(b Paris, 18 Dec 1781; d Paris, 26 April 1842). French teacher. He was the originator of a system of teaching sight-singing to classes of adults and children which in 1840 was adapted by John Hullah for English use. He was the son of an army officer and after a short period as an army cadet was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire in 1801. He then became teacher of music successively at the Military Academy of Saint-Cyr and the Lycée Napoléon. When the monitorial system of teaching was introduced in Paris in 1815, Wilhem devised a musical manual laid out in the form of question and answer to enable monitors to undertake the elementary instruction of a class of children. After four years’ experimental use his system was formally adopted in 1820 in the monitorial schools controlled by the Society for Elementary Instruction in Paris. In 1835 its use was extended to the city’s municipal schools.
In 1833, for the benefit of his former pupils, Wilhem established a choral society which eventually grew into a national institution known as L’Orphéon; and it was in order to provide tenors and basses to join these young singers that in 1835 he organized his first singing classes for adults. By 1836 Wilhem ran ten weekly classes at Guizot’s Association Polytéchnique, each one attended by hundreds of artisans. Wilhem’s system, published as Manuel musical (Paris, 1836) in many revised editions, contained few original teaching devices. It employed ‘fixed’ sol-fa, presented a series of exercises successively based on the various diatonic intervals, and included original songs which followed the same principle. As the system owed most of its success to Wilhem’s own energy and established position it did not long survive his death, except in England and in Hullah’s adaptation (London, 1842/R).
EMDC, II/i–vi (1925–31)
B. Rainbow: The Land without Music: Musical Education in England, 1800–1860 (London, 1967)
BERNARR RAINBOW