John Curwen

Reverend John Curwen (1816–1880) was an English Congregationalist minister, and founder of the Tonic sol-fa system of music education with the help of Sarah Ann Glover. He was educated at Wymondley College (subsequently Coward College) and University College London.

John Curwen was a descendent of the Curwens of Workington Hall in Cumbria, one of the oldest families in England, the male line proper being a direct descent from Eldred, a pre-Norman Englishman, whose son Ketel held lands in the Barony of Kendal. Orm, Ketel's son, inherited the Cumbrian manor of Workington.

Curwen was born 14 November 1816, at Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, the son of Spedding Curwen and Mary Jubb. His father was a Non-conformist minister, as John was also from 1838 until 1864. Curwen gave up full-time ministry to devote himself to his new method of musical nomenclature.

Curwen married Mary Thompson (1816–1890) in May 1845. They had four children – Margaret, John Spencer, Spedding and Thomas Herbert. Curwen died at Heaton Mersey on 16 May 1880. His son John Spencer married Annie Jessy Gregg, who went on to write the extensive and influential series Mrs. Curwen's Pianoforte Method based on her adaptation for the piano of John Curwen's method for voice.

Curwen's system was designed to aid in sight reading of the stave with its lines and spaces. He adapted it from a number of earlier musical systems, including the Norwich Sol-fa method of Sarah Ann Glover (1785–1867) of Norwich. Her Sol-fa system was based on the ancient ; but she omitted the constant recital of the alphabetical names of each note and the arbitrary syllable indicating key relationship, and also the recital of two or more such syllables when the same note was common to as many keys (e.g. C, Fa, Ut, meaning that C is the subdominant of G and the tonic of C). The notes were represented by the initials of the seven syllables, still in use in Italy and France as their names. Curwen taught himself to sight-read based on Glover's Norwich Sol-fa, made alterations and improvements, and named his method Tonic Sol-fa. In the Tonic Sol-fa the seven letters refer to key relationship (relative pitch) and not to absolute pitch. Curwen utilised the first letter (lower case) of each of the solmisation tones (do, re, me, fa, sol, la, ti), and a rhythmic system that used bar lines (prefixing strong beats), half bar lines (prefixing medium beats), and semicolons (prefixing weak beats) in each measure.

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