Abstract This article sets out the historical and conceptual development of a new musical pedagogy named Harmony Signing, and the influences that prompted its invention. It represents the first attempt to explain Harmony Signing as a distinct semiotic system. Two factors contributed to the inception of this project: the intention to help primary age children to compose chorally for each other where they had limited existing experience of music notation; and the desire to explore in present-day practice application of the theory of Darwin and subsequent commentators that music preceded speech in human vocal development. For Darwin, examining the human condition from the perspective of animal origins and a capacity for expression and emotion shared both with ancestor species and unrelated phyla, vocal communication held pride of place as a means of social interaction, mate attraction, and defense against predators. Such communication would have been multi-modal, and strongly reliant on the effectiveness of group cooperative behavior. This evolutionary perspective played a significant part in shaping the framework through which the pedagogy developed. Harmony Signing offers a means of learning music liberated from dependence on verbal explanation. Through the employment of a repertoire of hand gestures, teachers and their students can lead activities that embrace improvisation and composition in real time. Harmony Signing thus permits the transmission of aural culture, its representation in the individual, and its exercise within the bonded social group.
Nicholas Bannan (Wed,) studied this question.