The Diary of Iris Vaughan “Miss Queeny Sparks is teaching st. 4. She is fierce you don’t make a noise with her. Mr. Hanekom is teacher in big children. He is more fierce. I am afraid of him Miss Rena Sparks is pupel teacher and she is the nicest and kindest of all. When Jonny Bok looks at you you think quickly what have I done wrong now. We have an awful class here. It is a DOH rey me singing. Never shall I get this right. … a new kind of singing called tonic Sulfur. It is a doh rey me fah singing. Teacher stands in front of a paper hanging on the wall and points with a stick to the doh ray me writings up and down and evryone sings loudly to make a song. No piano it does not make sense to me. Why not singing like Pop and Mom. We sing nice things together Pop and Mom sing come where my love lies dreaming and we all sing soldiers of my king my lad together without dohray me. Never will I get this right.” Poor Iris, trying to grapple with the Tonic Sol-fa system. I must admit that, like her, I never grasped it, nor enjoyed it much. Invented by Sarah Glover (1785-1867) as a pedagogical system for teaching sight-singing, it was made popular by the Rev John Curwen (1816-1880) who adapted it to teach singing to his Sunday School children. It was so successful that by 1891 2½ million people across Britain were taught music this way. It was thanks to the Education Act of 1870 which allowed school boards to choose their own programmes, that the Tonic Sol-fa system got into the schools. And soon it spread to the colonies. In South Africa it was adopted by the Department of Public Education of the Cape of Good Hope. Teachers were trained in the method and fearsome inspectors – as Iris was later to find out – (watch this space!) were appointed to make sure it was implemented correctly. And so Tonic Sol-fa came to the Adelaide Public School (picture 1). The “paper hanging on the wall” was Curwen’s Modulator, which was to be found in almost every school (picture 2). Basically the Tonic Sol-fa system uses musical notation based on the movable ‘do solfége’, where every tone is given a name according to its relationship with other tones in the key. But let me stop here – it is already sounding far too complicated. But I should just mention that African choral tradition draws heavily on Tonic Sol-fa, where it was introduced successfully at mission stations for the singing of hymns (picture 3). And who can forget ‘Do Ra Mi’ in the popular 1965 film ‘The Sound of Music’ where Maria used Tonic Sol-fa to teach the Von Trapp children to sing for the first time (picture 4). When I was teaching in the 1980s, we still had Tonic Sol-fa books for the children that had to be used in singing lessons. It included clapping exercises to the rhythm of ‘ta ta tate ta a’, just like Iris mentions. I made a valiant attempt; couldn’t master it; the children, like Iris, hated it. So I put the books in the cupboard, took out my guitar and then we just sang. The children loved that, just like Iris did. There was always music in the Vaughan household. Patty Vaughan played the piano, and both she and Cecil sang. The first song Iris quotes in the extract above is ‘Come Where my Love Lies Dreaming’ by Stephen Foster. The second one is probably ‘Soldiers of the King’ by Ezra Read. We should just take a quick look at the teachers she mentions. We have already mentioned “Jonny Bok”, James Lamont, who was the Principal. Mr Hanekom was probably the First Assistant, who taught the upper classes, along with Mr Lamont. There must have been one or two other teachers, not mentioned here. As Miss Queenie Sparks was the Std 4 teacher, she must have been Iris’ teacher, as she was in that grade in 1902. Queenie May Sparks taught at the Adelaide Public School from 1895-1905, when she left to teach briefly at the Grey South End Public School in Port Elizabeth (picture 5). She returned in 1909 and lived out the rest of her days in Adelaide. She rests in the Adelaide cemetery, not far from Cecil Vaughan (picture 6). Her sister Rena – Alexandrina Sparks – of whom Iris was particularly fond, was in her second year as a Pupil Teacher (a learner teacher who was still at school) in 1902 and was 17 years old. She later became the town librarian, and was a much loved person in Adelaide. She too is buried in the Adelaide cemetery (picture 7). Both Queenie and Rena were daughters of Mr GAS Sparks and part of another one of Adelaide’s larger families. We will learn about them in another post soon. Promise!
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 19:43:49 +0000
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