Michael Joviala

Tag: edited

  • 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. We also study pitched subjects like harmony, intervals, tonality and scales. 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 wanting to learn music theory, they often come to a Dalcroze class to reconnect with parts of their musical selves they may have lost. Those who teach might wish to be able 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: mental flexibility, the ability to function well in a group, a strong memory, excellent focus and concentration, expressivity as well as 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 that are addressed in a Dalcroze class. 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 in 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 make 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 her arms on beat one of a four-beat measure just by asking her 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. When I am 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 at my best, 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. Students 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 Èmile Jaques-Dalcroze describes the central goals of his method in his writings. Especially in his later writings, these goals extend beyond 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 these aspects of being a well-functioning human being, my category 2, are what 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. Gaining these skills in an environment that stimulates our imaginations, fosters social connections (which are harder and harder to come by) while offering the some of the shared musical engagement 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.

    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. ↩︎

  • Dynamics

    I wonder if some of the other musical subjects are envious of ‘dynamics’. It’s very name sounds like a superpower. How about the others? ‘Duration’ sounds world-weary; ‘Augmentation/diminution’ feels like a medical procedure. ‘Meter’ sounds like something a bureaucrat made up. But ‘dynamics’ sounds like it is brimming with life-force energy. (Note: the image above is AI-generated after typing in “dynamics music superpower”. A little creepy, but I decided to keep it.)

    I sometimes feel a let-down if I need to define the word in class. Loud or soft? Is that all it means? When further reduced to a set of symbols (f, mp, p, etc.), it definitely does not live up to its own hype. The labels themselves are fuzzy. Just how do I know if something is ‘medium soft’ (i.e., mezzo piano) anyway?

    But I spotlight this subject in the beginning of the year because actually every Dalcroze class is about dynamics. Subtle changes of energy at just the right time are what make music sound expressive and nuanced. Rhythmic subjects like phrasing, meter, duration, and pitch subjects like harmony, melodic shape and phrasing all hinge on careful control of how loud or soft we are playing or singing at any given moment.

    If forced to reduce the difference between a music theory class and a musicianship class, you could do worse than simply saying, “Dynamics.” But in my own private instrumental lessons they were added on to the cake like icing or decorative flowers after the notes and rhythms were learned. In the musicianship class (which is what a Dalcroze class usually is), they can earn their rightful place as a subject of study. Because they can be mapped onto weight, use of space, balance, interaction with others, and speed they are the real meat and potatoes of the movement class.

    Activities:

    Teach a group of elementary-aged kids to make a circle and change the size from very large to very small. This could take a session or two depending on the group. Then play or put on some music that has lots of changes of dynamics. Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5 has a fun kinetic energy that kids seem to enjoy, but there are many possibilities. Whether I am improvising or using a recording, it’s especially fun when there is a good deal of predictability with just enough surprises to bring out giggles.

    To strengthen independence in children, I use an activity I have taken to calling “Orchestra/soloist” in my lesson plans. One child moves as they like (I try to encourage locomotor movements such as walking, skipping, lunging, etc.), and I accompany them, matching their tempo and dynamics as best I can on the piano using a single-voiced melody while the rest of the group watches and waits to move. When I bring in both hands (and all ten fingers), the rest of the group knows to join in the same movement. What tells them? Dynamics. I aim to develop a dialogue between soloist and orchestra that feels like a concerto.

    Towards the end of the year, we play the same game but I’ll start by putting on the board a big list of tempo terms (from slow to fast), dynamics terms (from soft to loud), and kinds of articulation (staccato, legato, marcato, etc.). Soloists choose their own combinations (“build your own sandwich”), for example, soft/slow/legato or quick/light/legato. I bring in as many musical terms as are appropriate for age and institution. Once someone chooses a particular combination, it’s crossed of the list.

    For early childhood, I create a ball-passing experience with the second movement of Haydn’s Surprise. I have to wait until I feel like most of the kids will willingly roll a ball back to me soon after receiving it. We sit in a circle with kids (3–4 years old) and their adults. This piece has many hilarious changes of dynamics usually built the same way: soloists, trios, full orchestra. When it is calm and quiet, I roll a single ball to different children. As the activity in the music speeds up, I add a second. When things really get moving, I add up to three or four balls. And, of course, that ridiculous surprise accent early on gets its own large bounce from me out of nowhere. It’s a long movement (almost 10 minutes in some versions), but kids almost always stay engaged with the drama (and the comedy). Who will get the next ball? When will we add more? Why is he holding on to them now? The right group will stay amazingly focused.

    Dynamics play a role in the overall form of all my kids classes. Especially in early childhood, they tire quickly and need frequent rest periods. Some kids are good at self-regulation: they’ll just lie down in the middle of a class when they need a rest. As long as they are not in the middle of the room where they might pose a safety risk, I don’t mind this. I try to build a couple of peaks of activity during every class so that everyone (even me) gets some rest. I follow each peak with complete relaxation on the floor. I often use the same rest music (Schumann’s “Far Away Places” and Ravel’s “Sleeping Beauty” Pavanne are my two go-to pieces for rest). The kids come to expect these rests and drop to the floor willingly. (Sometimes I encourage slow melting.)

    Adults and older kids often need specific techniques they can use to adapt to changes in dynamics, which often accompany changes in tempo. Here are some possible things to explore:

    1. Stride length: larger steps for louder dynamics, shorter for softer (with implications for exploring the interrelationships of time, space and energy).
    2. Body parts: which body parts are more suited for expressing the louder dynamics? Which for the softer?
    3. Size of group = dynamic: solo, duo, trio, full group.
    4. Resistance: use of elastic bands, or simply pushing against or pulling a partner can capture the dynamic arc of a phrase.
    5. Balls are effective ways to explore the dynamic subtleties of each beat in a measure: bouncing, catching, tossing and passing each might have their place in a meter of four.

    All of the above have direct application to music that closely maps our experience of being weighted beings subject to the force of gravity. Jaques-Dalcroze used this physical experience to create a theory of rhythm that can be applied remarkably well to many kinds of musical situations. (He even created ‘rules of nuance’ in an effort to teach musicality.) But I believe we can also benefit from exploring the many ways that musical reality might differ from our own physical capabilities. This is why I sometimes like to decouple the usual pairings of tempo and dynamics: slow and soft; loud and fast. What about loud and slow? Soft and fast? Music is large enough to contain these realities, too, even if they don’t come as naturally to us as movers. It can present and interesting question to explore in the adult classroom.

  • Tonality

    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 palette. When I use color in a drawing, I sometimes have trouble limiting myself. However, in one Sunday morning’s exploratory session with some new watercolor pencils (above), I made it a point to work within some constraints. It was a relief to not be overwhelmed by a riot of color!

    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, and 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; 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 in their tracks while they are hiking through diminished-scale forests; 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 backpedal to a tonic second inversion), that little bird will get the signal: time to land. It’s the feeling of one of those long trills at the end of a cadenza that says to the orchestra, “This has gone on long enough!”

    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” (i.e., “do these different things at the same time”), I will most likely play as clearly as possible with the diatonic color wheel. I am then careful also to use 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 the body.

  • 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, Èmile 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, 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 my teacher 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 G♭ major scale and ask how many black notes they hear, some students will say, “None,” and are 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 startlingly 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 black and white keys on the keyboard, jumping with two feet when we would land on a black note, and one foot for white notes. I have them speak the letter names, thinking with sharps when we ascend, and flats when we descend. The trick is to 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 step, they will sing the two notes and put a gesture (with a rest) 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.

  • Meter

    Part of a series of posts on the ‘musical subjects‘ I am working with in my classrooms and thinking about as a musician and teacher.

    I often turn to Walter Piston when I want some inspiration for teaching or for my own practice. Here’s what he says about meter in his book, “Counterpoint”:

    “In itself, meter has no rhythm. It is simply a means of measuring music, principally for purposes of keeping time, and as an aid in playing or singing together in ensemble music.” (Walter Piston, Counterpoint. Norton, 1947. pg. 26.)

    This rings true to me. The language of meter—that of an accountant or an actuarial—gives it away. We count, we measure, we create bars and lines. Piston provides easy and obvious examples of music in which the melodic and harmonic rhythm do not agree with the grid on the page. For me the point is not that meter really exists only on the page, rather it is something we can feel as a living thing. It should be as flexible, responsive and alive as a beating heart.

    In groove-based music such as jazz there is no other way to do it other than to feel it. Once you feel a regular grouping of beats into, say, three or four, there is nothing more to ‘measure’. The cycle of the meter in groove and dance based music is so much more than an ‘aid to playing or singing together’, though it certainly is that, too. Each beat has the potential to contain whatever can be imagined in time, with it’s own function in the cycle.

    In the classroom, I find myself working with meter in ways that I don’t have to with other rhythmic phenomena such as beat, division of the beat or syncopation. I’ve never taught anyone to synchronize to a beat. I have simply set up the conditions in which this primal human behavior can take place. Not so with meter. For children (and even many adults) synchronizing an action to different parts of a measure takes effort, understanding, practice and often patience.

    With children, the first thing I want to know is whether or not they can detect the regular, recurring grouping of beats into meter. Do they notice when this grouping changes, say, from four to three? Though I do not have any proof of this, I suspect they can feel metrical differences long before they can articulate them. This is why I like to slip different beat groupings under their basic locomotor movements. I’ll let them walk or even skip in 3 once in a while and watch them. They will sometimes look at me to see what I’m up to. Often, they’ll subtly change the way they are moving to reflect what they are hearing. Those are special moments!

    By the time they are a little older (say 5 or 6 years), I can begin to get them to synchronize to specific parts of the measure. This week I (somewhat spontaneously) told a story about 3 spare parts in a warehouse that decided to find a way to work together. (One child did not understand the idea of ‘parts’ so it was not entirely successful!) In groups of 3 they assigned themselves an order and created their own movement possibilities. I improvised music with nothing but three grouped beats. As they gradually found a groove, I began to play more ‘naturally’, stretching phrases over the bar lines, adding longer durations to the melody here and there. For some groups, I even slipped in a bit of the Bach Minuet in G that many of them have heard. My 3rd-5th graders are comfortable enough with the concept of groupings of beats that we were able to explore meters of 5 in different combinations this past week (3+2 and 2+3). They were able to toss and catch stuffed bears (the balls were missing, so I had to improvise!) in groups of two and three.

    For older kids, especially those that have had lessons, I also try to connect the work to the time signatures they encounter in their music books. I try to loosen the vice grip the quarter note has as representative of the beat. Any note value can be a beat after all, so I am careful with my language, “One way of writing the beat is with a quarter note, etc.” Children are taught to say that the quarter note ‘gets’ the beat. I am not at all convinced that this has lived meaning for most children and even many adults. I know it doesn’t for me. Why should a quarter note ‘get’ anything? If anything, it should be the reverse: the beat should get the quarter note as choosen by the one notating (the composer, the arranger).

    When I stepped into a Dalcroze class for the first time, meter had long since calcified into ‘time signature’, a thing I ‘knew’ all about. Irregular meters perhaps could command my attention, but certainly I had long since mastered everything there was to know about 4/4. The power of creative, purposeful movement helped create a sense of mystery around this most basic subject for me that continues to unfold to this day, and that is something I hope to do for others as well as in my work with adults. The usual oversimplification applies here: the kids can feel it but can’t explain it, the adults can explain it but can’t feel it.

    If I seem wary of this subject, well, it’s because I am. I notice that I emphasize it much less in my work with young people than I did when I first started teaching, perhaps because I am so aware of things I have needed to unlearn. I’ll give Emile Jaques-Dalcroze the last word on the subject for now:

    “… the metric tradition kills every spontaneous agogic impulse, every artistic expression of emotion by means of time nuances. The composer who is obliged to bend his inspiration to the inflexible laws of symmetry in time-lengths comes gradually to modify his instinctive rhythms, with a view to unity of measure, and finishes by conceiving only rhythms of a conventional time-pattern.” (Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Rhythm, Music and Education. p.185.)

    Related posts for personal practice:

    Triple and quadruple time

    Changing Meter: Reaction Game

  • Changing meter: Reaction game

    Note: This part of a series of posts for adults interesting in practicing eurhythmics on their own.

    The following is a known as “Quick Reaction Game” in Dalcroze parlance. In a quick reaction game, participants respond to a signal (auditory (musical or non-musical), visual, verbal or tactile). In this case, the subject is “Changing Meter”. See the instructions below for suggestions on how to use the lo-fi home recording I made. Better yet, make up your own variation!

    Divisions of 2 on the last beat of the measure call for duple meter (e.g., 2/4); divisions of 3 call for triple meter (e.g.. 3/4); divisions of 4 call for quadruple meter (e.g., 4/4). Suggestions: gesture the measure freely; step the beat or measure and conduct; toss a scarf on 1, catching it on the last beat of the measure; clap the measure and step the beat, or the reverse, being careful to use space to express the measure grouping.

  • Leading and Following

    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. From early childhood on, I like to give them experiences of leading, following, working with a partner and being a member of a large group, all roles good musicians navigate with ease.

    Very young children (3 and 4) delight in performing an action that causes a reaction from the whole group. In our classes, they participate with an adult. After a story about a cat that pounces on a mouse, I can ask the group to watch a single child jump, then clap just as she lands on the ground. The expression on the child’s face when she realizes the power she has is absolutely priceless. 

    At ages 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 direct them to create a winding path in the room, so that the train actually goes somewhere. As they go, the music matches their movements as closely as possible, giving them a more concrete experience of their own tempo choices. Of course, when they speed up, it is easy for many children to lose track of the ones following them as they become caught up in the thrill of the 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 taxi drivers and passengers. 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 might be done without music at first, so that I can narrate what I see, helping the children become aware of possibilities other than their usual favorites. Later we can all synchronize the game to music to give us the experience of phrase.

    Beginning around 6 or 7, children become more interested in—and capable—of working in pairs or small groups. I want them to experience the difference between working alone, working with a partner and working with the whole group. One simple game we might play is to walk alone when they hear a single melody from the piano, move with a partner when that melody is harmonized with another line, and move together as a group when I play with full chords. For older children (7—9), this can be extended into counterpoint. When the two voices are parallel, they maintain the same distance from their partner; when the two voices move in contrary motion, they move away from or toward their partner. To perform the activity well, they must be attuned to each other and make many subtle movement choices together. This is actually the essence of playing music with others. 

    I also make time to improvise freely with different combinations of non-pitched percussion instruments in solos, duets, trios and whole ensemble configurations. While I do make time to play specific rhythms we might be working on in class, I also want the children to be able to experiment freely. At 5 or 6 years old, I start with duets with me, allowing the child to choose a preferred percussion instrument (triangle, finger cymbal, claves, etc.). I turn this into a leading/following game with simple prompts such as, “Play only when I am not playing,” or even, “Play only when I am playing.” If I allow freedom, I must accept what they play, but by the time we’ve gotten around the circle, each child has given us an opportunity to hear different kinds of music: loud, soft, fast, slow, careful, reckless… I consider this expression a way of leading, too. 

  • Phrasing

    A phrase can best be thought of as a musical sentence. Phrases can be long, extending over many measures, or as short as a few beats. Just like a spoken sentence, phrases are often separated by a breath, or at least the sense of one. The ends of musical phrases can imply the punctuation of a written one: commas, periods, question marks and exclamation marks can all be heard in music. Musicians who play with a good sense of phrasing communicate a clear sense of beginning, middle and end to each phrase they play.

    These concepts may be challenging to explain in words to a four-year-old, but children can easily experience phrasing in movement. At first, they respond to musical or dramatic cues to encourage them to stop – something they are not always inclined to do on their own. Imagery can also play a role: the prowling cat pauses to sniff the air; the farmer has to stop milking the cow to wipe the sweat off his brow.

    Anyone who has seen a room full of children galloping with complete abandon can verify that the image of a horse and rider is very powerful for young children. We ride along to galloping songs such as “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain”. They practice pulling the reins to stop the animal, drawing their attention to moments in the song when the horse pauses. After a while, astute groups begin to notice when the horse gallops for a long time as opposed to a short time (the third phrase). We can also apply the concept to a song called “Who Stole My Chickens and My Hens”, a short, catchy tune depicting a very suspicious farmer. In this song, rests of varying lengths separate the phrases. While the children sing they walk around. During the rests, they pause to look for their lost chickens. As the year goes on, they can have many opportunities to initiate, continue and stop movements on their own, the essence of a phrase. 

    A more challenging exercise asks the students to stand in their own spot in the room, while one student delivers a ball to another during a phrase of a song. Many skills are required here, not the least of which is standing still until it is your turn to move with the ball. To perform this well, students must have a clear sense of the arc of each phrase, since they have to decide whether to walk to someone near or far depending on the length of the phrase.  For five- and six-year-olds I use an Irish lullaby called “Cucanandy”, which has a short-short-long pattern of phrasing. Younger children can pair up with an adult and press hands at every sung O in this song, since every phrase ends with this vowel. Better yet, they can make the shape of the O with their partner at the appropriate moment. 

    I have also used the ‘Cuckoo’ movement from Saint Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals to illustrate phrasing. In this short, magical piece, a cuckoo calls out at the end of each phrase. We walk quietly through the forest, stopping to point out near and distant birds as we go. The phrases are irregular, requiring attentiv listening, but children are drawn into the hushed, enchanted forest Saint-Saëns has created. 

    Besides drawing children’s attention to one of the most pleasurable aspects of music, the Dalcroze work has obvious application to instrumental work. The Dalcroze work allows the students to experience on a large canvas what must eventually be made small and refined in instrumental performance.

  • Register And Scale

    Translating musical phenomena into verbal language can be tricky. Most adults are familiar with the use of the words high and low as applied to musical pitch. Specifically, these words refer to the frequency of the musical tone: higher tones have a more frequent wavelength than lower tones. When physicalizing these concepts, we take advantage of the spatial meanings of high and low, which refer to points in space. While adults may take this type of synesthesia (mapping one sense onto another) for granted, these concepts may be beyond the immediate intellectual grasp of young children. In the Dalcroze classroom, physical experiences can draw their attention to this elemental musical phenomenon. Almost immediately, they usually demonstrate awareness of high and low by making gestures that are physically high or low.

    To further encourage this kind of perception, we might go apple picking. As they walk around the apple orchard, accented sounds in the upper register of the piano ask them to “pick” an apple from way up high in the tree. Accents in the lower register ask them to scoop apples up from the ground. This focuses their awareness on the general registers of the piano: high, middle and low.

    We can then branch out from these large categories of pitch. From day one, we stand up as I sing the scale. Eventually, even if they are lying on the ground, I can simply play a harmonized scale and they will stand up.

    For the minor scale, I enjoy using a poem called “The Little Man Who Wasn’t There,” set to the natural minor scale, as a way to apply the idea of scale to a dramatic situation. As the melody slowly ascends the minor scale (this is the version I sing; there are also old swing band renditions of this poem), a mystery unfolds.

    For older children, we can dip our toes into scales other than major and minor. Using the xylophone, they are asked to choose a starting note other than C and climb up eight steps (as the song does). Each new starting point provides a different scale, known as a mode. If I accompany them on the piano, they can get a real taste of Lydian (F to F on the white notes) or Dorian (D to D on the white notes). Each one has a very different feeling, and I like to give children an aural experience of them, even if they are not quite ready to grasp the music theory. As they play up the new scale on the xylophone, the class shows the man “climbing up the stairs.”

    • As I was walking
      • up the stairs I
        • met a man who
          • was not there. He
            • wasn’t there a-
              • gain today I
                • wish I wish he’d
                  • go away…

    (repeat descending…)

    Source: youtube.com via Michael on Pinterest

  • Exploring Meter

    A primary focus areas in the beginning of the year is the subject of meter (with subtle differences this is also known as ‘measure’ and ‘time signature’). Meter can be defined as the grouping of beats into 2’s, 3’s and 4’s. (They can be larger, too!) 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 grouping (this subject is referred to as ‘measure shape’).

    For children, I first look for ways to give them an experience of accent: squirrels jump from branch to branch, subway cars bounce, jack-in-the-boxes spring… These experiences lead to activities involving recurring patterns of accent, one of the hallmarks of meter. The 4-5 year-olds mostly work with groupings of two beats, but I often find myself stretching out to three and four with adept groups. A story of giant building a house gives them an opportunity to chop down trees, saw wood, and hammer nails, all with accompaniment in two. Ball passing games in which they raise the ball high before passing to their neighbor give them an experience of not only feeling the accented beat, but also the building energy that leads to the accent (called the anacrusis). After these experiences, the children are given a chance to invent their own patterns with two, three and four parts on percussion instruments.

    5-6 year-olds can also try slightly more advanced games. I might ask them 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 three or four. This is a challenging listening and cognition task, but with a little coaching, most groups are able to accomplish this!

    In addition to the songs we sing, I regularly slip music from the classical literature into the classes whenever possible (see list below). 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 more than willing to simply lie on the floor and listen. I don’t talk about the pieces, but they would likely recognize them if they heard them on a recording.

    Here are some of the pieces I use regularly:

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

    2. Entreating Child, #4 also from Kinderszenen

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

    4. Royal March from Carnival of the Animals, by Saint Seans

    I have been using this last selection in a ball passing game that emphasizes the strong ‘two-ness’ of this piece, along with the exciting chromatic swirls that occur in the middle section. This has been a new invention this year! For extra practice, put on almost any kind of  music (jazz, classical, pop – most kinds of music use meter), and try to find first that recurring cycle of beats with your child.