What do they have in common? They learned the names of the notes as solfege syllables. I am so thankful that I am comfortable reading notes in solfege so I can speak their language as far as the notes are concerned. So, basically, this is all to say that I am grateful for the Sound of Music and for spending two years singing "nonsense" in solfege because it makes teaching in an international environment that much easier.