The short answer is no. African choral scores are not dead, and staff notation has not become irrelevant. In 2026, both remain essential tools for performance, teaching, scholarship and cultural preservation.
The more interesting question is not whether one system has defeated another. It is how staff notation, tonic sol-fa and dual notation can work together to carry music across generations, languages, institutions and continents.
A choir may learn primarily by ear. A conductor may teach phrases by repetition. A student may begin with tonic sol-fa and later study staff notation. A researcher may need a reliable score to analyse harmony, form and text-setting. These are not contradictory practices. They are different ways of entering the same musical world.
A score is more than a set of instructions
African choral music has long existed through a productive relationship between singing and notation. In southern Africa, mission schools and churches introduced hymns, psalms and British tonic sol-fa during the nineteenth century. Over time, African composers and performers transformed these imported materials through indigenous languages, vocal practices, harmonic ideas and regional identities.
The history was not simple or free from coercion. It involved cultural transference within colonial and mission institutions, but it also involved adaptation, creativity and the emergence of powerful African choral traditions. The African Composers Edition history of African music scores traces this development through figures such as John Knox Bokwe and later composers including Joshua Pulumo Mohapeloa.
The score became a record of that development. It could preserve a melody, a four-part texture, a poetic text and a composer’s structural decisions even when the original manuscript was fragile or when a work had previously circulated mainly through rehearsal and memory.
This is particularly important for repertoire connected with places and landscapes. Mohapeloa’s Thaba-Bosiu, for example, takes its title from the magnificent sandstone plateau in Lesotho, “mountain at night.” The name evokes a dark massif rising above a fertile landscape, a landmark held in collective memory. Without a stable edition, such works can remain known only to the communities that have performed them, while becoming increasingly difficult for new choirs and researchers to access.
What staff notation makes possible
Staff notation is particularly valuable when a work contains several independent vocal lines. In a mixed choir, SATB: soprano, alto, tenor and bass, the conductor must be able to see how each part moves, overlaps and supports the others.
The five-line staff records more than pitch. It can show:
- rhythmic duration and subdivision;
- rests and points of entry;
- simultaneous harmonies;
- changes of meter;
- melodic contour;
- articulation and dynamics;
- the relationship between text and musical phrasing.
This makes staff notation useful for rehearsals, analysis and international exchange. A conductor in Lesotho, Ghana, South Africa, Britain or the United States can approach the same score through a broadly shared visual system, even when the language of the text is unfamiliar.
That does not make staff notation culturally neutral or universally sufficient. It is one representational tool among several. Nor should it be assumed that every African composer worked in tonic sol-fa, or that every African choral tradition follows the same notational history. John Knox Bokwe’s surviving manuscripts, for example, are associated with staff notation, while other composers’ works circulated in tonic sol-fa.
A responsible edition therefore needs to identify its sources and explain its editorial decisions. ACE’s editing process describes how a tonic sol-fa score may be transcribed into an open staff score, with each vocal part placed on its own line. Meter, clefs, key signatures, text underlay and other features may need to be interpreted carefully from the source.
Why tonic sol-fa remains useful
Tonic sol-fa is not an inferior substitute for staff notation. In the traditions where it is used, it is a practical and highly effective way of learning vocal music.
The syllables, d, r, m, f, s, l, t, give singers a direct vocal language for pitch relationships. They can support:
- sight-singing;
- aural training;
- part-learning;
- memorisation;
- rapid rehearsal;
- transposition and tonal awareness.
For a choir that has developed its musicianship through tonic sol-fa, the notation can feel immediate and physical. The singer does not merely observe a symbol on a page; the syllable prompts a sound: doh, ray, me. A line can begin quietly: “d-r-m”: then gather weight as the altos answer and the basses establish the foundation.
However, tonic sol-fa is not identical in every educational context. Historical practices differ, including the treatment of “doh” as fixed or movable. The UNISA Theory of Music syllabus is useful for understanding one South African pedagogical framework. Conductors should always establish which system their singers know rather than assuming that the same symbols carry precisely the same meaning everywhere.
Dual notation is a bridge, not a compromise
Dual staff-solfa notation allows singers to work from a familiar system while gradually developing confidence in another. It places two readings of the musical structure beside each other.
This is the rationale behind ACE’s presentation of many works in two versions:
- staff notation only;
- staff notation with tonic sol-fa included.
The Mohapeloa Critical Edition also provides original texts, English translations, contextual notes and a piano reduction for rehearsal. The piano reduction is not necessarily intended as accompaniment in performance; it is a practical rehearsal tool that lets a conductor or rehearsal pianist clarify the harmonic and melodic framework.
Consider Sehopotso (“A Landmark”), an SATB a cappella work by Mohapeloa. Its ACE score page provides a concrete example of how a historically situated work can be prepared for present-day study and performance. The score’s vocal texture can be examined by staff-trained musicians, while the dual version supports singers whose musical literacy is rooted in tonic sol-fa.
This is not simply a matter of convenience. It is a form of musical hospitality. A score opens the door without asking every musician to arrive with the same training.
Notation does not replace the ear
One persistent myth is that a written score somehow suppresses oral tradition. In practice, African choral performance has often depended on both the written record and the living act of singing.
Conductors may teach a phrase by imitation. Choirs may internalise a work through repeated rehearsal. A musical gesture may acquire expressive meaning through performance rather than through a single printed instruction. The written score records certain elements, but it does not contain every detail of vocal colour, pronunciation, movement, breath, communal energy or local performance practice.
This is why an edition should include more than notes. ACE editions may provide pronunciation guidance, translations, commentary and information about the song’s context. The translation is there to help singers understand what they are expressing: not necessarily to replace the original text beneath the melody.
In Mohapeloa’s work, texts may describe nature, rural and urban life, longing, joy or anxiety. A Sesotho phrase can move through the choir like drifting clouds over a mountain ridge, while a repeated line gathers the warmth of communal speech. Understanding the image behind the words helps a conductor shape the phrase with more than mechanical accuracy.
A necessary distinction: complex rhythms in classical notation
It is also important not to confuse staff notation with a single musical style.
Surendran Reddy’s Don’t Give a Damn Blues is a useful example of complex rhythms represented in classical staff notation. The work demonstrates that staff notation can accommodate intricate rhythmic design, syncopation and contemporary compositional thinking.
It is not an example of solfa notation or dual staff-solfa notation. It belongs to a different notational conversation. Mentioning it alongside African choral scores should not suggest that all African music shares one system, one history or one compositional language. Rather, it shows the breadth of African composition and the flexibility of staff notation as a medium.
Readers interested in Reddy’s wider catalogue can consult the Surendran Reddy composer page on ACE. For creative engagement with African and other under-represented musical traditions, see List C: World Music and EDI in The Maestro Online Creativity Grades. For independent improvisation, programmatic work and multimedia responses, List D: Creative Freedom provides a different pathway.
What conductors and educators should do in 2026
A contemporary choir does not need to choose between ear, solfa and staff. It can use all three intelligently.
A practical rehearsal sequence might be:
- introduce the text, pronunciation and cultural context;
- sing the principal phrase by ear;
- rehearse individual parts using tonic sol-fa where appropriate;
- examine the staff score to clarify rhythm, harmony and form;
- return to the text and musical line with expressive intention;
- use the piano reduction only as a rehearsal aid, allowing the choir to develop independence.
Students can also compare the two notations. Which information is immediately visible? Which must be heard? How does the eye follow a melisma? Where do repeated phrases become structurally important? These questions turn notation into an active part of musicianship rather than a test of literacy.
Researchers, meanwhile, need dependable editions because the survival of a repertoire depends partly on the survival of its sources. ACE’s sheet-music catalogue offers scores intended for performance, study and archival use, while the resources for teachers and students provide a starting point for further exploration.
African choral scores are not dead. They are being re-read, re-edited, re-heard and placed in new hands. Staff notation preserves detail; tonic sol-fa sustains practical accessibility; dual notation connects communities of musicians who might otherwise remain separated by different forms of training.
The future is not one notation replacing another. It is a richer musical culture in which the page, the voice and the listening ear continue to meet.