Because music is often a social activity, the Dalcroze classroom is a great opportunity for kids to experiment with roles that will also be important for them as they move through life. Over the past several weeks, I have become interested in giving them experiences of leading, following, working with a partner and being a member of a large group, all areas good musicians navigate with ease.

At 4 and 5, children are such natural followers that, when asked to become the ‘engine’ of a train, they will very often simply end up following the ‘caboose’. I gently encourage them to make a directional choice that allows the train to follow a winding path throughout the room. As they go the music mirrors their movements as closely as possible, giving them a more solid experience of their own tempo choices. Of course, when they speed up, it is easy for many children to loose track of the ones following them as they become caught up in the thrill of moment. If their train falls apart, we regroup and I encourage them to carefully lead the cars so that the train stays together, and the passengers safely arrive at their destination.

Once they become skilled at this, they are ready to lead a partner in a room full of pairs making independent choices. We become taxis drivers and passengers, and an observer stepping into the room would see (on a good day!) many different things happening: taxis driving alone and with a passenger, stopping for red lights, going slowly in traffic or on the expressway, and many other surprises the children come up with on the spot. This is done without music, so that I can narrate what I see, helping the children become aware of possibilities other than their usual favorites.

It is easy to see how these experiences might translate musically: conducting an orchestra, following a conductor’s cues, being a member of a chamber ensemble, playing an improvised jazz solo in a group or ‘comping’ as a member of a rhythm section all must be in the social repertoire of a performing musician.

Michael

2/6/12

One of our primary focus areas in the beginning of the year is the subject of meter. Meter can be defined as the grouping of beats into 2′s, 3′s and 4′s. Usually the first beat of the group is felt as a stressed or accented beat, and in the Dalcroze work we also recognize and explores the qualities of the other beats in the pattern.

For the children, this has meant first exploring the concept of accent: squirrels have jumped from branch to branch, subway cars have bounced, and jack-in-the-boxes have sprung. These experiences have lead to activities involving recurring patterns of accent. The 4-5 year-olds are mostly working with groupings of two beats. A story involving building a house gave them an opportunity to chop down trees, saw wood, hammer nails and paint, all with a two beat accompaniment. Ball passing games in which they raise the ball high up before passing to their neighbor gave them an experience of not only feeling the accented beat, but the building energy that leads to the accent (called the anacrusis). Later in the year, we will revisit this topic and the children will invent their own patterns with two, three and four parts on percussion instruments.
In addition to these activities, the 5-6 year-olds were also able to explore groupings of four beats. In one game they will be asked to move alone if they hear no metrical pattern, move with a partner if the music is in two, and come together as a group if the music was is in four. With a little coaching, most were able to accomplish this!

In addition to the songs we sing, I regularly try to slip music from the literature into the classes when possible. After the movement stories, we usually have a cool-down rest period, and if they are relaxed enough (i.e. if I have worn them out!), they are often able to simply lie on the floor and listen. I have not given the names of the pieces I play, but they might recognize them if they heard them on a recording.

Here are some of the pieces I have used:

1. Far Away Places, #1 from Kinderszenen (Childhood Scenes) by Robert Schumann

2. Dr. Gradus Ad Parnasum, #1 from Children’s Corner, by Claude Debussy

3. Sleeping Beauty’s Pavanne, from the Mother Goose Suite by Maurice Ravel

These are wonderful collections of music for and about children.

Also, this time of year I am not able to resist including a little marching and skipping music from the Nutcracker, which many of them already seem to know and love!

Michael

November, 2011

The Dalcroze classes are now in full swing (ok, pun intended), and the kids are becoming adept at listening for changes in tempo, rhythm, dynamics and pitch and expressing those changes in movement. In addition, the older children are learning musical terms for various rhythmic durations, and learning to discern music that moves in groups of two, three and four beats per measure. I’ll give more information about that in future posts, but I thought it might be interesting to talk about ways to continue this active involvement with music at home.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I attempt to take full advantage of children’s natural connection to the world of animals. The composer Camille Saint-Seans uses the same phenomenon in his “Carnival of the Animals”, a perennial favorite for children since its composition in 1886. The different temperaments and tendencies of various orchestral instruments are matched with an appropriate animal. Using a recording at home, it would be possible to reinforce many of the experiences we have been having in class.

You might start by simply playing a track, and asking your child to become whatever animal they hear. The simple act of moving like that animal as the music plays is enough to get a wide variety of nuance as the dynamics, rhythm and tempo change. There are no wrong answers. Of course, you can also tell them the name of the movement. Each short piece has a specific way of moving, and many exhibit one or both sides of a musical opposition (slow/fast, high/low, etc.) You might enjoy seeing what they respond to as they listen. Here is a list of some of the musical features of each movement that might catch kids’ attention:

1. Introduction and March of the Royal Lion: A stately and proud march, something kids love to do. Contrasts between high and low (in pitch) between the two pianos; loud dynamics.

2. Hens and Roosters: Starting and stopping.

3. Wild Donkeys: Fast and loud.

4. Tortoises: Slow and soft. (contains a musical joke – Offenbach’s popular Can-Can played very slowly)

5. The Elephant: Heavy with a medium tempo. (more jokes: music by Berlioz and and Mendelssohn originally written for flutes, now given to the low basses)

6. Kangaroos: the opposition of short and long; starting and stopping.

7. Aquarium: Light, gliding, running.

8. People with Long Ears (Donkeys): Lots of oppositions. Fast and slow; high and low (meaning pitch); loud dynamics.

9. The Cuckoo in the Woods: Phrase length awareness. The piano plays phrases (musical sentences) of different lengths. The “cuckoo” of the clarinet marks the end of each phrase.

10. Aviary: High, light, fast, soft.

11. Pianists: moving between high and low (pitch).

12. Fossils: Short, light, quick, loud dynamics. Twinkle Twinkle is tucked into this movement, along with a few other French folk tunes which may or may not be recognized. But this movement is really just about the dance!

13. The Swan: legato (smooth and connected), gliding, soft.

14. Finale: All of the animals are brought back. See how many you can recognize.

There are many recordings of this piece, and it is often packaged with other orchestra kid’s favorites such as “Peter and the Wolf”. I have a fondness for Leonard Bernstein’s recording with the New York Philharmonic from the 60′s. He does talk about each movement before he plays it, and his voice might not be every young person’s cup of tea these days. He uses young musicians whom he introduces on the recording however, and the idea of that might be inspiring for some. Pictures books related to the piece abound, and this could be of further inspiration.

This type of play can be done with many kinds of music, not just Carnival of the Animals, and not just orchestral music. So plug in the ipod, pull up something interesting, and enjoy some active listening with your child today!

Michael

In December of 2009, I presented a concert of solo improvised piano at the Bloomingdale School of Music. Here are the program notes from the event. I have posted a few mp3′s from the evening, as well.

Program Notes

Unlike the magician’s art which is betrayed by divulging its secrets, the improviser thrives on listeners who are ‘in’ on the game. One of my main sources of musical pleasure is in experimenting with different ways of improvising. Here are the rules and parameters I’ve set up for myself for this evening’s concert.

The Bach Partita that I am using (No. 1) has six separate movements or sections, and I will improvise my way through them in their original order. They are written using the form, style and rhythms of particular dances popular in the Baroque era. I will attempt to follow Bach’s basic harmonic plan (with an occasional straying here or there), and hope to gather melody, motif and phrase along my walk. Though I do aim to retain the basic feeling of the original dances, I allow it to be filtered through my own rhythmic language and musical experiences. Sometimes as I move through the piece I feel as though I am wandering from room to room in a fantastic old house, and I occasionally find myself compelled to improvise a transition from one room to the next, perhaps reflecting on what I have seen. For those keeping track of my progress, I will attempt to make clear where I am in the house at any given moment!

I have chosen five Debussy preludes, all from book II, for the next part of the program. These are highly evocative pieces which employ the full range of the piano’s possible dynamics, timbres, and textures. I have abstracted certain rhythmic, register, and intervallic information (you will notice me reading music) which I will use to create my own narrative in the spirit of each prelude. Because the harmonic language will be my own, these improvisations will be more of a departure from the original than the Bach.

The program will conclude with 4 original compositions. Though they do exist in written form, these short pieces have stubbornly refused to be played in any one particular way, and so it seemed appropriate to include them. Tempo, dynamics, meter, texture, orchestration are all up for grabs. Some days they seem to become a showcase for my left hand, all too busy with other chores to be allowed to make melody itself! These pieces share a certain harmonic elusiveness, influenced perhaps from contemporary jazz composition. Jazz tends to favor the ‘theme and variation’ form of improvisation, but I will play through the form of these pieces several times with melody largely intact. Sections may expand or contract, interludes may occur, but hopefully the theme itself will give the listener something to ‘hold on to’.

11/28/09

1. Improvisation based on the gigue from Bach’s Bb Partita for keyboard: Gigue

2. Improvisation based on Feuilles mortes, the second prelude from book 2 of Debussy’s preludes for piano: Leaves

3. An orginal composition: Four Square

Program Notes

Welcome to the maiden voyage of One Musician/One Magician! For the past several months, Jeff and I have been amusing ourselves by exploring the intersections of our respective arts, and we are delighted to present some of our findings today.

Our primary goal is to create music you can see and magic you can hear. We began with the premise that both magicians and musicians create illusions of weight, space, and time. The parallels and possibilities were so immediately apparent that it was a bit of a challenge to decide where to start.

Magic plays with pattern, expectation and surprise to achieve its effects, and most composers and improvisers hope to achieve similar goals in their music. Both magic and music are disciplines rooted in the imaginations of performers and audience alike. One large and obvious difference, however, is that music is entirely invisible. All of the elements that make music work (i.e. form, phrasing, repetition, variation, tension, resolution) may or may not be heard, felt, or perceived in the mind of the listener. For the magician’s audience, it is much easier to see that a coin has appeared or vanished, a juggling pattern has been disrupted, or a deck of cards seems to defy gravity. So, by attaching a visual to various musical elements (beat, accent, phrase, form, for example) it is my hope that the kinesthetic imagination can be activated.

The soundtrack for today’s performance comes from composer Claude Debussy and jazz pianist Chick Corea. Debussy’s Children’s Corner Suite evokes soaring mountains, adventurous (and sleepy) elephants, skittish dolls and comic cakewalks. Each piece is a study in itself of a specific aspect of time, space and energy. Corea has written some wonderfully evocative pieces as well, many of which seem to me to be more ‘about’ children than ‘for’ them. We have found these pieces especially conducive to juggling balls, vanishing coins, and gravity-defying cards. Today, we are using Corea’s music to introduce the magic tricks which will be tied to specific musical elements. The listener will then have the opportunity to continue the fun in his or her own imagination to the music of Debussy. Enjoy the show!

Michael