Solresol: The Universal Musical Language (Part 1)

Photo by Harry Quan on Unsplash

One Language For All 

At the turn of the 19th century, in the quaint village of Sorèze, France, southeast of Toulouse, a music professor instructs his pupil to recognize pitch, using Solfège—Do, ré, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, to. He climbs up the scale on his violin—do, ré, mi—and, in unison with his student, he gently scales back down—mi, ré, do. 

As he sings the major scale aloud with his adolescent student, his mind wanders. He thinks to himself, “The strings of this violin nearly mask my voice completely. It’s as though my speech belongs to the pitch of my instrument more than the words from my mouth.” 

His poetic imagination unravels his focus away from anything other than his new passion. In a divine haze, he alerts his wife and colleagues and everyone he knows, that he will use Solfège to create something never done before. 

What if all the world could disband their language barriers and converse in a language understood by all, innately? The humility of learning their neighbor’s language could be bridged with linguistic equality instead. That language would have to be simple enough for someone of any cultural background to approach. The syntax and the speech sounds couldn’t lean in favor or bias of any one language—not even French. Best of all, the meaning of words would stay frozen in time. With an isolated and consistent vocabulary, there would be no hierarchy of sophisticated usage on which to push down other classes. What is the one “language” that already unites us all? 

Music. 

His name is Monsieur François Sudre. And in six years, he will create the world’s first globally-recognized and revered artificial language of which you’ve never heard: The Universal Musical Language. Solresol.

Become Fluent in 3 Months

It’s now 1823, and M. Sudre has gathered together a public hearing. He’s worked fastidiously on his musical invention and is now revealing the fruits of his efforts for his first demonstration. 

M. Sudre has successfully composed a simple and effective communication system using only Solfège, the 7 tones in a diatonic scale: Do, ré, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, to. 

The crowd is in awe. After dozens of musical demonstrations on his violin, even those who were not musicians could easily learn and understand this musical language. He spoke with them purely by bowing his strings. 

Among some of the nuances unique to Solresol, was the invention of inverted words to express their opposite ideas. For example, where domisol means “God,” and misol means “good,” solmi meant “bad,” and solmido meant “Satan.” This lexical feature alone made his language extremely intuitive.

For language learners, we know the struggle of attempting new vocabulary when expressing ourselves in a new language. Now imagine that for every new word you’ve learned, you’ll only need to say that word backward to convey its semantic opposite! 

Thus, vocabulary acquisition is reduced by nearly half time. 

For this reason, along with others, reporters marketed M. Sudre's language with slogans similar to modern language learning apps. 

“After only three months, all people of the earth…can understand each other.” 

I Feel What You Mean, Literally 

In 1827, M. Sudre continued to campaign for his universal musical language. But now, he submitted his work—and himself—to high culture: The Institute of France. His audience would be one of the five esteemed academies, l’Académie Des Beaux Arts, which was and is considerably the equivalent of Harvard for the Fine Arts in France.

He presented to them a language that did not require one to sing. They need only speak the easily pronounced phonetic pairs. 

Along with the ease of speech, though, Solresol could also be silently spoken. M. Sudre’s end aim was to ensure a universal language for all people. So, he designed a sign language system, still using the solfège symbols. 

Imagine making music with your hands for the Deaf community so that they may see musical patterns and understand them with meaning. To make a clear distinction, sign language was already prevalent in France. Abbé Charles Michel de l’Epée, the father of deaf education, had already invented French Sign Language nearly a century before M. Sudre’s hand signing system. 

What made his invention unique was that the Deaf community would communicate using musical symbols. 

Now, take that wonder and double it! 

M. Sudre expanded the range of his artificial language in what he called the “hidden” form. He desired to establish “secret communications” and allow the deaf-mute to communicate. The speakers would use their index finger to touch the listener's fingertips, the inner part of the mid-finger, and the side of one’s palm—which were all designated with the solfège symbols. 

In short, the speaker used the listener’s hand like a keyboard of only 7 keys—or, more accurately, notes. 

“After only three months, all people of the earth—even the deaf, the mute, and the blind—can understand each other.”

The Institute of France’s Verdict 

After M. Sudre’s submission, the Institute of France responded. They sent him a long, detailed letter. On that parchment, they concluded their thoughts on M. Sudre’s invention, as well as the extremity of its aims. 

“[He] has perfectly achieved the goal of his proposal to create a true musical language.” 

Their praise exalted him for having “successfully offered humanity a new medium to communicate their ideas together.” One of the submissions evaluated was using M. Sudre’s violin to phone secret messages from afar. Remember that the telephone, or any product like it, was still decades away from being invented. And the world societies couldn’t have foreseen a device with that immense power. So, the idea of delivering voice messages farther than humans could shout was awesome—especially secret messages. 

In that regard, the Institute of France unanimously agreed that Solresol was both sophisticated and complex enough to “transmit even the most obscure ideas,” and most importantly, “from great distances.” 

Although they were in favor of his work, the Institute of France claimed that they did not possess the means to compensate M. Sudre—something that he’d continue to hear throughout his career as an inventor. So, they “strongly recommended” him to the Government, which, at the time, was Napoléon’s French Empire. But before his meeting, M. Sudre would travel to Europe’s highest courts in foreign territories, demonstrating his miraculous musical language with violin in hand. 

A Musical Vision from The 19th Century 

Sailing on the winds that blow over the hills, one might hear beauteous violin strings, bowed from one plain to the next. Two farmers converse about the climate in melodious distress. As dusk sets over the ville Toulousienne, two young Victorian lovers flute sensational poetry to one another in longing as they anxiously anticipate their night of consummation. 

Between nations, no more preponderance of a nation’s language reigns supreme over another. The bondages of linguistic supremacy would be severed by the impartiality and simplicity of a language that was no more French than German, no more English than Russian, no more Spanish than Turkish, and no more Arabic than Chinese. 

Instead, we approach foreign affairs in the middle and as equals. We meet with the tongues of our nationalities nestled at the door before we enter. We do not deny our heritages. However, we connect through a universal medium to communicate our thoughts, while speaking or even not speaking, in abstraction as in clarity. 

These were the dreams of Monsieur François Sudre. He propagated these dreams in the high courts of the sleepless empires in the same manner that he hoped others would propagate his unifying, universal musical language. 

…

Be the first to know what happened next. Subscribe to my email listing with the Tranquility Button below!

References

Flaxand, G.(1866). Langue Musicale Universelle. l’Institut de France, I — XVI.

Gajewski, Boleslas. (?). Langue Musicale Universelle: Introduction, Explication De l’Ouvrage et Sytnaxe., 5–7.