My daughter has just come home somewhat confused from a music lesson in her French school.

The teacher explained to them that if you were in England you could use the letters of BACH's name to play a tune. I explained to my daughter that the H is German, not English and she was happy with that.

But, for next week they are supposed to practise playing their own name on their instrument using the letter names. Daughter insists that her teacher said you could have all 26 letters if you included the sharps and flats but I just can't see how.

Am I missing something obvious?

She needs to be able to go at least to S.

I've never gone past G except for when we had a german student playing with our orchestra.

I don't know anything at all about the theory of music but wondered if the teacher actually meant them to write out the all the notes say starting with A, A sharp A flat or whatever order they come in. The tune could be played on the letter which is in the same position as the letter in the name.

Probably complete rubbish but just a thought

If you combine the german and french and italian note names, you'll get quite a few.

You have A-H easily then you get S from Eb in german. Then U, R, M, F, S, L, T? There's probably another couple of german ones too. I don't think that would get all of the alphabet though.

She'd still be lacking an "I" and an "N".
And what would you take for "S"? Eb from German (how do you get that by the way?) or G (the first letter of "sol")? or B (the first letter of si)?

Eb in German is Es (pronounced S).

You can get a couple more from Doh, Ray Me Fah So La Te

OOps Sarah123 has already suggested that sorry. Confused me with the U.

Shostakovich uses two code sequences in his Symphony No 10: his own name is represented by DSCH (D Eb C B in English), also used in the 8th string quartet; and that of a one time pupil, Elmira Nazirova, as the frequently recurring horn solo in the third movement, concert E A E D A, spelt in a mixture of German and French note names, "E La Mi Re A".

You can get a U from "Ut" (as in ut, ré, mi, fa, sol, la si do)... I think ??

Well you do have such works as Ravels 'Minuet sur le Nom de HAYDN', and Durufle 'Prelude and Fugue sur le nom A.L.A.I.N.'
Both these just continued up the alphabet after G,, so H is A again , I is B, J is C etc.

I think there are going to be a lot of very confused pupils in your daughter's class

It's not obvious to me. Without sharps and flats you have seven letter names (nine in Germans if Es = S). Adding sharps and flats to the seven gives 21; adding double sharps and double flats gives 35. I've never heard of anyone mapping either of these onto 26 letters.

Lots of interesting ideas here but they sound rather beyond what one would expect of children learning basic theory.

I was wondering what the children without musical parents would do (or a Forum)

Possibly stupid idea but if you start from say A and every semitone you jump to the next letter of the alphabet?
A Asharp B C Csharp ... would be A B C D E keep going all the way to Z

Thanks for the ideas everyone. I told her to ask a friend at school today (they have until next Thursday to do this piece of homework).


Actually, I think an English and musical mother is part of the problem. For the other children (all French speakers) using letters of the alphabet doesn't mean anything in particular. They, apparently, weren't bothered by the fact that the teacher told them that the English used an H whereas my daughter, who has never heard me use it, was immediately confused.

Maybe Jacobi is right and she is supposed to do A = A, A# = B, B = C, C = D, C# = E etc. but I can see us getting very confused
(And I can hear her complaining already that we shouldn't have given her a name with 9 letters)

The German system, for anyone who's puzzled about the H thingy;

Basic note names; CDEFGAH (H is pronounced Hah)
Sharpened, add -is (pronounced iss);Cis Dis Eis Fis Gis Ais His
Flattened, add -es (pronounced ess); Ces Des Es Fes Ges As B (pron bay)

(When I first started lessons here I wondered why the teacher would exclaim Ah-hah! quite frequently until it dawned on me he wanted a B and not a Bb ...)

Why I wonder is H in the wrong place in the alphabet though?...

I think the thing to do is just keep counting the alphabet up the keyboard, which is what Ravel did when he wrote the Minuet sur le nom de Haydn that F# Minor mentioned (at least I assume that's what he did, as it does work and I can't see how else he gets Y = D and N = G...).

I think that's what I meant, eg the very first key to the left is A, next key B etc

You both described it better than I did

You said go up a letter every semitone, which means that Bb would be B, B would be C, C would be D, C# would be E...

B and B-flat were called B-durum and B-molle in the olden days and B-durum was written with a square where B-molle - written like the letter "b" - has a kind of circle. If you leave out the lower side of the square in B-durum you get the letter h, and hence the names "h" and "b" instead of b-durum and b-molle.

Btw, if you have 2 sharps or 2 flats you say Cisis or Ceses etc.

Ina

Ah-Ha!!

Well, I've learned something there! Thanks for that Ina !

In Germany and Austria you have A B H C D E F G

B = Bb

H = B natural

I suppose it is it a bit odd that in their system H comes between B (Bb) and C and why should Bb have its own alphabet letter when no other flat or sharp does?

Anyway if you see a piece of music called Sonata in H moll it means in B minor. For the record.

Yes. In my edition of Bach's 2-part Inventions the contents page has all the titles in German and French in addition to English. If moll is minor, dur is major, isn't it?

Yep, 'dur' is major.