Michael Joviala

Category: Teaching

  • Invisible Subjects

    Sometimes, to see the whole, we need to look at the parts. But suppose some of the parts are difficult to see? This is one of the things that makes Dalcroze education so notoriously hard to describe.

    In one sense, the curriculum for the Dalcroze classes I teach is very straightforward. The list contains things you might find in any music theory, musicianship or ear-training course: rhythm subjects like beat, meter, duration, syncopation; for advanced students, maybe more eccentric topics, such as polyrhythm, polymeter, metric transformation and metric modulation, etc. We study pitched subjects like harmony, intervals, tonality, scales, etc. For non-professional students (which includes children and most amateur adults), this is usually the reason they are there: to gain experience and understanding of music through the study of these elements.


    Most professional musicians or music teachers have already acquired a thorough understanding of this curriculum if they have gone to music school. Rather than hoping to learn music theory, they often come to a Dalcroze class to reconnect with parts of their musical selves that they may have lost touch with. Those who teach might come to connect more deeply with their students. Others are drawn to the work by its promise to strengthen areas that are not specific to music, but which good music-making requires, such as mental flexibility, the ability to function well in a group, a strong memory, excellent focus and concentration, expressivity, an active imagination and the ability to access it easily. There are also physical elements such as body awareness (both internally and in its relationship to other bodies in space and time), coordination, and economy of movement. Professional musicians must spend long hours isolated in a practice room, and so often find the social interaction a powerful corrective. You won’t find these kinds of things on the curriculum of any traditional music theory course, nor do they appear on my own syllabus, but most would agree they are key ingredients for excellent musical performance, and they are what makes a Dalcroze class a Dalcroze class.


    I can divide everything I teach into two categories. Category 1 can contain everything that is specific to music: rhythm, harmony, melody, form, etc. These items are the ostensible subjects of the lessons, a class on compound meter rhythm patterns, for example, or an exploration of functional harmony. Category 2 will have everything that is not specific to music, but that promotes optimal human functioning: things like adaptability, expressivity, imagination and cooperative skills. I constantly switch my focus between these two categories as I teach, even if I am only dimly aware of it in the moment. There is a kind of tension or dialogue between the two that I think may be common to all conscientious teaching of almost anything. When I can remember to place equal value on them both, these two ends of the magnet keep me oriented, even though category 2 elements are not the explicit “subject of the day”.

    Having recently become more aware of this, I noticed myself switching to category 2 at crucial times. For example:


    When children aren’t interested in the musical elements

    Children, especially young children, often aren’t directly interested in the mechanics of music-making (category 1). It is hard to motivate a 4-year-old to swing his arms on beat one of a four-beat measure just by asking him to do so, but ridiculously easy when she is a giant chopping down a tree to build a house. I can even get her to change tempos as the giant gets tired or as the tree begins to fall. Why? Her imagination is engaged (category 2).


    When activities aren’t working effectively for social reasons

    This can be as simple as a child becoming angry because he did not get the color scarf he wanted. He pouts or starts to cry, and I know that he needs to work with feeling disappointment, again category 2. If I remember that category 2 items are as important as category 1, I am more patient with him, knowing that he is learning exactly what he needs to learn. Unfortunately, the adults who accompany the child may become embarrassed or upset by his behavior, compounding the problem! I want to tell them (and sometimes do!) “Don’t worry, your child is learning about himself. That’s why we are here!”


    When professional musicians have only an intellectual understanding of the musical subject

    When I first came to Dalcroze as the product of a musical conservatory, I was desperate for category 2. I already knew the theory (or at least thought I did), but lacked physical coordination, connection to others and easy access to my musical imagination. Sometimes adult musicians and teenagers are resistant to expressive movement. When I see this I recognize myself. I needed a great deal of time to dissolve the barriers between my intellectual understanding and the physical realization of music, which seemed like a great risk to me at the time. At my best, I can remember that it may be enough for a stiffly, awkwardly moving student to be merely accurate (category 1), knowing that with time their movement will exhibit more flow, grace and ease (category 2). When I am not, I forget how vulnerable expressive movement can make us feel. I find myself pushing the students, or—much worse—taking disengagement personally. At these times I must become the student. Of course, it’s always me I’m becoming frustrated with, my own inability to be expressive, my own discomfort with my body. I have plenty more to learn from category 2

    When things aren’t going well in the classroom, I first check category 1. Is the material too difficult, or too easy? If so, I can simply dial the level of difficulty up or down. The symptoms of this problem can be disguised as category 2 issues. Children unable to physically execute something that is too hard may begin to “act out” or “disrupt” (with or without “scare quotes”). So often the diagnosis will come from category 2. Maybe their imaginations are not engaged, or they lack awareness of each other. Maybe they need to express something (anger, frustration, sadness) that has nothing to do with the class. Children as early as 5th or 6th grade into adulthood may be generally self-conscious about their bodies, voices or abilities. Even if I cannot directly “fix” these things, I cannot ignore them, and I am a better teacher when I remember that this is why we are together in the class. Music becomes almost an excuse for working with the very things that make us human. Isn’t that why we play music in the first place?

    ____________________________

    Over and over Emile Jaques-Dalcroze describes the central goals of his method in his writings. Especially as he got older, they aren’t about music or even music education. Music was the vehicle for much larger aspirations for humanity. It seems to have taken him somewhat by surprise:

    “In evolving the educational system of Eurhythmics some twelve years ago I certainly did not realize the great influence that this new system would have in restoring man to knowledge of himself. 1”

    I believe it is these aspects of being a well-functioning human being, my category 2, that are the things Dalcroze is pointing to when he talks about “knowledge of himself”. They are by no means exclusive to musicians. They are necessary in all of the arts, not to mention sports, the sciences, parenting, civic engagement… it’s hard to think of any area of culture that does not depend on this set of skills. Everybody needs category 2 to be a well-functioning human, and you can learn these things from almost any pursuit that stimulates, engages and challenges.


    But even understanding how important this is to my own teaching and having communicated it to myself (and now to you), I wonder about how to communicate this to my students or to their families. Am I a ‘self’ teacher? Are the students going to self-school? Is it measurable? How do I teach such a massive but nebulous thing? Where does it fit in my explicit curriculum? And if it is so important, why don’t we talk about it more? It is difficult enough explaining what we do in a Dalcroze class. How am I supposed to explain this to parents? “This year, your child practiced becoming herself. She has made great progress.” It is also a challengingly large thing to talk about with Dalcroze teachers-in-training, given the enormous amount of category 1 material that needs to be covered, practiced and mastered.


    We advertise Dalcroze as a great way to teach category 1, and it is. But the things everyone really craves are from category 2. Musicianship, theory, and ear-training subjects will never be as big a draw as learning to play a Chopin prelude, writing a pop song, playing in a rock band. Nor should they be! These ways to ‘musick’ are primary sources for Category 2 growth. They do, however, become much easier with solid Category 1 skills and understanding, and gaining these skills in an environment that stimulates our imaginations, fosters social connections (which are harder and harder to come by) while triggering the same kind of neurological stimulation that singing with a choir does seems to me to be a great two-for-one deal.

    I came to Dalcroze at a time in my life when I was really struggling to understand myself. I didn’t know what I wanted to be: jazz musician? Theater composer? Classical pianist? Turned out I didn’t want to be any of those things per se, and stripping away everything but the body, the voice and the ear really helped (forced?) me to see what was left when everything else was stripped away.

    Now, how do we get all of that into a course description?

    1. Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Rhythmic Movement, Vol.1 (Novello and Company, 1920), 1. ↩︎

  • Surviving Genius: an Imaginary Book Review

    Here’s an idea for a book that I want someone else to write. The author would have a large breadth of cultural knowledge coupled with expertise in music and dance education, as well as somatic practice. He or she would be able to digest large amounts of information and have a keen mind for teasing out patterns and drawing conclusions that can lead to useful, predictive theories. A review of the finished product (with the author here identified as Ms. AB C___) might go something like this:

    History is the story of, among many other things, genius. Today this word is most often used to identify an individual who possesses intellectual or artistic superpowers. In his book on the subject as it relates to literature, Harold Bloom identifies two more useful concepts contained in the original meaning of the Roman word ‘genius’: 1) to beget, to cause to be born and 2) an attendant spirit that strongly influences someone. These usages are the starting points for music and dance critic Ab C__ in her latest book, “Surviving Genius”.

    Rather than focusing on the influences on works of genius (as per usual), C__ is interested in what happens to the work after the death of its creator. And rather than works of art or music, her subject matter is the far less tangible field of music and movement education. She is looking for genius itself in the education of genius. The 20th century, particularly the first half, saw the birth of many approaches, methods and techniques, most often named for their originators. Some, like Carl Orff, Zoltan Kodaly, Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham were also themselves significant creators of works of art. Others, like Moshe Feldenkrais, F. Mathias Alexander, Rudolph Laban, and Joseph Pilates were not, but gave birth to teaching methods still practiced today under their creator’s names. In “Surviving Genius”, C__ examines their history to better understand why some of these methods continued to flourish after the death of their creators while others did not.

    The 753-page book (including references) is not for the faint of heart. C__ is a meticulous researcher determined to provide enough evidence to answer this question as definitively as possible. If I were writing the book, I might have been tempted to organize it by discipline: a chapter for music education, dance education, somatic education, etc. But C__ has taken a far more effective approach, organizing the first half of the book according to how the progenitors prepared for their work to survive, and then tracing the evolution – or extinction – of these works of genius over succeeding generations.

    C__  first looks at the relationships the originators themselves had with their own work.  Some, such as somatic movement educators Feldenkrais and Alexander, who both themselves trained a first generation of teachers, tried to clearly imagine what the future might hold for their work. Others, whether through their own untimely death (as in the case of Isadora Duncan, who died at the age of 50 when her scarf became tangled in the wheel of the car she was riding in), or applied their creative energies in other directions (as in the case of Rudolph Laban), did not. Many, such as Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, created schools and foundations while still active. These institutions not only helped fund their artistic endeavors during their lifetimes, but also laid the groundwork for the training of first generations of teachers.

    But does this careful planning ensure a practice will be vital 50 or 100 years into the future? The simple answer is no. Why?

    C__  finds the first generation to carry on the work of a master teacher to be crucial. For example, Laban benefitted from students such as Irmgard Bartenieff and Lisa Ullman, who both ensured the survival and continuation of his work. This was doubly fortunate in Laban’s case considering his involvement with the Nazi regime and the present era’s growing awareness of complicity in atrocity.

    As techniques move further from their sources, copyright and trademark are sometimes used to take control over practices. Sometimes, as in the case of Pilates, multiple organizations fight over legitimacy.  C__’s research shows that these legalistic approaches do not guarantee the continuation of a practice. Competing organizations can create confusion; lawsuits and litigation can tarnish reputations. A shining exception to this is the music teaching method begun by Shinichi Suzuki, which is thoroughly copyrighted and controlled, yet continues to be practiced worldwide with the assistance of large, cooperative associations in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia, all dedicated to the professional development of its practitioners.

    So is there no predictor of success? Are well-thought out plans for certification of teachers, the establishment of boards and foundations, the thorough documentation of training procedures, all for nothing? After all of the evidence is laid out on the table, C__ finds that what matters most is the nature of the practice itself. How open to interpretation is it? How open to (or dependent on) innovation is it? How clear are the principles? How well-defined are the techniques? C__ finds that the answers to these questions, along with the vagaries of historical luck, are stronger indicators of what the health of a given practice will be 50 or 100 years after the death of its progenitor.

    To apply her conclusions, C__ takes the approach to music and movement education begun by Swiss pedagogue Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (1875-1950) as a case study. (A surprising choice, given the relative obscurity of the practice today.) Dalcroze was a prodigious and restless creator. Over the course of his lifetime, he wrote dozens of articles, method and text books, as well as hundreds of musical compositions. His work in the conservatory as a professor of harmony and music theory was relentlessly experimental and regarded with a mix of skepticism, exaltation, amazement, distaste and even moral outrage in conservative turn-of-the-century Geneva, Switzerland and beyond. He certified pupils to call themselves Dalcroze teachers once he felt they understood the basic principles. But he expected them to find their own way according to the needs of their own students and the force and direction of their own personalities. He did not articulate a set curriculum or sequential method of instruction. He was a creator and an innovator and he seems to have assumed that those he certified would simply have to be as well.

    Today, those interested in the health of the practice that bears his name can find both reasons to celebrate this openness and causes for concern. As opposed to Suzuki, who was able to articulate a finite list of basic principles of his method very clearly before he died, Dalcroze’s writings are far less amenable to concrete interpretations. His articles and manifestos can be inspiring, but they can also be overly general, full of vague pronouncements and lofty language (a not uncommon trait of his time). His text and method books, on the other hand, are extremely specific.  Many today that teach under the name Dalcroze are not familiar with their contents. Dalcroze would probably not be surprised at this. He was aware that the techniques he developed met the needs of the students with whom he was working, but knew that future students would likely require entirely different solutions and approaches. As a result, those that teach using the name Dalcroze today fall within a wide spectrum of conservative and innovative. The result is an approach to music education that is notoriously difficult to define, that varies widely between practitioners, and which has sometimes had a difficult journey as it has passed from generation to generation.

    C__  narrows her focus further to Dalcroze practitioners in the United States, finding periods of insular and protective attitudes among teachers giving way at other times to more cooperation and unification. Attitudes of teachers in the US towards each other and towards the Institute Jaques-Dalcroze in Switzerland (which remains the sole institution that can certify master teachers) are in constant flux, and the practice itself has struggled to retain popularity in the country. The effort to keep alive something that was born in the heat of genius, after all is said and done, turns out to depend on the nature of the thing itself. Does it still beckon with creative possibility? And is that potential strong enough to overcome petty concerns, human flaws and weaknesses? That, C__ finds, is ultimately what its survival depends on.

    Had the book ended here, it would have been a valuable reference. (Where else can we find brief histories of Skinner Release and Topf Techinque alongside the piano methods of Abbey Whiteside and Leschetizky?) But C__ wants to leave us with a way of evaluating the relative health of a given method, and so the last third of the book is devoted to the explanation and application of a theory she believes will do just that.

    The theory can be mapped onto X and Y axis. On the X axis is charisma, defined by C__ as the power of an individual’s personality to draw people in. This is expressed on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being the least charismatic, 5 the most. On the Y axis a subject is mapped onto a five-point scale using letters A through E, with A being the most conservative and E being the most innovative. A conservative practitioner is defined as someone who is mostly interested in preserving the practices, ideals and intent of the founder. An innovator is defined as someone who seeks to create new material or approaches while still keeping within the boundaries of a given discipline. C__ believes that the healthiest practices have an even distribution of innovation and conservation, as well as people working within the full spectrum of charisma. Too much innovation can cause a practice to be unrecognizable to the majority of the community. When this happens competing organizations and methods develop. On the other hand, practices that contain too many conservationists risk stagnation. Charismatic teachers draw in students, but too many can cause overheating (and turn practices towards cultlike behavior). Having fewer charismatic teachers is beneficial, too, whether innovative or conservative. They can provide balance and stability.

    All of this is stimulating and digestible enough, but C__ inexplicably applies the theory to a field outside the scope of the book: rock music. It is unclear why, after an exhaustive survey of music, dance and somatic educational practices, we are now using artistic output itself as source material. Perhaps C__ felt that having examples that everyone could relate to would be helpful. (Though this will be true only for those of a certain age, I suspect.) Or perhaps she felt the book needed its own dose of charisma. In any case here we are comparing Bob Dylan (a 5E on the scale) to Bruce Springsteen (clocking in at 5B) to Paul Simon (a 2D). By the time we get to the 80’s hair-metal bands as the cause of the death of rock-n-roll (too much charisma and too conservative, i.e. empty calories), the reader is ready to take his shoes off and rest his feet by the side of the road.

    If this theory appears in its own dedicated volume there will be no shortage of material from which to choose. C___ restricts herself to rock music but could easily apply it to the real subject matter of the present book. I am not convinced that the metrics are useful. There is a great deal of subjectivity in defining degrees of innovation to say nothing of what charisma even means. John Coltrane was a towering innovator in jazz, but a quiet and meditative presence both on and off stage. Is that charismatic or not?

    The theory is compelling, however, and one hopes it will reappear in a starring role in C__’s next book, preferably after a series of rigorous academic studies have been done. I can imagine the Dalcroze community, for example, using it to assess their needs. Does a practice that was pulled from the fires of a charismatic creative need more quiet innovation? Or does it need more charismatic leaders to draw people in but with a return to its roots? In the present book, these tantalizing questions are left dangling for the communities themselves.

    There is a double meaning for C__’s title that I find even more compelling than all of these questions. Yes, there is the work itself, the survival of the genius. But there are also all of us who exist in the wake of genius, like those who survive a death.

    Ultimately, time will tell the fate of both.

  • It’s All a Charade (Part 2)

    I was first attracted to the educational practices of Èmile Jaques-Dalcroze because they seemed to turn everything on its head, allowing a fresh perspective on music and teaching. What can you learn from singing every scale from one pitch? What could moving precise rhythm patterns tell us about the very nature of rhythm? But even revolutionary approaches can become rigid. Here’s part 2 of the story of a 3rd-5th grade class which encouraged me to think outside of a box that was already outside of the box.

    ******

    Believe it or not, 9-12 year-olds love rules. They have a burning desire to ‘be right’, with an often cool exterior that can barely keep the lid on an absolutely goofy interior. (Sometimes is it is the exact opposite!) Over the years I’ve worked with groups this age that seemed to have an innate understanding of the connection between movement and music, and how movement can be put to use to discover the ‘musical truths’ that reside in the body, as Meredith Monk put it. This year? Not so much. In a previous post, I described how I used the timeless party game of charades to demonstrate how almost anything related to human experience could be expressed solely through movement.

    They loved playing the game and they continued to ask for it all year. We had many follow-up classes in which I attempted to steer the experience more overtly to musicianship training. I felt that they understood the point of playing, but it still didn’t seem to spark too much curiosity about music as a physical experience. Music, at school at least, seemed for them to be more about learning notes and then playing them from memory.

    If there is anything like a dogma in Dalcroze education, it is that students should experience music before analyzing it. With some groups, I can simply give a direction like, “Step the beat and clap the division.” Once this has been mastered, I can add, “Change hands and feet at the signal.” Assuming terms “beat” and “division” have been well defined and are basically understood, once most have mastered the skill I can then ask them questions about their experience. I might start with a precise question like, “How many steps for each clap?” If, for example, we are comparing simple and compound meters (beats with two and three divisions respectively) the answers will be ‘2’ or ‘3’. But to move beyond the math, we can compare how it felt to move the 2’s as compared to the ‘3’s. (If I keep the division of the beat constant, when written as 2/4 and 6/8, the eighth notes will be played at the same tempo, expressed usually as “division=division”.) Did one feel more linear and the other feel more curvy? Did one feel more ‘flowy’ and the other feel more angular? Why might that be? Their physical experience becomes their teacher.

    When I tried my usual experience-first approach with this particular group and asked them to compare the feeling of the two meters, instead of using words like “curvy” vs “angular” they answered with words like ‘shorter’, ‘longer’ and ‘faster’ or ‘slower’. These are relative words that can point to a significant aspect of the experience, but only if we can compare them directly to physical experience. But these students couldn’t discern basic movement data such as the three divisions of 6/8 which lead to opposite footing every beat, and the two divisions of 2/4 leading to regular footing every beat.

    I needed a different ‘different’ approach.

    So the next week in small groups, I gave them separate challenges. One group had to demonstrate the difference between simple and compound meter, and the other was asked to show the pattern of whole and half steps in a major scale. Both had to use movement alone. They would be successful if the other group could explain the concept back to them.

    Normally this kind of activity would come somewhere towards the end of a class. The students would have had enough experience of the subject to accomplish it without too much input from me. They would simply be putting their own spin on it. But by this point in the year, I knew this group well. If I tried my usual approach, I expected that at some point I would look up from the piano and see them listlessly trudging around, dutifully doing what they were told, but doing it mechanically and without making any strong connections between their movement and the music they were hearing.

    So I decided to simply tell them right away what the difference between the two meters was rather than giving them experiences that would allow them to discover it. “The beat in simple meter has two divisions; in compound meter the beat has three,” I said and sat down to watch them work. They blinked at me (they knew me well, too), surprised that I would just come out with a fact like that, unearned. For those working on the scale, I brought them up to the piano and simply showed them the pattern and then stepped out of the picture.

    This goes against the cardinal Dalcroze pedagogical principle that class activities should lead students to discover facts like these rather than be told them from the outset. But I needed a way to get them to want to “discover”.

    The groups divided themselves into boys and girls (at their request). The girls got to work pretty quickly. They needed help focusing and paring down their ideas, but they came up with something that effectively signaled the pattern of whole and half steps mostly on their own. The boys needed quite a bit of coaching, but mostly because they were having trouble working together. Eventually they, too, succeeded. The efforts of both were very mechanical even though I insisted that they use the whole body in their creation, but they were accurate and successfully communicated at least the ‘math’ of the concept. It took the entire period for them to accomplish this.

    By the next week, they were able to piece together the mathematical difference between simple and compound meters relatively quickly and we were able to focus on what the physical experience of moving them felt like. (I used a list of words describing movement in place and movement from place to place  from Barbara Metler’s “Materials for Dance”. Perhaps the subject of another article…)

    What’s the lesson? The lesson was for me.

    Composer John Cage used to say “get yourself out of whatever cage you find yourself in.” No matter how effective a teaching method, system or principle is most of the time, it won’t be effective all of the time. I don’t know how far I got in connecting their minds to their bodies this year, but it reminded me that every once in a while it can be useful to turn upside-down things right side up. Then guess what: they become upside-down again! (Assuming, as in this case, that “upside-down” is a good thing!) These shifts of perspective helped me stay focused on what I am really trying to do in the classroom: engage with my fellow humans through sound and movement in an effort to express something meaningful and maybe even beautiful.

    And that’s not just a charade.

  • Color My World

    How many times have you looked at a young child’s drawing and thought, “Wow. That’s terrible.” Maybe you even said to yourself, “That’s supposed to be a puppy? It’s just a bunch of scribbles! This kid needs some lessons.”

                Absurd, right? We afford children an amount of freedom for their visual creative work that we withhold when it comes to music. Part of the reason for this may be the evolutionary pressures that now allow us to close our eyes but not our ears. I can glance at the child’s drawing, praise her, and be done with the whole interaction in a moment. Not so easy to do when someone is sawing away at the cello for hours, or producing sounds on the recorder that make even the dog head for the door.

    But I wish we let children explore their instruments as often as we encourage them to freely dive into a box of Crayola 64. Music so quickly turns into the study and practice of fingerings, reading and “notes” (a word I wish would disappear). I admit it’s not an entirely fair comparison. If young students are to be in an ensemble there are things to know and skills to perfect. I grew up playing in these bands and orchestras, and I always loved the cacophony of the room before the rehearsal started: 30 young musicians all making their own sounds! There was a kind of power and even unity in the chaos that trundling through Hot Cross Buns, or even The Theme from Rocky—as thrilling as that also was—could never quite match.

    This year, in addition to my Dalcroze classes, I’ve been teaching an instrument discovery class. The kids (between 4 and 5 years old) with their grown-ups get to spend time with the recorder, the piano, violin, cello, and the ukulele. In addition to classroom Dalcroze experiences, they have weekly assignments that I hope will encourage them to think of music as not only mastery of an instrument but also as a wide open field of creative possibility. So far they have written short songs, matched movement to sound with homemade instruments, conducted each other with musical gestures and drawn pictures of sounds. The sounds they are producing on the recorder can be headache-inducing for those with sensitive ears, but I guarantee you I could find master improvisers, some at the forefront of music innovation, who have made those exact same sounds on recordings that are now considered classics. If it’s not too early to let a child spread paint with their fingers onto a sheet of paper, surely we can set them free with a simple instrument and let them discover some of its possibilities for themselves. As they share their discoveries with the class they also get a taste of what it’s like to prepare something to perform for others or to be a member of an ensemble.

    It’s their 3rd week on recorder, and, yes, we are learning to produce specific pitches and building skills related to breathing and tonguing. Yes, we are heading towards Hot Cross Buns (a beautiful example of simplicity, contrast, AABA form, and so much more) before we shift to the next instrument. And, yes, the families may need to thank their neighbors with a bottle of red for their kind indulgence. There will be plenty of time in their young lives for standing still, practicing a difficult passage for hours, perfecting tone. Where would music be without those willing to do those things? But also, where would music be without the hunger to explore and create? I believe we can nurture both from day 1.

    One way to do that is through the Dalcroze approach. Now that we are heading into our third month of study, many early childhood Dalcroze families are wondering just what the heck we do in there for 45 minutes? Children are notoriously unreliable narrators, so some previous articles I’ve written can help give you a general idea of our goals and objectives.  You can use the ‘early childhood‘ tag to see articles about early childhood Dalcroze. Here’s a good one to start with for a basic overview. If you are really intrigued, ask to visit an adult Dalcroze class—no musical experience necessary—and try it for yourself!

    As always, I’m delighted to hear your thoughts, comments and questions in the box below.

    Now go get a box of 64 for yourself and have some real fun…

  • It’s All a Charade

    The Classic Party Game as Music and Movement Portal for 3rd-5th Graders

    Last week, I came across a passage in a book by Elizabeth Vanderspar that stopped me in my tracks. (The book was originally published as “Principles and Guidelines for Teaching Eurhythmics” and is now available as Dalcroze Handbook: Teaching Rhythmics.) She suggested playing charades with older kids who are new to Dalcroze to give them an experience of communicating through movement.

    The second I read this I knew immediately I would try this with a 3rd – 5th grade Dalcroze class I have this year. Most of the students have been studying an instrument for a while and most of them are new to Dalcroze this year. They are basically affable and game to try anything, but after our first month together I did not feel that many of them really understood the point of the class. It’s a good question: just why are we moving again?

    There are many possible answers to this question, and my own answers have evolved (and multiplied) over the years. The one most often cited–to learn music theory primarily through direct kinesthetic experience–still holds up. But simply telling someone this, especially a 5th grader, is not very effective. “I signed up to learn to play the piano. Why am I running around a room without my shoes?”

    Vanderspar’s suggestion seemed perfect for this age group. They love rules (they can be lawyer-like in their execution to the letter of every utterance from me); they are highly competitive; they love to problem solve; and most of all they love any excuse to laugh and get completely silly. What better way to experience communication through movement than with this classic game of, well, communicating through movement? Brilliant.

    So we tried it.

    To save time I decided to bring in the words myself that they would guess rather than let them select. I used a random charades generator (thank you internet) set on ‘easy’. I let them self-select their teams (predictably it was boys against girls). And I let them play one regular round: 3 minutes per team to guess as many words as they could, no talking, only gesture. They enjoyed themselves. The girls did much better than the boys (also predictable).

    We played another round, and this time I accompanied the gesturer on the piano whenever I thought it might help. I tried to follow their lead and complement their movement, sometimes making verbal suggestions if they were stuck. If a team was having trouble guessing, I asked the mover to listen to the piano and reflect more closely what they heard. This often led to a more conscious use of weight, space or time, and it seemed to facilitate more accurate guessing. (The boys did slightly better on the second round.)

    In between rounds we talked a bit about what elements went into successful communication of a word or idea through movement. I was not able to elicit much in the way of thoughtful analysis: how, for example, a rhythmic slicing of an imaginary pizza made use of weight, space and time, and just why that facilitated quicker guessing than just drawing a triangle in the air over and over with an exasperated look on your face.

    So we played a third round. This time, I intervened more often to give direct assistance. One boy was having trouble communicating ‘snow’. The music I played lightly in the upper register of the piano (actually a pale imitation of Debussy’s “La Neige Dance”) gave him a bit of assistance, but then he began trying to mime the making of a snowman and ending up just confusing his team. He quickly drew a few circles in the air and was stymied when no one could figure out what he was trying to communicate.

    I understood so I butted in. I bent down to roll a heavy ball of snow. I made another, slightly smaller, and bent my legs with my back straight to slowly lift it and place it on top of the other. I did it a third time, with a smaller ‘snowball’. The students instantly guessed “snowman” and then it was a short trip to elicit the word ‘snow’.

    This was paydirt. The clear use of weight, time, shape, effort made for clear communication of an image. It was not hard for them after that to make the connection to music performance. When you are playing an instrument the sound you make is entirely dependent on your movement (unless you are programming a digital instrument). Loud and soft, fast and slow, short and long all depend on physical precision, and the connection between the imagination and this fine motor precision are what give music its expressive power.

    All of that took up the full 45 minutes. We discussed no music theory directly. There were no quarter notes or eighth notes on the board, no time signatures.  But I think it was worth it. We talked about the value of using your imagination to translate ideas, feelings and experience from one medium to another: sound to movement; movement to sound; something heard to something visual; a feeling to a phrase of poetry…

    I think we opened some doors, and most importantly I got a clearer picture of how they conceive of both movement and music. It will be fun to see where we end up by the end of the year.

    I’ll keep you posted!

  • Tonality

    So, yes, the relationship between two tones is not necessarily black and white (see previous post). Tonality puts those two tones into a context which could consist of the many shades of gray, unrestrained technicolor or a tasteful complimentary color pallet. When I use color in a drawing I sometimes have trouble limiting myself. However, In last Sunday morning’s exploratory session with some new watercolor pencils (above) I made it a point to work within some constraints.

    My weakness for unrestrained color combinations has its corollary in sound: I am an avowed congregant in the church of dissonance. When I improvise for myself I very rarely end up using diatonic harmony (subject for an introspective future post?). I do not shy away from this in my playing for children’s classes. Though they may be only able to reproduce a limited range of tones in their singing voice, I see no reason not to expose kids to all sorts of tonal relationships, beyond major and minor. Walks can be Lydian and lunges Phrygian, and stories can be excellent backdrops for all sorts of harmonic worlds. The sun can rise with a Schoenbergian series of perfect 4ths; chromatic birdsongs à la Messiaen can stop bird-loving giants while they are hiking through diminished-scale forests in their tracks; later we can float on the open seas of freely juxtaposed triads for a feeling of the awesome power of nature.

    But when we are doing something that calls for more precision, there is no substitute for diatonic tonality. For little ones taking a solo flight out their adult’s “nest” I end the phrase on a dominant when they bend down to pick up their worm, and resolve it with an authentic cadence when they return. Every once in a while (ok, pretty often) one of the little birds just wants to keep flying. If I stay on that dominant long enough (or even back-pedal to a tonic second inversion) and stay there long enough, that little bird will get the signal: time to land. I’m going for the feeling of one of those long trills at the end of a cadenza that says to the orchestra, “It’s time…”

    Older kids are ready to recognize and respond to tonic and dominant harmonic function with an association type Dalcroze game (“this=that”). For example, during locomotor movement (walks, runs, skips, lunges, etc.) they could be asked to sit if a phrase ends on the tonic, but stay standing and reach toward someone if it ends on the dominant. Whether they are children or adults, if they are doing something at all complicated like a Dalcroze dissociation (“this equals NOT that” or “do these different things at the same time”), I will most likely play as clearly as possible with the major or minor color wheel and 8-bar phrasing punctuated with half and authentic cadences at the appropriate moments. Clarity of form through classical harmony does wonders to regulate the mind and organize body.

    Speaking of organizing and regulating mind and body, we’ve organized a special workshop series in New York City at the Lucy Moses School for plastique animée. Four Saturdays in April and May of 2023. Join us for a physical experience of tonality (among other things) that just might get you out of your head when it comes to harmonic analysis.

  • One Small Step…

    Whole and half steps are kind of like air. We tend to not pay too much attention to them unless something unexpected happens. For years they were certainly invisible to me – or rather, inaudible – unless I made a mistake in a musical passage, an easy enough thing to fix for pianists. It didn’t seem like such an important subject, just a way to label the movement between two adjacent scale tones.

    In his solfège texts, however, Emile Jaques Dalcroze put this subject front and center for beginning students, and the longer I teach the more I appreciate why. As I learned to perceive them, I learned to use them to do all sorts of things. They are the keys (pun intended) to modulation and, maybe most importantly, and they offer great potential expressive power when playing a melody.

    But inside a scale? They tend to just disappear. One of my first tasks then in the adult Dalcroze solfège class is to make them at least visible, hoping that in time they will become perceptible as well. I am working for bottom-up recognition, the kind that is instant and effortless, but to get there we may need to go back and forth between what we hear and what we know analytically for a while.

    Fortunately there is the layout of the keyboard. Though they are literally invisible on a violin, the half steps stick out like sore thumbs on the piano, at least when you are in the key of C Major. This can create a kind of C major bias for some students, old and young. (I am reminded of Anne Farber often referring to “the tyranny of Do”.) However, it’s a good place to start. To combat the notion that the black notes sound different from the white I might play a Gb major scale and ask how many black notes they heard, some students will say, “None,” and are quite astonished to learn that I was primarily playing black notes.  

    Gestures come in handy, too. By creating a simple movement association for half and whole steps (for example, paint the scale in space, keeping the hand open for whole steps and closing it for half steps), I can ask a student to sing the scale with an absolute naming system (e.g. fixed do solfège or letter names) while gesturing for whole or half steps. As she sings, I can play exactly what she gestures, even if it is in conflict with what she is singing. This technique is a bit like mild electroshock therapy, but it can be startingly effective. This technique is supercharged by starting and ending the scale on different scale degrees (one of Dalcroze’s most brilliant pedagogical inventions).

    For young children we’ll need a different approach. This is definitely one of those “teachery” subjects that invite eye glaze or outright rebellion if pushed too much (I can see watery eyes even from adults if I spend too much time on this). With elementary-age students I start with the keyboard, again no matter what instrument they play. I look for ways to physicalize the pattern of white and black. I play a game based on the American sidewalk game ‘hopscotch’ I call ‘hop-scale’. We move across the room imagining the chromatic layout of of whole and half on the keyboard, jumping with two feet when we would land on a black note, and one foot for white. I have them speak the letter names, thinking with sharps when we ascend, and flats when we descend. The trick is remember the two sets of adjacent white notes. The pattern is just off-center enough to keep students from going on auto-pilot until they really know the map.

    We can do a version of this for adults, too, by having them sing the chromatic scale, but step only on the notes of the C Major scale (or any other key, even starting on any scale degree). If the students are seated, have them clap, snap or gesture on the notes of the scale. Another way to bring this perception into awareness is for me to play a whole or half step on the piano. If it is a whole, they will sing the two notes and put the gesture in the middle, if half they sing without the rest. When I do this, I try to make it feel like music, rather than the atonal randomness of my own college ear-training classes. It is in the context of a melody that the power of the half step becomes tangible, especially when I put them to use in a modulation. Which is just what they do in “real life”, outside of the ear training classroom.

  • Picturing Music

    I’ve been thinking about representation lately.

    No, I don’t need a lawyer. I’m talking about how we ‘picture’ music. As an experiment last week, I asked my kids to draw a picture of rhythms we were working with during the session. I didn’t ask them to use notation. Some of them are too young to know any notation anyway (the older ones have basic reading skills). I just said, “Draw a picture of the two’s on one side and the three’s on the other,” which had been the focus of the day’s activities.

    A few drew groupings of lines or shapes, but most simply drew whatever it is they liked to draw. There were human figures, airplanes, even a well-shaded piece of fruit. I asked them to hold up the side that matched the music they heard, and I improvised music in two or in three. In most cases, I would have been unable to discern which drawing was which by merely looking. I needed an explanation from the artist. When it seemed to me to that there was an identical piece of fruit on both sides of the paper, the student explained to me that the one with more empty space was for the two’s. Of course, the words ‘draw’ and ‘picture’ naturally send kids into a particular mindset. Interestingly, this mindset is usually representational in some way. We don’t always draw what we really see.

    Our minds are built to associate meaning with symbol, and musical notation takes advantage of this proclivity. All of the words and symbols on this page are mostly arbitrary. We have agreed on their meaning, and so I am able to communicate with you. It has without question made possible some profound and glorious combinations of sound throughout its history, and yet I find myself wary of placing too much emphasis on it in my teaching. Notation creates a hierarchical grid that is not part of my experience of so much of the music that I make and that is important to me. Making things worse, the names in American English are highly problematic. Four-quarter time? Sure, makes sense. One quarter is 1/4th of a measure of four beats. So how can one “quarter” note stand in for 1/3rd of a bar in three-quarter time? And on and on. (In naming their rhythm units after knitting needles, the British have an advantage here.)

    I experience a rich interplay of pulse levels and even meters when I listen to, for example, a Sonny Rollins recording. There is great pleasure to be found in the play of two’s and three’s (on many levels) as my perception shifts from one to another. The musicians communicate through a dynamic, flexible and somehow simultaneously precise and ambiguous rhythmic language. Of course, students learning a Haydn Sonata need to be able to decode the shift from eighths to sixteenths to triplets and then to thirty-seconds, but I am loathe to lock them into that too soon via notation.

    When a quarter becomes the de facto representation of a beat, something is lost. Anything can represent a beat: a quarter, an eighth, an apple… In the Dalcroze classroom I try to split the difference between my natural inclination to avoid reducing music to representation too soon and my responsibility to make sure my students are prepared for their music lessons. I want to create musical experiences that will be solid, tangible, lived, felt and authentic. If I am doing that, I can feel more at ease showing them a quarter note and telling them that it represents—or can represent—a beat.

    I made the drawings some time ago to help myself visualize a couple poly-meters and cross-rhythms. Some will be easy to see, some less so.

    But I’m ok with that.

  • Ensemble Skills for 1st-2nd Grade (Part 4 of 4)

    This is the final part of a series on skills, goals and objectives for 1st-2nd grade Dalcroze classes. The lists from the previous posts on movement, rhythm and pitch would not have been out of place in many other introductory theory, ear training or music or movement fundamentals classes. I regard this final category, ensemble skills, as just as important as the others, even if they are not the outright focus of the class. Items that appear on this list are an attempt to answer the question, “How do we make music with others?”, especially music that we create ourselves through real-time composition, a.k.a. improvisation.

    When I went to the list I shared with parents last year, I was surprised to find it was much shorter than I expected. In my mind, learning how to function in a performing group are foundational skills for musicians that can provide a lifetime of enjoyment in music-making. Yet there were only eight things on the list, and I could easily imagine a list of 8 different things. How could that be?

    As I sat with this discrepancy, I thought about what each of these items have in common. Unlike the other lists, they are less concerned about what music is, and more focused on how it is made. They are relational: they focus on the quality of connection with other musicians, and the ability to retain and express individuality within a larger group.

    These items fall squarely in the ‘musicianship’ category on the syllabus, as opposed to the ‘music theory’ end of the spectrum. They are skills musicians need whether playing improvised music with others or playing “pre-composed” music (e.g. performing a string quartet or an orchestral work). Developing these skills is a lifelong process, but I try to make space for them in each class. There are many ways into the woods, so this is simply the form the work took last year. Instead of just bullet points, I’ve included a bit of background for each.

    Play something that has a beginning, middle, and end

    I can hear you thinking, “Doesn’t everything have a beginning, middle and end? How hard can that be?” True, beginnings are not hard. Middles take care of themselves. It’s the end that seems to be a learned behavior (and not just for children). Endings are different from merely stopping. Endings are intentional. They make space for the next thing. They can question or answer. They can merely pause. They can be abrupt or gradual. They can be expected or they can surprise. But in my experience, this is learned behavior needs to be encouraged at every level of improvisational study and practice.

    Make clear choices of dynamics, tempo and texture

    Most students come in with a primary or favored mode of expression: loud and fast, say, or careful and deliberate. In class we might call attention to these tendencies in the form of simple observations. “Mark played fast and loud.” “Jenny played soft and slow.” After a while, I’ll try to find ways for students to try on someone else’s mode of expression. Imagery and story are very helpful for young children, but so is cultivating careful and close listening, naming and acknowledging so that children are exposed to a wide variety of possibilities while having their own choices validated.

    Play something similar

    Remember that Sesame Street feature, “One of these things is not like the other”? I loved playing that game. It highlighted not only what was different (1 fruit and 3 vegetables!) but also what was the same (all something that you eat!). This is a very useful concept for creating music. When we are playing together we can learn to both stand out as ourselves while fitting in to the overall dynamic of what’s happening. Not a bad life skill, either.

    Play simple ostinatos under an improvisation

    The group plays a repeated pattern (perhaps with some combination of beat and twice as fast or slow), and a soloist is free to play as she likes. At first, most kids will either play something completely disconnected from the music or play the irresistibly compelling thing the group is playing. I’m fine with either of those at first because I am mostly interested in helping the group to stay together in a simple repeated pattern. Can we maintain it without speeding up or falling apart? Can each child resist the urge to unleash his or her wild energy on an instrument for the sake of the group? It takes a while to cultivate this, but when it happens, it’s the same magic feeling humans have been addicted to for time out of mind.

    Follow a conductor in a group

    Again, subverting your will to the will of someone else (a composer, say, or a conductor) is sometimes what music is all about.  I find children are often more than willing to watch and take direction from each other, usually much more excited about it than doing so with me, yet another adult telling them what to do. When they lead each other, I love watching them sense the power behind (at least momentarily) investing someone with authority.

  • 1st – 2nd Grade Skills, Experiences and Objectives Associated with Pitch (Part 3)

    Well, “next week” turned into two months! The teaching season has heated up, but I’m finally continuing my curricular lists for 1st-2nd grade. This time the focus is on pitch. Rhythm skills for kids this age are a lot more predictable for me than pitch skills. Some kids have an easy, natural relationship with their singing voice, while others seem to struggle with the kind of self-consciousness that plagues older kids and adults in relation to singing. However, many of the pitch skills are about perception, which does not necessarily require the singing voice. Here, kids seem to be on more equal footing. Also, as I look at this list, I notice that these are mostly skills rather than experiences. I think I know the reason for that, but perhaps that’s for a future post. Suffice it to say for now that all of these skills are taught through – you guessed it – experience. Here’s the list:

    Voice

    • slide up and down through the range of your voice
    • improvise phrases in a singing voice
    • match a pitch

    Melody

    • recognize and respond to melodies that change directions frequently vs melodies that move in one direction
    • Melodic Contour
      • distinguish melodic lines that ascend/descend/stay in place
      • discern the high note in one-measure patterns

    Scale

    • Major Scale
      • Sing scale degrees 1-5 with letter names or numbers in the key of C
      • Differentiate the tonic (scale degree 1) from other pitches in the scale
    • Chromatic scale
      • learn the pattern of white and black notes on the piano
      • be able to name the notes ascending using sharps from C
    • Minor scale
      • experience the expressive posibilities of music in the minor mode
      • distinguish between musci played in minor and major
      • sing simple melodies in the minor mode

    Harmony

    • hear, identify and sing 1-3-5 of the major scale in different combinations
    • explore the concepts of consonance and dissonance