Articles about Dalcroze pedagogy organized by age.
Early Childhood:
-
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…
-
Phrasing
A phrase can best be described as a musical sentence. Phrases can be long, extending over many bars, 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…
-
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…
-
A Basic Structure for 4-5 year-old Dalcroze Classes
Hello Lucy Moses Summer Intensive 2013 participants, and anyone else interested teaching music to young children! As requested, here is an outline of the structure I use for my classes for young children. Though I do follow this basic plan for most of my classes, this represents only what works for me – there are…
Early elementary:
-
Letter to 1st and 2nd Grade Families
note: here’s an end-of-the-year summary for the families of my 1st and 2nd grade Dalcroze classes. I refer to a list of skills and experiences. It’s a bit long for a post, but if you are intersested, I’m happy to send you a copy. Dear 1st and 2nd grade families, The 1st and 2nd grade…
-
Skills and experiences for 1st-2nd Grade Dalcroze: Movement (Part 1 of 4)
The focus for this list is movement. In each Dalcroze class, I give a short warm-up at the beginning. The focus is usually on some kind of movement technique, and I often use the warm-up to provide an introduction to the musical subject of the day (for example beat and division, syncopation, simple triple meter,…
-
1st-2nd Grade Dalcroze Skills and Experiences: Rhythm (Part 2 of 4)
Second in a series of posts describing what a typical class might cover during the year. Now we get to the heart of the matter. This is a formidable list, and not all that different from a list I might make for adult classes. Does this mean the children will master each of these things?…
-
1st – 2nd Grade Skills, Experiences and Objectives Associated with Pitch (Part 3)
Here are more 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…
Late elementary:
Adult
note: during the pandemic, when we were looking for ways to keep ourselves moving, I made some posts for adults to practice their eurhythmics skills. For more about teaching Dalcroze to adults, view ‘by subject‘.