I may not have much education on music theory, but both of my parents were music majors and I can confirm from their experience, and the stories they've related to me, that the solfege system can be moveable. 'Do' is the tonal note and it progresses (do, re, mi) up through the chromatic scale from that point. My dad had the experience in a college classroom of observing a guest conductor (from China) who used solfege to sing the music to the various sections of the orchestra. The usage in that setting does differentiate sharps and flats relative to the key signature because that's how they're used for strings.Donn wrote:Not sure about that. I skimmed some discussion of solfège and what not, and it looks to me like when it came up in the 11th century, the syllables that became do, re, mi etc. were "movable", as they continue to be in the English speaking world, Germany and I'm guessing Scandinavia.
Doing a quick check of Wikipedia (not a citation worthy source all the time, but sometimes useful for finding such sources), there are indications that different music schools either teach solfege as moveable to the major scale of each key signature or fixed to the C scale. I'm not sure you can trust Wikipedia to identify which regions of the world use it in which way, but it does provide a list for both systems.