8/13 POIs

Kodaly Reading

First off-"The Method?" Seriously? What is this, a cult?

"To use a subject logic approach in teaching music to young children is to expect them to intellectualize something that does not exist in their own experience."

One resource I think is underused in this regard is the history of our own western music tradition. Music didn't start with Stravinsky, or even Mozart. These musics came after centuries of development. We actually have a music that possesses a simple tonal system, is monophonic, and separates rhythmic challenges from pitch based challenges: Gregorian Chant, which we could use alongside pentatonic music or at a more advanced stage. However, most peoples' experience with Chant as music that is learned is in a college level music history survey, in which many of them express confusion, since it is not the same as the more complex music they were taught in their performance based programs. Why do we not use this resource earlier in music education? It is historically valuable music and to many it is very beautiful music. The religious implications(if they are found problematic) can be removed by removing the original texts or simply composing new pieces in the style of authentic Gregorian Chant, something which any music teacher should be able to do. Why the rush to teach children Bach and Mozart while neglecting this resource?

"Kodaly felt that simple, expressive forms of nursery songs and folk music were more suitable for children because they were living music, not fabricated or contrived for pedagogical purposes."

Pedagogical music is hugely important. It allows teachers to isolate areas in which students are having difficulties and concentrate on those areas in controlled ways. It may be possible to find folk music that does this, but what is the major advantage that unfamiliar folk music has over pedagogical music? That someone, somewhere actually sings it? What if one cannot find folk music to isolate a particular skill? Kodaly wrote music for his method, so either he had a very grandiose view of his own compositional abilities(most people don't consider Kodaly's pedagogical music to be part of the canon of masterpieces) or did find pedagogical music useful regardless of its widespreadness or recognition. Pedagogical music is widespread throughout education. Since it focuses on particular difficulties that most performance-intended pieces don't, it is often considered uninteresting. But it fills in a gap since most performance-intended pieces don't isolate and focus on a particular difficulty. This strategy can be fruitful with all different ages, when approached the right way. Kodaly, at least in word, seems to be throwing away a valuable resource.

"The [notion?] that musical literacy is as universally possible as linguistic literacy and that development of such literacy is an obligation of the schools came as a breath of fresh air"

I still personally experience far to many depressing incidents in this regard. Why would someone who loves making music decide that reading music is a waste of time, which I have heard, or someone who can do many other complex things claim that learning to read notation is too hard? Obviously notation is valuable for the same reason as reading and writing: it gives us another way to communicate our ideas. As for the difficulty, musical notation is by far less complex than any written language. If we can all learn to read, we can all learn to read music. The problem is that many music classes seem to consider notation an extraneous waste of time at best or a negative interference at worst. Yes, you must learn to talk or sing before you can learn to read, but why don't we teach notation like we teach reading, starting with simple things and at an early time. Keyboard instruments are especially useful because students can both see and hear the meaning of notational symbols.

Dalcroze Reading

"For some teachers, Dalcroze techniques are practiced only as Eurhythmics."

This was my experience at CIM, and because of this, I didn't feel like I got a lot out of it. Rhythm is one of my stronger points and none of the exercises we did were challenging for me, except in a a kinesthetic way and then only at first. I don't think I ever got a rhythmic dictation wrong. For me, incorporating tonal and improvisatory exercises could have made the class much more valuable, as those are areas in which I am weaker and could use more development. The lesson is that it is important, no matter what method one uses, to address all the different aspects of music so as to reach all kinds of students with different strengths and weaknesses.

"Sharper communication between the ear, eye, body, and mind must be developed."

This reminds me of Dr. McClary's lecture. Our kinesthetic relationship with music can be something we get away from as we grow older and attempt more advanced pieces. I had this experience in my flute quartet. We were playing a movement with two parallel canons. One was very soaring and lyrical while the other was very light and dancelike. However, when listening to the sound we produce, the only difference was the rhythms. The slow parts felt stagnant and the rhythmic parts choppy rather than dancelike. I found that concentrating on movement and trying to think about how I would move the music helped me to achieve the phrasing that I wanted. Some of the other players in the quartet didn't like the idea and didn't want to try it. This is something we should try to preserve at all levels of music education. Movement doesn't just correspond to rhythm, it corresponds to all sorts of aspects of musical style. We should give our students not only opportunities to think about this encourage them to actually try moving(perhaps not while playing since that can cause problems) so they can feel out how they want the music to sound.

"In 1913,the Gluck opera "Orpheus" was performed at the school, where Dalcroze directed a chorus and soloists who were trained in eurhythmics."

This is interesting considering the role of "Orpheus" as the first prominent reform opera of that era in which Gluck sought to move away from opera seria's emphasis on the solo aria and virtuostic embellishment and return opera to a form that integrated singing, instrumental music, staging, and dance. This in many ways embodies the philosophy that Dalcroze promoted: that these things are all related and that the ideas of expression and drama within music are strongly tied to movement and the human body. These ideas were less emphasized in the time of Gluck. The movement was rather interested in returning to the older French version of opera which itself was attempting to return to the ancient Greek version of drama. It would have been fascinating to attend Dalcroze's production and see how his philosophy furthered the ideas espoused by Gluck when he wrote "Orpheus" as well as how it reflected the differences in the goals between Dalcroze and Gluck.