How Dalcroze Eurhythmics Has Transformed My Solfège and Ear Training Teaching Margarita Martínez Mejía (México)
For twenty years I have been teaching the ear training class, also called musical language or solfège, at the Escuela Superior de Música of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura in Mexico City. When I first began to teach these classes, I did so in the same traditional way in which I had learned—through lectures on theoretical concepts, learning to read notation using the Pozzoli Method (spoken and sung exercises dating from the nineteenth century used in solfège and music reading coursework), leading dictations, and reading rhythms. However, I didn’t know whether my students truly understood everything they were learning in the classes. I always felt something more was needed, but I didn’t know what it was. Although I tried to explain in detail the concepts of rhythms, scales, intervals, chords and their inversions, and play these on the piano, I realized my students still could not sing without losing the tonic. It was also difficult for them to sight-sing, perform harmonic dictations, and conduct and read rhythms fluently, among other things. In 2002, I was invited to a conference of music educators held at the Facultad de Música of the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León and CONARTE in Monterrey, México. I was struck by the name of the conference: Dalcroze, Orff, and Kòdaly: Similarities and Differences. At the time I had not heard of Dalcroze, so it was of great impact when the teacher, Dr. Herbert Henke, asked us to come on stage to take the class. Then I thought, “For what purpose? Will it be necessary to be here sitting on the floor and not comfortably in our places for this class?” Nevertheless, I stood from my seat and went on stage with a few others to participate in the class. I could not have made a better decision! Finally, I had found what I had longed for: a different way of teaching where students could be themselves, perform, understand, develop, participate, play, have fun, learn, feel, and live the music! From that moment to the present, I have been interested in learning more about this new way of doing things and began my Dalcroze certification at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Years later, I was able to complete the Dalcroze certification in México at the Conservatorio de las Rosas (Morelia, Michoacán).
I wanted to know more about the origins of Dalcroze education and the so-called New School or Active School, which was a movement of pedagogical renewal that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century in opposition to education based on formalism and memorization (De Zubiría Samper, 2014, 98). It had as precursors Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Lussy, and Claparède, among others. The New School postulated that “learning comes from experience and makes the child the main actor in education, the center around which the entire educational process must revolve” (De Zubiría Samper, 2014, 95). It also intended that music education be activeparticipatory and carried through in an environment of play, joy, and trust; in these conditions, children could flourish creatively. This new vision of education gave much weight to socialization and education through and into life. (ibid., 96) The birth of eurhythmics at the start of the century coincided with renewal of emphasis on human individuality. In becoming a new area of philosophical interest, about human beings with their real-life problems; inevitably, it became central to the blossoming of education, psychology, and sociology.1 Starting from the general principles of the New School, the so-called Active Musical Methods emerged, including Dalcroze education: “ …and it should never be forgotten that rhythm is considered as a mode of education through and into music” (Jaques-Dalcroze, 1926, 66). The principles of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze’s pedagogy provide a complete musical training system in which the development of an immediate physical response to a stimulus is made automatic. Jaques-Dalcroze described eurhythmics as a necessary experience with music through movement, which develops the sense of “muscular rhythm and … nervous sensitivity” rendering the ear attentive to “all gradations of intensity, duration and time, phrasing and shading…” (JaquesDalcroze, 1930, 106)
1
Cf. Bochenski 1962: 17-40
DALCROZE CONNECTIONS • SPRING 2022 VOL.6, NO.2 • WWW.DALCROZEUSA.ORG • LATIN AMERICAN ISSUE, PART 2 (ENGLISH)
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