Vol. 2, No. 1 December, 2016
IN THIS ISSUE FEATURES KENNETH K. GUILMARTIN: MAKING MUSIC TOGETHER
Submission deadlines for each volume year are August 15, February 15.
BY WILLIAM R. BAUER
THE GIFT OF DALCROZE FOR BABIES
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BY RUTH ALPERSON
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2016 CONFERENCE FLOWS TO SUCCESS BY PATRICK CERRIA 26
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CONCERT REVIEW: DALCROZE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES BY AARON BUTLER 29
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FROM THE EDITOR
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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
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LESSON PLAN: EARLY CHILDHOOD CLASS BY FUMIKO HONDA 30 REFLECTIONS: A PATH OF DISCOVERY
The Dalcroze Society of America (DSA) publishes Dalcroze Connections to inform, inspire and educate its members. Published twice per year (Fall and Spring), the magazine seeks articles, essays and letters by DSA members of varying lengths that pertain to the history, study, practice or teaching of the Method Jaques-Dalcroze and related disciplines. Submissions are accepted on an ongoing basis and may be edited for content and length. While timely submission of articles may allow for consultation with contributors, the editor reserves the right of final editorial decisions.
BY ANDREA KLEESATTEL
CHAPTER NEWS: PHOTOS FROM THE NORTHWEST CHAPTER
ROUND: WHICH WITCH IS WHICH BY WILLIAM R. BAUER
Articles should be submitted electronically to Michael Joviala (editor@dalcrozeusa.org). Submissions to Dalcroze Connections should be no longer than 2500 words. Contributors are encouraged to submit related photographs and images. Scholarly authors are referred to the The Journal of Dalcroze Studies, the DSA’s refereed (peer reviewed) journal, published once per year. For more information, email editor@dalcrozeusa.org.
TRAINING CENTER PROFILE: DALCROZE SCHOOL OF THE ROCKIES
The views expressed in Dalcroze Connections do not necessarily represent those of the Dalcroze Society of America.
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36 38 40 42
MICHAEL JOVIALA
FROM THE EDITOR
[PHOTO CREDIT: NILSA LASALLE]
Welcome to Dalcroze Connections, the DSA’s newly re-vamped member magazine now in its second year. We have a jam-packed issue for you this time, so I’ll cut right to the chase. For those of you lucky enough to attend the biennial conference in Princeton this past June, our feature articles this time will be a reminder of some of the fine work on display at this successful week-long event. Those who weren’t able to attend will get a taste of what they missed, and hopefully some incentive to make early arrangements to attend the next one. Speaking of which, we hope to see you at the California State University at Dominguez Hills the first weekend of January 2018. Yes, that’s right: the DSA is hosting its conference in Los Angeles in just over a year, on January 5-8, 2018! Our focus for this issue is early childhood education, and we offer three different perspectives on the subject. Bill Bauer has written a thoughtful and thought-provoking profile of Music Together founder Ken Guilmartin. I hope you appreciate as much as I do the way Bill has teased out the relationship of Ken’s work to its Dalcroze origins. I am also pleased to present the work of Ruth Alperson, whose teaching has been so influential to so many, myself included. Those of us who know her will easily recognize her voice: simple, clear and deeply rooted in her many years of experience as a Dalcroze teacher. The third entry on this theme relates to an early childhood lesson that took place at the conference, and it was one of the highlights for me: Fumiko Honda’s absolutely arresting session – done entirely in Japanese – with her young pre-K students and their parents. To round out our issue, I asked Fumiko if she would share her lesson plan. She graciously complied. No lesson plan can come close to capturing the depth and scope of a great Dalcroze session, but I think you’ll find it inspiring nonetheless. There are plenty of other surprises tucked in the pages which I will let you discover. But before I go, I’d like to give you an update on the DSA’s other publishing efforts. As I announced last year, the DSA split the American Dalcroze Journal into two separate publications: a magazine aimed at DSA members, and a peer-reviewed journal meant to reach a wide audience of scholars and academics. To give us a fresh start, we are officially this year retiring the name “The American Dalcroze Journal.” The new name of the scholarly publication will be “The Journal of Dalcroze Studies.” There are, as many of you know, many gems hidden in the forty-year history of the American Dalcroze Journal. Through a generous donation by Julia SchneblyBlack, we are also moving towards realizing my dream of building a digital archive of past American Dalcroze Journal issues that we can one day make available to our members. Thank you, Julia! It is my sincere hope that we in the DSA can build a home for inter-disciplinary thought and scholarship from the many fields implicated in our practice, and it looks like we are well on our way to doing just that. Since last year, authors wishing to publish in the journal have have been submitting articles for review. We are slowly building up our network of reviewers. The journal will continue to be on hiatus until the peer review process has enough time to do its work of ensuring that we only publish scholarship of the highest quality. I am grateful for your patience as we pursue this goal! We have made some dramatic changes over the past two years, and these changes have been well received. But, like most big changes, they do not come without risk. Publishing an eye-catching magazine full of features and an academic journal worthy of international respect and attention would undoubtedly further the DSA’s mission of promoting the understanding practice of Dalcroze.
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But if we are to succeed in these efforts, I need more help. I am grateful to my assistant editor Aaron Butler, the tireless efforts of DSA President Bill Bauer (without whom I would have very little to publish), and to all who send in articles. The team needs to grow if we are to sustain these two publications, and I am gambling that you, the members of the DSA, are up for the challenge. Ever feel frustrated that Dalcroze is not more widely known? Here’s something you can do about it. I’ve outlined some specific ways you can get involved (see page 34). Or write me at editor@dalcrozeusa.org with your ideas and suggestions, and we’ll get to work. Thank you for your support – and enjoy the issue! Michael Joviala
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MARTA SANCHEZ DALCROZE TRAINING CENTER music.cmu.edu/dalcroze
Dalcroze at Carnegie Mellon Pittsburgh 2017 Join us for our 42nd Annual Summer Workshops! “ Dalcroze Eurythmics has awakened in me a whole new level of musicianship, one that has application and profound impact in every aspect of my musical life. —Marie Miller, Music Teacher, Bethlehem, PA
Come join us for an exciting year of Eurhythmics study! February 18–19, 2017 Winter Workshop Dalcroze Eurhythmics Immersion Weekend with guest teacher Jeremy Dittus, Diplôme Supérieur, Dalcroze School of the Rockies, CO. July 10–14, 2017 One-Week Workshop 42nd Summer Dalcroze Eurhythmics Workshops July 10–28, 2017 Three-Week Workshop 42nd Summer Dalcroze Eurhythmics Workshops
All Workshops offer performers, conductors, music educators (preschool through college), studio teachers, music therapists, and movement specialists practical applications of the Dalcroze principles to performance and teaching. Beginner, intermediate, and advanced level classes are offered during the One-Week and the Three-Week Workshops.
Contact: Stephen Neely Marta Sanchez Dalcroze Training Center at Carnegie Mellon School of Music, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 music.cmu.edu/dalcroze music-dalcroze@andrew.cmu.edu
July 10–28, 2017
Read what people are saying about Dalcroze at Carnegie Mellon at music.cmu.edu/dalcroze
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE I gather you’re a Dalcroze learner. Me, too. That’s why we’re all here, right? So I’d like to take moment to celebrate who we are. I don’t think we’re some kind of “breed apart,” though I confess to harboring a Dalcrozecentric attitude toward education. But I wonder if a key factor that led me to find myself in this particular community (in both senses) is also a reason why you’ve found yourself here, too. It has to do with the specific ways of learning that Dalcroze promotes. Learning “in and through” music. Learning that taps into the vast body of knowledge at my fingertips when I let the music move me and let my movements sing, when I embody my mind and re-mind my body. Learning that summons the impulse to participate in and contribute to the creation of shared meaning. Learning that connects me with my fellow students while also allowing me to express myself with personal authenticity, through improvisation. It’s a lifelong affair, this Dalcroze learning, once it gets under your skin. More likely it’s not just these factors, but also a set of shared attributes (many of them not immediately apparent) that predispose us toward the Dalcroze approach to learning, as well as to teaching. Striking differences among us may make it less than obvious how we belong together; but, as with Wittgenstein’s “family resemblance” theory of verbal meaning, we share enough common traits to consider ourselves members of the same clan or tribe. I’m thinking now of a “Jaques Therapy” session I was thrilled to take part in this past October, hosted by the DSA’s New York Chapter (formerly known as “TriState”) at the Lucy Moses School in NYC. I felt quite at home in our tribe as we invented games that playfully took advantage of the skills and understanding we’ve forged in our training. Such as the ability to send clear signals through keyboard improvisation, and the ability to express rhythmic impulses clearly through movement improvisation, and the ability to “read” and interpret such movements musically. One game we played, I’ll call it “Dalcroze tag,” brought all of these skills together. The person seated at the keyboard is “it.” Each of the others steps through the space with a distinct tempo or pattern. The pianist “tags” one of them with an acoustical, rather than a physical touch, by playing the rhythm that is informing (and, consequently, generating) his or her way of stepping. This person then takes over at the piano, etc. It was delightful to be it, identifying a mover, internalizing the rhythm of his or her walk, and then synching up with it musically. It was also a treat to be out on the floor, maintaining my own way of moving while watching everyone asserting different tempos and rhythms, most of them conflicting with mine! It was fun to be tagged, too, hearing how a friend was musically interpreting my movement. I wish we could all get together for such playful celebrations of our practice. This past summer our national conference had a similar inclusive joy. Across the country the DSA is working to create more of such opportunities where we can enjoy the fruits of the common ground we’ve cultivated while also reveling in the diversity that makes our practice so multifaceted. So, while we may not be one big happy Wittgensteinian family yet—we’re perhaps too contentious for that—at least we, the membership of the USA’s Dalcroze Society, are becoming more of a “mutual admiration” society. I hope we never come to take this idiosyncratic way of learning for granted. When we gather together to learn in this way, I marvel at the uninhibited gusto with which we take up the lesson at hand. Adult Dalcroze learners really know how to engage in the discovery process, the engine that drives the lesson, tackling it with irrepressible kid-in-a-candy-store glee. Not just for the gains it yields, be they immediate or long term (though those often prove substantial)—but also, as with play, for the sheer delight this process spreads among us. We’re on a grand adventure in and through music, “a thrilling chase—a wondrous place.” I marvel at the motivation that brings us back time and again. To workshops, to the National Conference, and to the training.
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BILL BAUER
[PHOTO CREDIT: ANETTA PASTERNAK]
Looking at this same phenomenon from the other side of the coin, one of the true joys of teaching other Dalcroze learners is the pleasure of working with adult students who deeply value the work, the learning, the music they’re experiencing so deeply, and one another (but for whom none of the above would be possible). It’s a key reason why I appreciated the chance to offer a workshop for the DSA’s Rocky Mountain Chapter this October—as well as the Dalcroze learners who attended. As they broke into groups and plunged into the work of designing a plastique to a Tanz from Carmina Burana, listening intently, studying the score, choreographing, rehearsing, they made the learning seem like child’s play (which, as we now know, is also a mode of work). I have a notion that the merging of work and play in a Dalcroze class helps us unite inner child and inner parent, id and super-ego, allowing us to actualize ourselves in a fresh way. Regardless of how easy or hard it is, this work-play delivers intrinsic rewards, like art for art’s sake—learning for learning’s sake. And let’s face it, it’s deeply enjoyable! As DSA President, I often puzzle over how we can spread the word more effectively, drawing more in to share this experience with us and partake of our uniquely Dalcrozian culture. But I know it’s not everyone’s idea of fun. In fact, when we look out beyond our tribe, it seems counter-cultural, this zest for learning. Only rarely do I find college students who share such a commitment to one’s own musical growth and selfactualization. But, while I find this fact disappointing, I don’t blame them entirely. The school system they’ve come through, with its standardized ‘common core’ curriculum and high stakes testing bears much of the responsibility, as does our consumerist society, oriented as it is toward the acquisition of stuff. So much of what happens in schools these days seems intent on dulling students’ inborn curiosity, stomping out their natural impulse to imagine and create, and suppressing the very qualities that make each of them unique. All in the service of preparing them for life in “the real world.” By the time they get to my class, these young people have already figured out what their teachers expect of them, or so they think: hand in this paper, take that test, do at least well enough to pass; pass the next test, and the next; get a passing grade in this course, and the next; proceed through the degree program, repeat and rinse. Our society has applied the factory model of mass production to education and the results are often comparable to what comes off an assembly line. Widgets instead of compassionate human beings with a zest for life and learning. And sadly, owing to the corporate model that dominates much of our society, even teachers have less and less say in how their lesson design and execution can reflect their creativity and stimulate their students’ imaginations. That’s why one of my goals is to give students a chance to reconnect to that part of the human spirit that rebels against the erasure of their personhood. Sometimes the lone seed of individuation buried deep within them responds to the Dalcrozian invitation I extend, and the force that once spurred on this individual’s growth as a child—that child-like wonder, that curiosity—takes root and sprouts upwards. When that happens, it makes all the rest worthwhile. As a student of Dalcroze pedagogy I focused all my energies on the teacher’s side of the equation. The overriding concern was: “How can I call upon and synthesize all the complex skills sets I’ve developed and give students a Dalcroze experience?” From this perspective I identified the practice almost solely with the pedagogical methods I was studying, and I completely lost sight of the reciprocal role that Dalcroze learning plays in the whole endeavor. I’ve since come to think of Dalcroze education as a two-way street: a mutually reinforcing spiral of learning, student and teacher each enabling one another’s climb upward toward higher levels of selfreliance, each doing his or her part to provoke discoveries, which in turn propel us
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forward through our respective zones of proximal development. Having cultivated my own lifelong love of learning and earnest wish to grow, I wish on my students’ behalf that they all may call forth these attributes in the classroom. The students who enter my classroom without them initially find it hard to accept the invitation I extend to them—an invitation to step out of their comfort zone, let go of their preoccupation with “making the grade,” and enjoy the uncertain process of trial, error, and discovery that allows them to take ownership of their learning. But over the course of the semester, many of them awaken to the to the power they hold as masters of their own growth. And I’m always grateful when, years later, some of them let me know how this aspect of the class affected them. No doubt you have stories, too, of the impact you’ve made on your students, or the impact a Dalcroze teacher made on you. I hope you are coming to see Dalcroze Connections as a forum for sharing such stories. And I look forward to seeing you the next time we have the chance to learn together. As Dalcroze learners.
William R. Bauer President, Dalcroze Society of America
BILL BAUER AND MICHAEL JOVIALA IN A SURPRISE PERFORMANCE OF JOVIALA’S LOCO MOTORS [PHOTO CREDIT: ANETTA PASTERNAK]
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The Dalcroze Program at Diller-Quaile 2016-2017 DALCROZE CERTIFICATION OPPORTUNITIES Teacher Training Faculty: Ruth Alperson, Michael Joviala, and Cynthia Lilley CORE SUBJECTS: EURHYTHMICS, SOLFÈGE, IMPROVISATION DALCROZE METHODOLOGY: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES Includes observation of Dalcroze Eurhythmics classes for children and practice teaching DALCROZE CLASSES FOR STUDENTS FROM PRE-K THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL Teacher training classes have been evaluated and recommended for college credit by the University of the State of New York, New York State Board of Regents National College Credit Recommendation Service (National CCRS). Visit www.diller-quaile.org for information about 2016-2017 courses.
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The Diller-Quaile School of Music | 24 East 95th Street | New York, NY 10128 212-369-1484 | www.diller-quaile.org Accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Community & Precollegiate Arts Schools
BY WILLIAM R. BAUER
[PHOTO CREDIT, HEADSHOT: ANETTA PASTERNAK] [PHOTO CREDIT, ARTICLE: MUSIC TOGETHER LLC]
KENNETH K. GUILMARTIN:
MAKING MUSIC TOGETHER
Last spring, in anticipation of the 2016 National Conference, I visited with DSA member and Dalcroze Certificate Kenneth K. Guilmartin (who is also a fellow Princeton area resident). Ken and I first met over thirty years ago in Manhattan, when he and I were both studying with Bob Abramson. He generously took time from his busy schedule to share the story of Music Together, the thriving early childhood music education organization he founded, and how it all got started. Our talk covered a lot of terrain, ranging across the rich landscape of Ken’s life, our common ground as former Abramson students, our shared interest in research on music cognition, and, of course, the development of his highly successful music-and-movement ed organization. At the heart of the conversation was his connection to the Dalcroze training he received from Abramson; for I was especially interested in how the lessons Ken learned from Bob informed his vision of Music Together. Turning to the opening lines of the Acknowledgements listed on the final page of the book that accompanies the Music Together song collections, of which thousands of copies are sold each year, we can get an idea of those lessons’ importance: The authors would like to acknowledge the major sources of influence on the ongoing evolution of Music Together since it first began to take shape in the mid-eighties. The work of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, particularly as interpreted by Robert Abramson, is fundamental to Ken Guilmartin’s approach to music and movement education.
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Ken’s father James, a lawyer and district attorney, preferred easy listening; but he didn’t exert much of an influence, musically speaking. Ken’s mother Joan, a psychiatric social worker, enjoyed dancing and listening to jazz; but, even though music ran in her family, she was unable to carry a tune and didn’t pursue music very far. In this regard, the uncertainty she felt about guiding her son’s musical growth makes sense. Even when nature grants a child the rare potential to be especially musical, absent the nurture of musical enculturation—that is, without one generation passing songs, and skills, and musical values on to the next—it’s unlikely that much will come of it.
In the following essay, I’ve woven together the various threads of these narratives with descriptions of Music Together, intermingling passages from our discussion, so each strand may shed light on the others. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes are in Ken’s voice. Many thanks to him for the interview, as well as for reading an early draft of this article and offering suggestions for improvement. His and others’ help notwithstanding, I take sole responsibility for any errors of fact or interpretation that have crept into the writing. ON THE NATURE—AND NURTURE—OF MUSIC TOGETHER When he came into the world (specifically, in New York City, in 1946) Ken harbored an innate love of music. It’s something all people feel as children, naturally, without any training. What’s more, we all enter the world with the seeds of musical ability awaiting cultivation. As he likes to say, “We are born sounders and movers, coming out of the womb. Even in the womb, we’ve been moving and listening to sound for four or five months. Children remember songs sung to them in utero.” It’s a powerful theme, and one he readily warms to: “We’re born as sounders and movers: we are music. Moving, imprinting sound; sound imprinting movement.” Of course we Dalcrozians heartily agree.
In Ken’s case, however, something did come of it. Or rather, he took his innate gifts and made something of them. Somehow, from the lost opportunity, as if from an invisible garden, conspicuous in its absence, his vision for Music Together sprang forth. It was a vision of families with young children sharing positive experiences making music, together, with their caregivers. Hence the company’s name: “The ‘together’ in ‘Music Together’ means with grownups. It’s not just groups of children. We don’t do ‘kiddie’ music: we do music; so adults don’t mind singing along. Even if they think they can’t sing, they end up singing along anyway, because we reassure them that it doesn’t matter how well you do it.”
Yet during those critical early years before starting school, a time when kids make big developmental strides every day, Ken’s own musical gifts remained largely untapped. Clearly music excited and delighted him: that much his mother could see. But other than the radio—not a reliable source of suitable musical stimulation for children—she didn’t have any way to really satisfy his curiosity. And there were other matters to attend to.
The idea is therefore not just to create a setting in which children and their families may enjoy music making in a classroom once a week; but beyond that, to give them the tools they need to make music whenever they want to— specifically so music making can become an integral feature of their lives. “Then you have an environment at home where music is happening. So much happens by way of music and music relationship, enhancing development in the children and also in the grownups.” Indeed, the children are not the only ones who end up growing: “Many of the adults come in not being able to sing in tune. But after a couple years of doing tonal patterns and humming along as best as they can, even they start singing in tune!” If only Ken’s Mom and Dad had taken part in such a program. This is a key reason why Music Together provides materials and a curriculum that parents can use easily at home: so children have ongoing access to age-appropriate music. “Kids listen to the CDs a lot. We give them movement and dances and things to do at home. Ideally it becomes a part of daily life—not to practice or study; not something you have to do—because it’s just there.” The information Music Together gives parents on its website
As fellow educators who have a shared stake in addressing humanity’s need for music, we know this state of affairs all too well. Despite the best of intentions, many parents remain largely unaware of how to proceed on their children’s behalf. Those who love music and sense its importance yearn for an answer to the question: “What can I do to encourage his/ her interest in music?” Well, the good news is, thanks to Ken and the organization he founded thirty years ago, each day more and more parents are discovering ways to do just that—encourage their child’s musical interest; in ways their parents never knew. So it’s a bit ironic, perhaps—ironic and poignant—that his own family of origin would’ve been a good candidate for the kinds of musical sharing his organization now makes possible at more than 2,500 licensed sites located in over forty countries across the globe.
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listening to the radio in the ‘60s; to rock and roll and then jazz. My first LP was the soundtrack to the Benny Goodman Story, a 33 1/3 vinyl record that I played on a little record player meant for 45s. I just wore it out listening to Gene Krupa playing ‘Sing, Sing, Sing.’”
and in its other publications reinforces this critical message: If we believe that music making is an essential element of a well-lived life for all human beings, not only for the most gifted ones, then giving small children opportunities to take part in good music making experiences on a consistent basis amounts to a quality of life issue.
But home wasn’t the only place where adults missed opportunities to support his musical growth. The time his kindergarten teacher asked him to silently mouth the words of the songs the class was singing in a school concert lingers in his memory like an off-key tune. Later he came to see how cultural factors led her to miss a chance to engage her young charge in music making. The school and parents all expected his teacher to produce a certain musical result: a performance, rather than focus on her students’ learning process. The experience lives on as a cautionary tale from which Ken derived a key principle of the Music Together philosophy: “When teachers apply performance standards to music development, especially at these young ages, it’s not developmentally appropriate.”1 This principle is a corollary to Ken’s emphasis on giving kids ways to participate in developmentally appropriate practice instead of getting them to perform, focusing on their learning process rather than on producing a preconceived result.
In sum, then, the Music Together recipe features three key ingredients: first, a means of consistently delivering Parent-Child classes to preschoolers and their caregivers, classes where families can encounter a wide repertoire of developmentally appropriate songs and arrangements so engaging, the music will satisfy the adults as well as the kids. Next, a way to make the music available to families not only in class, but also outside of class, in recorded and printed versions, and a clearly spelled out curriculum that combines the music with age-appropriate stories, activities, and movement games. Finally, a research-based philosophy that gives parents, especially the ones who feel inhibited about making music, an empirical basis for their participation in musically infused play, making it a safe place for enjoying music making without any threat of judgment. Through no fault of his parents, and largely owing to cultural factors, none of these factors were present in Ken’s own upbringing.
Would he himself have developed differently if, rather than linking music making to performance—and the comparisons and judgments this entails—his earliest role models had welcomed his participation unconditionally? Would his relationship to music now be different? There is, of course, no way to know for sure. We do know, however, that, undeterred by the early challenges he faced, he took up drums in fifth grade—inspired, no doubt by Gene Krupa’s explosive example. And then there was the family business. Ken’s mother’s side of the family has had a long history in the educational publishing business. Jane’s father John F. Sengstack, a New York accountant and amateur violinist, bought the music publishing house Clayton F. Summy Company in the ‘30s (as a retirement project). Her brother David got his start in the business as a sales manager in 1948, when it was still in Chicago. A decade later he became president and sole stockholder—his sister wanted nothing to do with it. He later acquired C.C. Birchard and Co. and changed the company’s name to Summy-Birchard Publishing Co., which provided textbooks for schools across the country; and in 1978 he moved the business from Evanston to Princeton. As he further expanded the company’s holdings he changed the name again—first to the Birch Tree Group, Ltd. and later to The Sengstack Group, Ltd. By the time he sold it for millions of dollars to Warner/Chappell Music, Inc. (a subsidiary of
And so it was less by design than by happenstance that his mother’s move to Princeton NJ in 1954, when he was eight years old, positioned him well for later developments on this front. The move placed him among others who could encourage his musical growth; and they did. But he was also more self-motivated than most. And so, as he grew Ken seized upon whatever opportunities to pursue his love of music came his way. First it was just popular music; it wasn’t until later on, in college, when he would discover classical. “I grew up
1 See Diccon Hyatt, “Music Together Passes the Baton to a New CEO,” U.S. 1, April 22, 2015, pg. 1. This source provided helpful (though sometimes inaccurate) information beyond that which emerged in the interview.
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too strong to resist. During his last year in college he played organ in a blues group called Sidetrack that was based in Montreal. This was the end of the ‘60s and for a while the group served as the house band at the Cafe au GoGo in Greenwich Village; and they once opened for Jefferson Airplane and played on the same bill as B. B. King.
Time-Warner, Inc.) in 1989 the company held roughly 50,000 copyrights, the best-known of which was “Happy Birthday.” A gift that kept on giving, this one song and its familiar lyrics accounted for roughly a million dollars a year, a hefty chunk of the company’s revenues.2 When Sengstack moved to Princeton, Ken was in his early thirties. In the three years leading up to the company’s sale, from 1986 to 1989, Ken worked full-time for The Sengstack Group, giving him a chance to get to know his uncle much better. A strong male role model whose rare combination of business acumen and social consciousness set a formative example, Sengstack had a special interest in early childhood development. Upon selling the business, he used some of the proceeds to launch a private foundation to support charities that focus on giving children nurturing experiences during the first three years of life. In addition, when Ken’s vision for Music Together started to take shape, Sengstack’s extensive background in music publishing made him an excellent resource. Birch Tree’s assets had included the international rights to the Suzuki Method, and the company also published the innovative Frances Clark Library. When Ken was in his teens his mother arranged for him to study piano with Clark, whose New School for Music Study was (and still is) located in nearby Kingston, NJ.
When he graduated he left the band, moved to the East Village, and studied jazz piano, renovating co-op apartments and renting them out to help pay the bills. The band hadn’t been a distraction, however, since it led him to discover how deeply satisfying composing was for him, and this discovery led in turn to his first professional composing job, arranging and directing music for the Public Theater. This led to similar off-Broadway and regional theater work, enabling him to draw upon several different areas he had pursued, not just music, and bring them together to create something new. When he and I spoke he reminisced nostalgically, noting that “we all have to find a path, a crooked path, to get to all the things that feed what we want to feel and express.” By the late ‘70s he was pursuing formal composition studies at Manhattan School of Music.
Moving from drums to piano, from rhythm to harmony, Ken was finally satisfying his hunger for music. But in 1964, when Ken entered Swarthmore, he planned to study chemistry. While there he directed and acted in plays, however, which opened the door to other possibilities. He dropped out for a time in the spring of 1965 to become a potter, and then returned to finish his degree—not in chemistry as first planned, but rather in English Literature, and the writing skills he gained came in handy later on. Music courses he took in college spurred his interest in music, however, and eventually the inexorable pull to make music became
2 The tune we know as “Happy Birthday” has an intriguing history. It first appeared in 1893 in a book titled Song Stories for the Sunday School minus its famous lyrics. Its composer, Mildred J. Hill and her sister Patty Smith Hill (a kindergarten principal who later became a distinguished professor of early childhood music education at Columbia Teachers College) wrote the melody to welcome the children to Sunday school with the words: “Good morning to all, good morning to all, good morning, dear children, good morning to all.” Adapting the lyrics to various occasions, they arrived at the version we’ve all come to know and love. During the ensuing decades it spread across the country. But they had never formally copyrighted it. John Sengstack advised a third sister to sue for the rights and publish it with Summy in 1935. That same year the company published a copyrighted instrumental arrangement by its employee Preston Ware Orem. Because the song was registered with the Library of Congress as a work for hire, its copyright expired in 2010. [see Geraldine Fabrikant, “Put a Song in Your Portfolio: ‘Happy Birthday’ Is for Sale” (New York Times, October 20, 1988, and “The Media Business (column): Sound of a $25 Million Deal: ‘Happy Birthday’ to Warner” (New York Times, December 20, 1988); as well as https://www.tempotherapy.com/mthistory. html and http://www.eswsmusictogether.com/music-togethers-history.html (all sites accessible as of 2016.11.05).
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that love into their composing. In addition to compositions for solo piano, songs with piano accompaniment, and songs with orchestral accompaniment, Abramson’s portfolio included film scores and pieces for the theater, featuring incidental music for dramatic productions and ballet scores. In ways that were not so obvious they spoke the same language, and Abramson made a lasting impression:
These studies led to a formative relationship with another key figure in his story, a music theory professor who taught at MSM, the late composer, concert pianist, and conductor Robert Abramson. A charismatic, confrontational, provocative figure and a brilliant musician—some might say a troubled genius—Abramson had received his Dalcroze training from Hilda Schuster, who directed the Dalcroze School of Music in NYC from the mid-1940s to the mid-1990s. Shuster earned the highest degree attainable in Dalcroze education, the Diplôme Supérieur, in studies at the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze in Geneva with Dalcroze himself in the mid-30s.3 Abramson received his Diplôme in 1975 (twenty-five years after Dalcroze died) and continued teaching until he died in 2008 at the age of eighty. As the teacher and mentor of many practitioners, Abramson is well remembered all over the world by Dalcrozians. He left an indelible mark on the practice of Dalcroze Education in the USA—and on Ken Guilmartin.
Bob was so key for me. Having come to classical so late—to reading music late—it was really difficult for me, particularly at a conservatory. But taking ear training with Bob made me feel “I’m learning something. I’m being taught. I can trust it.” Because he spoke to my body awareness. And the teaching— his understanding of education, from a psychokinetic point of view—was superior at the time. In guiding him over these hurdles and demonstrating pedagogical methods that could help him, Abramson planted seeds that later blossomed into Ken’s passion for music education. “That was so key. I’m a natural teacher and wanted to find a way to teach music, and that was it! It became my education path.” And so, while the hurdles he faced early in his life had almost defied him to seek a path forward, it was the unforeseen possibilities Abramson’s teaching opened up that showed Ken how he could proceed. “All of us who love teaching are wounded healers and in some areas we had a difficult time dealing with x or y or z, and then you figure it out: ‘There is a way for me to get this!’ For me the way was Dalcroze.” The success he experienced via Dalcroze methods—which are not just technical, but also human—inspired him to want to teach. He studied pedagogy with Abramson and assisted him in his teaching.
On the surface they didn’t have a lot in common. Unlike Ken, Abramson had benefited from being born and raised in an artistic household (in Philadelphia). A prodigy, he showed promise at an early age. His parents nurtured his musical development; and when the time came, he sought out musical training directly, studying composition and performance at Peabody Conservatory and the Juilliard School. But some intriguing parallels strengthened their connection to one another. Like Ken, Abramson also started his undergraduate training in chemistry (in 1946). While both of them ended up pursuing other interests, the scientific training they received prepared them to seek out sound theoretical principles to justify their pedagogical practices. Abramson also left college, in his case to spend several years gaining valuable professional experience, before eventually completing his schooling, earning his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the Manhattan School of Music in 1965 and ’66, respectively. In addition to concertizing on piano, harpsichord, and organ and composing original works in a variety of genres, he also performed and made recordings with key figures in the then-vibrant folk music scene Jean Ritchie and Oscar Brand; and he conducted the pit ensembles for regional musical theater productions. Abramson and Guilmartin both shared a love of popular genres and brought
My conversation with Ken gave him a chance to reflect on the pieces of his story and how they fit together. Commenting, “there’s order to it; but I had no idea at the time,” he added, “the education piece came in much more strongly when I was ready for that in my 30s, when I became a parent and got interested in growth and development.” When his daughter Lauren was three, Ken became the music teacher at the parent-owned and
3 On the basis of her training with Dalcroze, and his encouragement, Schuster believed she was the only practitioner truly qualified to transmit the practice in the USA. Interested readers can learn more about her and her impact on Dalcroze Education practitioners as a community of practice in recent back issues of the American Dalcroze Journal.
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pervasive in Western industrialized societies that discourage non-musicians from experiencing the benefits of music. The first is the assumption that making music is only for the talented few who are meant to become performers (the Performance Model). The second, a corollary of this idea, is that music is merely a form of entertainment to be enjoyed passively by an audience (the Passive Consumption Model).
operated Montclair Cooperative School she attended for preschool. He also gained valuable experience teaching Music and Movement at the Jewish Community Center in Westfield for four years, a job Abramson helped to line up. At the time he was also studying Creative Drama, the educational side of musical theater. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to click into place, preparing Ken for a catalyzing event that would trigger the crystallization of these various influences into a plan of action. And that’s where his Uncle Dave comes in.
These cultural assumptions are not new, although recording technology has greatly exacerbated their impact. Indeed, they were already pervasive when Jaques-Dalcroze devised his pedagogical methods over a century ago. I suspect that they’re among the factors that led him to develop an innovative education not only “in” music (that is, as a way of learning music) but also “through” music. What does it mean, though—to learn through music? Given his training as a pianist and composer, it isn’t all that surprising that JaquesDalcroze developed his system partly as a mode of formal music education designed to prepare children for musical literacy, instrumental proficiency, and the performance culture of Western classical music. Those elements were certainly central to his original attempts to bring natural movement into his teaching at the conservatory in Geneva in 1894.
CULTIVATING MUSIC TOGETHER Around this time David Sengstack asked Ken a provocative question: “What can we do for all the families and kids for whom Suzuki is not a good fit?” According to Ken, his idea was, “If you can help kids get to age three in good shape, so many other problems are solved.” And not just in their musical development. Curious as to why some kids drop out of music study, he and Ken speculated that it was the children who lacked developmentally appropriate experiences when they were young who were most at risk. The reason?: “In Japan they can sing in tune and keep a beat by three or four because parents are singing to their kids and ours are not!” Sengstack underwrote Ken’s initial research into early childhood music education and his attendance at conferences, enabling Ken to further pursue the intriguing questions his uncle raised. As a result of their shared interest in early childhood pedagogy Ken became active in the National Association of Education and Young Children (NAEYC). His investigations led him, in turn, to Temple University and Edwin Gordon, whose seminars Ken attended; and, from there, on to his collaboration with Lili Levinowitz, one of Gordon’s doctoral candidates.4 Now a professor at Rowan University, Levinowitz worked with Ken to build Gordon’s theory into Music Together’s philosophy and curriculum. “It’s a very important part of Music Together. It gave us a more academic underpinning by which we could explain our points of view.”
But various factors in his background also led him to form a broader vision of music education as a socializing force, especially for children—a vision at odds with contemporary European culture. These included the Pestalozzian educational
Drawing as well on Jerome Bruner’s constructionist ideas, Ken’s research into early childhood developmental theory enabled him to put his own personal theories about children’s early exposure to music on a scientific basis. Moreover, it gave him ammunition to counter two ideas
4 In our talk Ken drew the analogy that, if the composing, the theater, and Dalcroze are more part of his “right” brain, then Gordon’s work in Music Learning Theory would be part of his “left” brain, evoking the bi-cameral right/left brain theory Bob Abramson was fond of citing when employing “Brain Gym” workouts. Quick to add that scientists have since challenged the theory as an oversimplification of complex brain functions, he observed that the model still has an archetypal validity.
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We know from Gordon’s research that there is a distribution of music aptitude, and that that distribution is normal. It follows the same bell curve as linguistic or mathematical or other aptitudes. The vast majority of us are in the middle of the curve. With average musical aptitude you can still do a lot—even play in a symphony orchestra. Everybody has the potential to achieve ‘basic musical competence.’ Everybody can learn to sing in tune and tap in rhythm—and it’s probably all doable by about age three or four, just like with language. However, many never achieve it.
philosophy he absorbed early in his life, based on Rousseau’s political ideals, and the deep impression ethnic communities he encountered in Algiers and other non-Western expressive cultures made on him when he was coming of age in 1886.5 While in North Africa he experienced music not just as a mode of performance, but also as an elemental medium through which human beings can interact with one another directly, rhythmically, and communicate non-verbal meaning. He envisioned a pedagogical system for modern Europeans that would empower them to grow collectively—and morally— as social beings, through music, as well as individually, in music. Moreover, he believed that, precisely because music is ultimately rooted in our humanity, an education through music is something not just a select few can benefit from, but each one of us, and society as a whole. The creation of a utopian community in Hellerau, a suburb of Dresden, from 1911 to 1914, gave Dalcroze a forum for trying out this alternative cultural model of human development in and through music, and his experiments created a sensation in Europe at the time. But the historic events that swept through Europe in 1914 to 1917 interrupted his work in Germany and his ideas remain revolutionary to this day. And so, despite Dalcroze’s and others’ contributions on this front, we still face the same deeply entrenched cultural assumptions.
Ken took these ideas further, however, arguing that these cultural assumptions are key factors discouraging parents from getting actively involved in their children’s music making and music development. Parents’ reluctance to engage with their child musically during the critical formative years from zero to three is especially troubling in light of the potential these parents harbored as models of musical participation, a potential left largely unrealized. These factors made it all the more urgent to free them from the cultural assumptions inhibiting them from participating in music making, to the detriment of their children’s music development. In addition, Ken saw that parents and nursery programs were losing a golden opportunity to reinforce their preschooler’s musical learning: “I was struck by how ineffective it was, in my working with the co-op and early childhood applications, to teach a song in class and expect it to live through the child’s life all week long without something being sent home so the grownups could learn it too.” These various strands culminated in the Music Together philosophy, curriculum, and repertoire. The teaching Ken was doing around this time provided more data for his research, as well as an impetus to take action. But it also led him to branch out from the approach Bob Abramson and Ruth Alperson certified him in 1983. As he put it: “To create Music Together I had to move beyond Dalcroze.” He went on: I was doing Music and Movement with the three and four year-olds at the JCC in the morning. Then in the afternoon I’d come to the nursing home to visit my grandmother here in Princeton and work with 83 yearolds, 94 year-olds, stroke victims…And I was doing the same lesson plan, but with a different style. There’s a continuity across age levels that made it work. So it wasn’t long before I realized I wasn’t really doing Dalcroze: I was doing some kind of “Ken” thing.
Ken recognized that American society’s framing of children’s music development in terms of performance is rooted in its Western cultural heritage. It’s a lineage that brings certain benefits: “I like to say ‘performance orientation is the Olympian path.’ If you’re going to do the Olympics and get out there, all right, great. It’s difficult and challenging; incredible, miraculous when people traverse it and achieve,” as well as certain costs: “But that’s not how children should start. That’s why the children weren’t learning; because they need the modeling.” These ideas came from early childhood theory. And so, to challenge these assumptions, Ken Guilmartin and Lili Levinowitz leveraged Edwin’s Gordon argument that music aptitude is “normally” distributed. As Ken describes it:
Ken found that the Dalcroze approach he had learned wasn’t working for the little ones he was teaching, in part because they were at an age for which it’s too early to expect them to keep a beat. “You could adapt the approach and do the same kinds of things for them anyway. It’s not as if it’s bad for them.” But there
5 See William Bauer, “Radical Departure: Where did Emile Jaques Get the Idea of Rhythmic Education?,” American Dalcroze Journal 39, No. 2 (Winter 2013), 6-19.
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appropriate for toddlers is at odds with the enthusiasm Abramson felt about giving children suitable Dalcroze experiences from as early as infancy.
was a deeper reason why the model of Dalcroze he learned from Abramson wasn’t working for him: despite its strong emphasis on process and discovery, at the end of the day it was supposed to make students better performers— especially of classical music. Having experienced his Dalcroze training in a conservatory, Ken understood Jaques Dalcroze’s method primarily as a mode of formal music education for children aged four through grade school to young adult: the age range his Certificate training focused on. As he encountered the training, with its intense focus on classical performance practice, solfège rooted in tonal theory, and piano improvisation based on tonal harmony, it was more an education in than through music, driven by the Performance Model. And, in fact, this is how many Americans think of it, too: as a good preparation for instrumental study—the “real” point of music education.
There’s little doubt that, having received his exposure to Dalcroze Education almost solely from Abramson’s example, Ken generalized about what it constitutes largely on the basis of that example. So in many ways Abramson bears some responsibility for Ken’s impressions. He demonstrated Dalcroze methods to his teacher trainees almost exclusively with groups of children aged four and older, and never in a parent-child setting. To validate the contributions of nonmusicians, he went out of his way to show the formally trained singer and instrumentalists in his classes that dancers and actors could often improvise with more openness and authenticity. Condemning conventional music educators for what he believed was a pinched vision of music and education that lacked a deep commitment to their own creativity and artistry, Abramson often showed them open disdain. Be that as it may, it’s clear in retrospect that, as Ken developed Music Together’s participatory, inclusive, noncomparative, and non-competitive model of early childhood musical exposure, he did so partly as a counter-reaction to the performance orientation he associated not only with music educators such as his kindergarten teacher, but also with Dalcroze teachers whose training in formal music education biases them toward the elitist Performance Model.
Understood in this way, the “classic” or “pure” Dalcroze Education he had experienced came into direct conflict with the uncritical Participation Model Ken saw as fundamental to Music Together: Bob was with me every moment I was teaching in those early years. At least I see so much Dalcroze in what we do, or I did. But we’re not doing Dalcroze. We needed teachers who were not necessarily Dalcroze trained. We didn’t want them to do all that stuff. Dalcroze was not suitable for our goals as it was, because it was formal instruction. As enlivening—as developmental, in its way—as it is, it wasn’t developmentally appropriate for people who couldn’t keep a beat yet. Same with Kodaly, same with Orff, same with Suzuki. They’re all wonderful pedagogies for young children. But they’re formal instruction! They’re after results. Instead of adapting Dalcroze into things, I wanted to throw it all out and start afresh. And then we had to build our organization to support that.
Given that Music Together features parent education as a key component, not only of the philosophy, but also of the repertoire and curriculum design, it’s not hard to see how Ken came to prioritize unconditional acceptance of all participant contributions. It’s precisely the element of judgment prevalent in formal music education that can easily sabotage any effort to engage parents. “It can be so challenging to get a parent who brings the child to class to do more than sit and watch. ‘You take my child. I would only be bad for her if I sang. You teach my child. I’ll watch.’” In response to such parent reactions, Ken developed the parent education piece of the philosophy, which equips Music Together teachers to tackle the uphill battle of fighting commonly held assumptions about who’s allowed to make music. And when it comes to the most reluctant caregivers, Ken becomes the biggest cheerleader, only redoubling his efforts to encourage them and validate their participation: To make the point, he reenacts a dialogue with such a participant: “If you really are not going to sing, because you can’t, I’ll bet you you’re dancing with your child. Do you ever hold him in your lap and bounce along with the music?: ‘Oh, yeah, I do that all the time.’”
Some Dalcroze educators may beg to differ. When I shared this idea with one colleague, he replied: “When I teach young children, I do not consider in the least that I am teaching them to keep a beat. I am creating an environment in which musical behavior might emerge. However, it’s a common misconception people have that Dalcroze education is only a way of teaching music concepts through movement. Sure, when it is offered as professional training, or serves as a theory course in a music school, it is. But that’s not the whole picture.” One could also quibble that the idea that Dalcroze is not developmentally
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IT IS EVIDENT THAT THE MISSION OF MUSIC TOGETHER IS TO ENCOURAGE KIDS TO EXPLORE MUSIC IN THEIR OWN WAY, ON THEIR OWN SCHEDULE. THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG WAY TO EXPERIENCE MUSIC. TEACHERS AND PARENTS DON’T TELL THE KIDS WHAT TO DO. ALL TEACHING IS DONE THROUGH MODELING AND ALL TYPES OF EXPLORATION ARE ENCOURAGED. AND THE ENTIRE CLASS IS TAUGHT USING MUSIC. EVEN WHEN CLEANING UP INSTRUMENTS, THE TEACHERS WILL FIND A RESTING TONE AND SAY “BYE BYE INSTRUMENTS.” • EMILY BENJAMIN, MUSIC TOGETHER PARENT
I HAVE FOUND THAT MANY PARENTS DON’T KNOW HOW TO PLAY WITH THEIR CHILDREN. SOME OF THE PARENTS ARE RELUCTANT AT FIRST, BUT THE TEACHERS DO A GREAT JOB OF ENCOURAGING THEM TO PARTICIPATE AND PLAY WITH THEIR CHILD. • EMILY BENJAMIN, MUSIC TOGETHER PARENT
A key element of the Music Together philosophy is to validate whatever the child and the parent are able to do, regardless of whether it fits a conventional model of musical aptitude. “If the child does something that, to most people would not look musical, or would look like the wrong kind of musical response, at least it’s a response! You have to be quick to validate it so the parent sees ‘she did something right.’” Such validations is also how teachers guide caregivers not only to adjust their ideas about what constitutes “quality time” with children, but also their own self-image, so they can see themselves as models of musical engagement, regardless of how musically talented they really are. “Expanding the adults’, parents’, and professional caregivers’ awareness of what is musical and how they can actually find their own unique way that’s comfortable for them to participate musically is really what we’re about. Because we know that that’s essential for the child’s development. If the children just see the loved, the depended-on, the bonded-to caregiver sitting on the couch watching TV, that’s what they’re are going to do, too.” It’s a circle. You leverage the children’s natural responses, their enjoyment, and the parents see that and, with some encouragement, and the modeling of other parents and teachers, they find—and we give them—access points where they can actually participate, whether they can sing or not, whether they can dance or not. It’s easy and rewarding instantly—and it’s non-threatening. And you get a feedback loop: music, and pleasure, and development. We call it the spiral of exposure and experimentation…which is play! And then some new information reinforced Music Together’s justification for its curriculum. “When the NAEYC reviewed their definition of play, they redefined it as ‘developmentally appropriate practice.’ As I was listening, I said to myself: ‘We do that! We do all that!!’ Lili Levinowitz and my daughter Lauren are keeping up on all this. One of the nice things about the integration of our system—we’re independent as a business—is we can teach our own people about that. And so a year or two later we had workshops on that, and we had teachers informing our parents, parent education, about these connections. And it was a delight to be able to do.” Developing the teacher training took time, however, especially because of the expectations different people bring to it. “We have more challenge getting music educators who train with us to do true developmentally appropriate practice than we do with actors or songwriters; because they’re locked into goal oriented instruction. It’s tied to performance. Even if it’s just playing for grandma, they’re after a performance.” To this day, teachers who come to Music Together harboring expectations formed from a conventional music education have the most difficulty adapting to the non-competitive sharing of music without passing judgment. In 1985, Ken started working on the Center for Music and Young Children, which gave shape to his vision of a class for children where parents would be present in the classroom. The following year, Lili Levinowitz started working with him to develop the Music Together curriculum and repertoire. Many of the over two hundred fifty songs featured in Music Together’s materials are of his own creation, and all of the arrangements are his. There are nine song collections to provide more than enough material for a three-year cycle of three trimesters, Fall, Winter, Spring, taking a child from, say, infant to age four. Moreover, each repertoire item serves a particular curricular function, providing important contrast for lessons in real time as the teacher moves along from one song to the next, and a rich and varied musical landscape to hold children’s and their adult caregivers’ attention during the week away from class. In our song collections we have a very intentional mix of tonalities and meters. We use asymmetrical meters, for example, with Phrygian, Dorian, Lydian, Mixolydian modes thrown in, because that’s what gives you an earful. We know from research that children learn more from differences than from
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IT CRACKS ME UP TO HEAR MY SON ALEX BELT OUT “YOU GET A LINE, I’LL GET A POLE, HONEY” OR “ARE YOU GOING TO SCARBOROUGH FAIR?” WHAT THREE YEAR OLD KNOWS THESE SONGS?? AND I LOVE WHEN HE SINGS A SONG IN SPANISH! ALEX ALSO LOVES CHANGING THE WORDS TO THE SONGS TO NARRATE HIS DAILY ACTIVITIES. THIS IS SOMETHING THE MUSIC TOGETHER TEACHERS OFTEN MODEL IN CLASS, AND I HAVE BEEN DOING AT HOME. SO NOW HE WILL MAKE UP HIS OWN SONGS TO SING WHEN HE IS WASHING HIS HANDS, OR GETTING DRESSED, OR PLAYING AT THE PARK, ETC. I REMEMBER LEARNING THE “HERE IS A BEE HIVE” RHYME AND SAYING IT TO ALEX DURING DIAPER CHANGES TO KEEP HIM DISTRACTED. AND I REMEMBER SINGING THE “I HAVE A LITTLE FROG” SONG AND BEING SO SURPRISED WHEN LITTLE BABY ALEX FIRST MADE THE “BURPING” SOUND IN THE SONG, RIGHT ON CUE. IT WAS SO ADORABLE!! I’M ALSO AMAZED BY HOW QUICKLY HE LEARNS THE SONGS IN THE PROGRAM. THIS PAST SPRING, WHEN HE WAS STILL LEARNING NEW MUSIC TOGETHER SONGS, HE PICKED UP THE TUNES AND LYRICS WAY FASTER THAN ME!! • EMILY BENJAMIN, MUSIC TOGETHER PARENT
THE ORDER OF SONGS AND ACTIVITIES HAS BEEN CAREFULLY TESTED SO THAT TEACHERS CAN “PLUG IN” SONGS, VARIATIONS AND IDEAS. THE CURRICULUM BECOMES THE SOUNDTRACK FOR ONE’S LIFE WHETHER ONE IS INVOLVED AS A TEACHER OR PARENT (ESPECIALLY SO IF BOTH!). AS MT STUDENTS AGE OUT OF THE PROGRAM AND START TAKING INSTRUMENTAL LESSONS, FOR EXAMPLE, THEY ARE SO WELL PREPARED MUSICALLY. THE DIFFERENCE IS EVIDENT! • AMY ZAKAR, MUSIC TOGETHER TEACHER
sameness. Lots of children’s song collections in the olden days, they’re all written too high, and they’re all in major keys: “happy” songs. Children actually don’t learn the characteristics of something—for instance, they actually don’t learn major—unless they have something to compare it to. They learn from discrepancy. It would be like only speaking in the present tense around your children in the thought that it would somehow be more beneficial in terms of their learning of language. The first classes were held near Levinowitz’s home in Wyncote, Pennsylvania; and by the next year they launched the Music and Movement Center of Princeton. After a short stint at the Westminster Conservatory, the organization moved into a site on Nassau Street in 1989. It has since become the Music Together Princeton Lab School, a consortium of ten sites that collectively offer a hundred Music Together classes each semester. By the early 1990s the company had approved six or seven other Music Together licensees to offer the program, and it continued to grow steadily over the ensuing decades to its current size. GROWING MUSIC TOGETHER In order to expand the network for marketing and distributing the Music Together program so rapidly, Ken needed to authorize a growing number of registered teachers who had gone through the basic training, who understood the philosophy, and who could facilitate classes with families, with caregivers and children, doing developmentally appropriate practice together. I asked him, “What were the criteria for accepting and certifying trainees? How could he feel confident that the freshly minted trainee could go out and do the kinds of things they need to be able to do?” He admitted it was difficult. We don’t certify people in the training. The basic training is only an intensive weekend; twenty-five hours of contact time over a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. There’s no way we could certify them then. We have a certification program that you can come back for. But initially everyone has to take a kind of a test. We want to at least know you can sing on pitch and be there for the training. We can make a very good assessment that they understand what we are doing. There’s a ten-minute exercise that they’ve practiced several times during the training. They lead a song with everybody else role playing children and parent in classes. We can pretty much tell from that whether they have the potential. In other words, in twenty five hours, the graduate is not expected to demonstrate full mastery. Given that the program itself is not especially skills intensive, but more about the philosophy and how to use the curriculum, the trainee just has to show she has basic musical competence—and an underlying assumption of the philosophy is that, simply by virtue of being human beings we all have that, whether or not we had a chance to develop it—and that she could eventually grow to become a skilled facilitator. “Someone who passes the training has demonstrated they have the potential. Usually you can spot the really good ones easily. And market forces do take care of the small amount that we let through that were a mistake.” Parents who have a bad experience eventually fall away. “We wish we could spare them even that.” According to Ken, their research has shown that such experiences have not hurt Music Together’s reputation because parents identify the program with the materials, its repertoire and curriculum, and the philosophy, more than with the teacher. “We did some studies of this early. Parents generally know the difference between the program and the teacher.” Indeed, a key piece of the program is the distinction Music Together makes between the materials, which consist of the repertoire and curriculum, the guiding philosophy, which all figure in the teacher training, on the one hand, and, on the other, the legal arrangement to offer the program at a particular site. One could say that the focus on quality materials, with gorgeous production values reflected in the recordings’ professional performances, in
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the audio production of the repertoire, and in the print materials, Music Together has come as close as anyone could to a teacher-proof curriculum. “We wanted the families to know what was going on musically. If they could model music skills as best as they could, then the child would learn. We know the stuff we give families at home works.”
MUSIC TOGETHER PROVIDED PLENTY OF TOOLS TO USE DURING THE LESSONS AND HELP WITH HOW TO RUN THEM SMOOTHLY. I HAD ALSO “SHADOWED” EXPERIENCED TEACHERS. THE TRAINING EMPHASIZES THE ARC OF THE LESSON PLAN, THE FUNDAMENTAL BACKBONE OF THE CLASS. THE TEACHER NEEDS TO BE ABLE TO SING AND MOVE FREELY THROUGHOUT THE 45- MINUTE CLASS—OFTEN THROUGHOUT SEVERAL IN A DAY. AS WITH ANY KIND OF TEACHING EXPERIENCE, ONE IS NEVER QUITE READY FOR ONE’S FIRST CLASS. I REMEMBER THE NIGHT BEFORE MY FIRST CLASS, SITTING ON THE FLOOR OF MY COLLEGE DORM ROOM GOING OVER THE LESSON PLAN, SONGS, VERSES AND MOVEMENTS. BUT TEACHING A ROOM FULL OF PARENTS AND TODDLERS ALL LOOKING BRIGHT-EYED AT ME WAS QUITE MOTIVATING. THE FAMILIES WERE SO POSITIVE; I FELT FORTUNATE TO BE ABLE TO TEACH THOSE SUNDAY MORNING CLASSES. • AMY ZAKAR, MUSIC TOGETHER TEACHER
The ease with which an applicant can become a registered Music Together teacher has helped to fuel the organization’s rapid expansion and its distribution network: “We certainly would not have grown the way we did if we’d required the kind of certification Kodaly, or Orff, or even Suzuki require.” Not to mention Dalcroze! Consequently, there is nothing obligatory about becoming certified. For those who show promise, the teaching skill evolves organically from their on-the-job training. But Music Together also offers a continuing education program that gives motivated trainees opportunities to build on their basic foundation. We give them a lot of support. We provide sample lesson plans (but don’t provide tons and tons of them). We expect them to write a lesson plan and teach them how. And we teach them why it—the way we think it can work—works. So they go away with all that written up. We prepared training materials, thoroughly written stuff, reference material, tapes, now we have videos, things we’d been developing for years. A lot of support. Second to none in our field, I’d say. An important distinction, then, is that graduates of Music Together’s basic training are not initially certified; they’re just registered. “We have a certification program. We do workshops around the country several times a year: ‘Songs Workshops,’ we call them.” Once registered graduates have had at least a year of experience and have taught a certain number of hours, they can come back anytime at a discounted rate and repeat the training as a refresher. If they’re going for certification, there’s a fee similar to the initial fee. And they have to do preliminary work, observe classes and comment, take notes, write “parent education” logbooks, and teach a class under observation. “When we deem them certified, they can be proud of the plaque they receive, and hang it up and talk about it.” What motivates graduates to return for further training? Consistent with its laissez faire approach on this front, Music Together does little to incentivize the behavior; so the degree to which each teacher pursues professional development is left up to her. As Ken puts it, “I’ve always felt it was important to make these kinds of things voluntary—to provide a ladder of development—a ladder of opportunity, if you will; and have people enthusiastic, as much as possible, as much as their lives allow, and climbing it, and be present for group reaffirmations of our work together.” But people are human; some don’t follow up. “I think there’s a certain acceptance (more than what we might need to have) for what that is.” This stance may explain why Music Together puts a lot of faith in on-the-job training. Ken admits that there are some teachers registered to teach Music Together classes who may not be its ideal representatives. “It’s a community where lots of people find out about us by word of mouth. We have people who do Music Together and it works for them. They’ve got congenial personalities and so forth. But their actual teaching is not where we’d want it to be.” Rather than intervene directly to ensure the quality of the teaching, however, Music Together’s model leaves that aspect to market forces. “Our quality control is in the licensing arrangement or agreement. You don’t have to be trained to be a licensee, but you do have to employ a registered teacher, a graduate of the training program. It’s not going to be in your business interest to employ somebody who’s no good; and you can see that pretty quickly.” Unlike Dalcroze or other teacher training programs credentials, which authorize the programs’ graduates to practice the method, the Music Together license is strictly a legal arrangement. It merely grants its holder legal permission to use the trademark and marketing materials to promote the program, and to distribute the copyrighted repertoire in the songbooks that parents buy as a part of their enrollment fee. In this regard, the
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AMIDST SO MANY REPORTS THROUGHOUT THE NATION OF CUTTING MUSIC PROGRAMS AND THE DECLINE OF MUSIC BEING TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS, I WAS THRILLED TO SEE THAT MT WAS FINDING SUCH ENTHUSIASTIC SUCCESS. • AMY ZAKAR, MUSIC TOGETHER TEACHER
WE WENT THROUGH A PERIOD ABOUT A YEAR AGO WHEN ALEX DID NOT LIKE IT...WELL, IT LOOKED LIKE HE DIDN’T LIKE IT. HE WANTED ME TO STAND UP AND HOLD HIM, AND HE WOULDN’T PARTICIPATE. IT LOOKED LIKE I WAS FORCING HIM TO TAKE CLASS, AND I HAVE TO ADMIT, I QUESTIONED MYSELF AS TO WHY I WAS “MAKING” HIM GO. BUT AFTER ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES (ROUGHLY HALFWAY THROUGH THE CLASS), HE WAS FULLY PARTICIPATING AND HAVING FUN. AND WHEN I WOULD OBSERVE ALL OF HIS SINGING AND MUSIC MAKING AT HOME, IT MADE ME REALIZE THAT EVEN THOUGH HE LOOKS LIKE HE HATES IT, HE REALLY IS TAKING IT ALL IN. • EMILY BENJAMIN, MUSIC TOGETHER PARENT
SOMETIMES CHILDREN GO THROUGH PHASES WHERE THEY OBSERVE RATHER THAN PARTICIPATE, AND PARENTS INTERPRET THIS AS LOSS OF INTEREST—AND IT IS UP TO THE TEACHER TO EXPLAIN THAT THIS IS A PHASE IN MUSICAL DEVELOPMENT, LEADING UP TO PARTICIPATION AND A NEW LEVEL OF MUSICAL UNDERSTANDING AND SKILL. WHEN THE ADULT MODELS THE ENJOYMENT OF THE MUSIC WITH THE CHILD, IT NATURAL TO THE CHILD.
license is somewhat akin to the arrangement trainees made with the pre-instrumental program Kindermusk, which in superficial respects could be seen as a precursor to Music Together. “Another aspect of being registered is that you have to be actually working as a teacher. And then we know for the most part that you’re working under a licensee–that an authorized licensee who has a program up and running is mentoring you. In other words if you want to do Music Together, you do have to start up a little business or a practice.” If any factor has impinged upon Music Together’s growth it has been this requirement rather than constraints on who can claim to teach the curriculum. In fact, some graduates’ reluctance to engage with the program’s entrepreneurial aspects has proven problematic. “If they don’t want to do that—if they just want to teach—we find that limiting. (Because, even though we really help you manage the business side of things, if that’s not your thing, then what can we do?) Well, they can get associated with a community music school or something like that. But then they have to get the administration to come on board with the licensing.” Staffing licensed Music Together sites entails recruiting a self-selecting population of those who want to get into the Music Together network. The program then leverages whatever musical skills they bring to the table, even if those are not such conventional musical skills as reading music or playing an instrument with great proficiency. Open minded about whom to take in, Ken points out that “good theater people are brilliant at galvanizing emotional and other kinds of attention.” While this decision is not motivated by business factors, such factors are not entirely left out of the calculus behind it. I wasn’t interested in the business side. But we had to build the business to get the work out. I think that’s the true use of business, the true function of business: it distributes. To make it viable; to bring in enough revenue so you can do what you want to do. Money is good for that. It’s energy. If you get it flowing and invest it in ways that get people interested, responding—and responsive—and active, actively passing things on, then it keeps flowing. So we had to create a structure that would support that; and the principles were the same all the time: What is developmentally appropriate not only for children and their parents, but for us as an organization for our teachers? Having recently stepped down from his roles as CEO and CFO, Ken now has professionals taking care of the business side of Music Together. He’s still Artistic Director, and is thrilled to be back in the recording studio, revisiting the song collections, working on a new thing, something he referred to as the “Rhythm Kids” curriculum. “I’m a composer before all else. I’ve composed this organization. But it’s time for others to take that over. I’m no longer involved with the details of running it.” I hope it’s apparent how Ken’s story of making Music Together is relevant to us Dalcroze educators beyond the human interest story of a Dalcroze colleague making good in the world. Because our practice is another form of music-and-movement education—indeed, the originary form of it—and because we face many comparable challenges of promoting it, including the same cultural assumptions that Ken is seeking to subvert, we in the DSA can benefit mightily from studying the example of a well-distributed music-and-movement program Music Together gives us. I look forward to reader responses and hope that this article prompts a robust discussion about the various ways Ken has incorporated elements of his Dalcroze training into Music Together, as well as the ways we may disagree with some aspects of his model. Ultimately, we are all working to address the urgent need for the personal and social benefits people can glean from making music together, each of us oriented toward a particular segment of the population. I’m thrilled that we have in Music Together an ally in this effort.
• AMY ZAKAR, MUSIC TOGETHER TEACHER 21
BY RUTH ALPERSON, PH.D.
[PHOTO CREDIT, HEADSHOT & ARTICLE: MICHELLE JACOBS]
THE GIFT OF DALCROZE FOR BABIES feet. These movements are natural and unconscious; the babies are not “aware” of their gestures. And always, they feel the movements of their parents, who rock and bounce them in their laps, who carry them as they move through the room, who swing them and hold their hands when they are finally ready to take a walk.
This article was adapted from a presentation given at the following venues: ISME Conference, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2012 1st International Conference of Dalcroze Studies, Coventry University, England, 2013 The Dalcroze Society of Japan, Showa College of Music, Tokyo 2015 International Dalcroze Conference, Geneva, Switzerland, 2016
At the center of Dalcroze education, and one of its very unique features, is the use of improvised music, an essential communication in the Dalcroze lesson, from teacher to student; usually, this is done at the piano. The music I play for songs and games moves at a tempo comfortable for babies; it uses dynamics and tones that resonate with the natural gestures of the babies’ small bodies, and the newness of the experience for them.
I have taught Dalcroze classes for babies with their caregivers for almost three decades; one of my first little students is now a Professor of Chinese at an American university. The babies in the class are at least one-year-old in September, when their class experience begins. The photographs shown here were taken seven months into the school year, by which time most of the babies were two years old. Each baby is accompanied by a parent, grandparent, or caregiver; each has a lap in which to sit. Up to eight babies are enrolled in the class, which meets once a week for 30 weeks. In the first few weeks, most of the children are minimally verbal, and cannot walk independently. As a Dalcroze teacher, my musical behaviors in these classes are similar to those in my classes for school-age children, or adults; indeed, these classes for babies provide an excellent model for what is “Dalcrozian.” EMBODIED LEARNING AND THE MUSIC / MOVEMENT CONNECTION At first, many of the babies watch and listen to me, wide-eyed, some with their mouths open, as I sing, play music, and move. I note that their limbs are, for the most part, relaxed, as they sit in the warmth of their caregivers’ laps. Some thumbs are in mouths, some arms cradle a stuffed animal or grasp the corner of a small blanket. I believe that these comforters help the babies focus on the classroom experience. How can I teach a Dalcroze class to students who are not visibly moving? First, I am not teaching the babies “Dalcroze;” I am teaching music using the Dalcroze approach. Second, babies meet and greet the world through their senses; there is intense learning going on through the body. During the first month, as they get used to the class routine, the babies become increasingly attentive to me, their teacher. Some respond to the music with their bodies, moving their heads, wiggling their fingers or toes, or tapping their
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My good friend and colleague Louise Mathieu notes Dalcroze’s belief in the power of music to “awaken vital forces within the person that enable him or her to act and to think autonomously.” (Mathieu, personal communication) We see this autonomy in the very youngest children, in movement that is authentically theirs. We observe their readiness to move, we observe joy in their movement; we observe qualities of will, intention and determination in their movement; no one else is urging them to move, except a drive that emanates from within; it is the music that urges the children forward.
My music lies within the parameters of the babies’ world of sound and movement. I use no big chords, fancy arpeggios, very quick or very slow tempi, or very loud sounds. Through improvisation, I can adjust the music to meet the needs of these very young students. When the Dalcroze teacher plays for the students’ movements, the music speaks to the students. They move in response to the music they hear; their movement takes on a quality that may be seen in the aliveness of their bodies, in their readiness to move, in their animated facial expressions, and in the joy they experience, moving with the music, and feeling the music move in sync with their bodies.
The late Frances Webber Aronoff, internationally known Dalcroze pedagogue and writer on Dalcroze Eurhythmics, noted that when the Dalcroze teacher improvises music that corresponds to the student’s movement, with each step, “The mover feels, ‘I’m right, I’m right, I’m right’” (Aronoff, personal communication). From this it follows that feelings of selfconfidence and self-reliance—autonomy—grow within the child, and skills are developed. Through keener listening and attentiveness to sound and the environment, new connections develop for the child, with music, with the parent, and with the community in the classroom; eventually, the child is able to move comfortably and joyfully through space.
I play music for walking, clapping, swinging, tapping, for locomotion through space, and for staying in place. I use my voice expressively, and I use silence. Each exercise begins with silence, and listening, and while we listen, we wait; we are preparing to welcome sound. Then the music begins. The connection between the teacher’s improvised music and the children’s movements becomes increasingly interactive: while improvising, the Dalcroze teacher observes the students’ movements—fingers tapping, heads nodding—and is further inspired to create music that “copies” what he or she sees. In the course of this interaction, week after week, the children’s involvement in the music/movement experience intensifies. Increasingly, the babies develop expectations; they are “listening” with their bodies.
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who prefer not to move, but who love to observe the goings-on around them, while sitting in the lap. From my observations, I believe that if the child is involved, watching actively, and responding—smiling, looking around at all the children as they move through the room, the child is learning.
Dalcroze catalogued elements in music that have long been considered as a theoretical foundation for his approach; these include dynamics, silence, rubato, changes of tempo, and a host of other expressive qualities that live in music and capture the listener aesthetically. These forces can move the very youngest child into the world of musicianship and music making. After many weeks of “taking in,” most of the children begin to participate actively: they learn from observing others, they enjoy using materials—scarves, balls—and playing small percussion instruments as a group experience. In Dalcroze pedagogy, the body becomes the musical instrument; music is taught through music. As I improvise at the piano, I observe that the intensity of the dynamics in the music are mirrored in the children’s visible reactions: in the changing expressions of their faces, in their body movements, in the widening of their eyes, the happy spirit in their movement, and their eagerness to participate in music-making with their classroom friends.
For some children, moving and taking in information do not go together. I often hear from parents, in the initial weeks, “I feel so frustrated: Johnny does nothing in class, then afterwards, in the car, then at home, he sings so many of the songs from our class.” According to parent reports, their children act out games and exercises from our class at home, during their play; some of them set their stuffed animals or dolls in a circle and sing songs to them. I now understand that many of these very young children learn first by looking and listening, during class. Later, with pleasure, they repeat the activities at home. Most of them do not do both at the same time; indeed, many children do not want to move while they are involved in the “looking and listening” process. Now, when parents complain about their children’s “inaction” in class, I respond, “Susie is doing ‘research’ while she is in the class; clearly, she has learned from our lessons so well that she can repeat what she has learned when she is away from the classroom.” Really, what more, as their music teacher, could I want?
In the Dalcroze classes, one observes that the training develops sensitive listening. Indeed, the babies are quiet during these sessions, so that they may focus on the music—where the “information” resides. There are children in the Dalcroze class
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AN INEFFABLE MIX
AUTHOR’S BIO
There is a wonderful mix in the eurhythmics classes, impossible to describe adequately. It is an ineffable mix of the musical experience and the students’ physical reactions that lead to a greater sense of self. In the Dalcroze class for babies, there is comfort and warmth learning in the lap, and then the joy of letting go, and moving in space. There is a special bond of shared learning with parent, with teacher, and with community. There is the experience of joy and sadness, excitement and calm, when very young children move with the music, and when they feel the music moving with them. As the lessons progress, these experiences are internalized; they live in the muscle memory, in memory, in the inner ear, the body and mind.
Ruth Alperson is Dean of the Hoff-Barthelson Music School, in Scarsdale, New York, where she directs the Dalcroze Teacher Training Program.. She is on the faculty of The Diller-Quaile School of Music, in New York City, where she teaches a graduate course in Dalcroze Methodology for adults. She earned a Ph.D. in Arts and Humanities from New York University. Dr. Alperson holds the Licentiate from The Dalcroze Teachers Training Course, London, England; and the Diplôme Supérieur from L’Institut Jaques-Dalcroze, Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Alperson has given Dalcroze workshops in colleges and universities in the U.S.and Canada, England, Australia, Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, and the Dominican Republic.
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2016 CONFERENCE FLOWS TO SUCCESS BY PATRICK CIERRA
Our National Conference took place this past June on the beautiful campus of Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey. Over the course of the week there were over 100 participants representing 8 countries and 18 states who attended classes, workshops and performances from and over 40 presenters. This would be the first time I attended a Dalcroze conference, and so the thought of reconnecting with old friends and making new ones was exciting. I was intrigued by the theme: Flow in Performance: Theories and Practice. Did the word “performance” refer to how we, as Dalcroze teachers, work in the classroom? Did it apply to our musicianship? The conference officially began on June 20th with a twoday symposium. The question of “flow” was put into two contexts: playing and teaching. Elda Nelly Trevino began the symposium via teleconference from Mexico, presenting a study on the ability of Dalcroze to promote flow as defined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in older adults. Throughout the symposium, presenters explored flow in many ways, including the role of rhythm in education, the relationship between music, movement and dance, and a look inside a parent/child Dalcroze class in Japan, courtesy of Fumiko Honda. Keynote addresses were delivered by Westminster Choir College faculty member Tom Parente (who was a key
LISA PARKER & MICHAEL SCHNACK FEEL THE RHYTHM [PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID TUCKER]
player in organizing the conference) and Belgian researcher Luc Nijs. Day two culminated with William Westney’s fun and ice breaking “Un-Master Class”. Board member Eunjin Lee described the symposium – the first of its kind ever presented by the DSA – an “inspirational chance to interact with scholars from other areas of study.”
WERONIKA BALEWSKI , EMMA SHUBIN, MELISSA TUCKER, ANNE FARBER, GINNY LATTS [PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID TUCKER]
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JUMPING THROUGH HOOPS IN JEREMY DITTUS’ CLASS [PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID TUCKER]
and students from the Dalcroze School of the Rockies. All in all, the schedule was spaced out in a way that allowed for great experiences. Hats off to the organizers!
The regular conference then kicked off on Wednesday, June 22. Lisa Parker’s opening day eurhythmics class set the tone, got the flow going and put a smile on all of our faces. Attendees were given a schedule conveniently broken down into “Pre-Certficate”, “Pre-License”, and “Pre-Diplome” sessions, and were able to participate in workshops and sessions relevant to their specific areas of training, helping the conference to feel personalized. Attendees were also able to participate in daily “Boxed Lunch Discussions” that were relevant to the evolution of Dalcroze teaching and training. Throughout the week there were ‘surprise’ performances, including Michael Joviala and Bill Bauer’s debut of Michael’s improvisational clarinet/piano duo Loco Motors and dance performances from Monica Dale , Anetta Pasternak,
The highlight of the conference came with the tribute to master Dalcroze teacher Anne Farber. The event featured performances by Anne’s children and grandchildren. Cynthia Lilley played Jerome Kern’s “The Way You Look Tonight,” one of Anne’s favorites, as the rest of us sang along. Longtime DSA members got up to speak about the many ways Anne has touched their lives, and her many contributions to Dalcroze education. Finally, she was presented with a pendent from the DSA as a token for her contributions.
ANNE FARBER [PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID TUCKER]
BILL BAUER TEACHES JAZZ IMPROVISATION [PHOTO CREDIT: ANETTA PASTERNAK]
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The conference had something for everyone, but perhaps the theme that continues to appeal the most to me is the community’s commitment to education and learning. It was great to simply be immersed in that community, and to be around both fellow Dalcroze teachers and people just discovering the method. I met people from Pennsylvania, Colorado, New York, and Seattle. I was also pleasantly surprised to re-connect with old friends from as far away as South Korea. Though the dorms had a “summer camp” -like atmosphere (one attendee said she’ll always remember “being stuck to the plastic dorm mattress all night”) many took the opportunity to make new friends. Other attendees took advantage of downtown Princeton with its shops and restaurants (I personally stopped by the Princeton Record Exchange to seek out a vinyl copy of George Crumb’s Music for a Summer’s Evening) as well as the train to New York City.
I’m so proud to be a part of the Dalcroze “tribe.” We are a passionate, committed group on a mission to make music move! Here’s looking to January 2018 in Los Angeles!
AUTHOR’S BIO Patrick Cerria is a New Jersey based Dalcroze teacher who’s had a life in music. He began playing the drums at age 6 and has never stopped. He earned his BA from William Paterson University where he studied Music (percussion) and the Humanities. He was awarded his Elementary Dalcroze Certificate at The Juilliard Dalcroze Institute in 2007. His music and movement program, TumbleJam™, was recognized by national and state organizations for his work with special needs children.
A SPONTANEOUS PLASTIQUE [PHOTO CREDIT: ANETTA PASTERNAK]
FUMIKO HONDA, CYNTHIA LILLEY (AT PIANO), EUNJIN LEE, EMMA SHUBIN [PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID TUCKER]
EIKO ISHIZUKA ; ANETTA PASTERNAK; LUC NIJS [PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID TUCKER]
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BY AARON BUTLER
[PHOTO CREDIT: MATTIE KAISER]
CONCERT REVIEW:
DALCROZE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES Hans Huber, Emile-Robert Blanchet, George Templeton Strong, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze—names not frequently presented on stage—were give a marvelous interpretation. Mr. Riva’s capable hands lead us through all the music thoughtfully and expressively. At times playful, intense, wistful, or grave, his exemplary touch and technique illustrated why these composers belong among the best. Particularly of note was the creativity of his voicing as he found inner voices to bring out, carefully painting the foreground and background of the musical textures.
What a joy to be reminded that our beloved Monsieur Jaques was a composer before anything else! Italian Pianist Adalberto Maria Riva treated a lucky, select crowd of New Yorkers on October 9th to a concert of music written by Dalcroze and his contemporaries. The concert was sponsored by the Dalcroze Society of America and hosted by the Kaufman Music Center of New York City, home of the Dalcroze School of New York. Mr. Riva is participating in a larger project, sponsored in part by the Geneva Conservatory and by the Dalcroze Foundation and Association, to record the complete works of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze.
The larger recording project will be released in 2018 by Toccata Classics (www.toccataclassics.com), to be available in the United States through Naxos America. We all await its completion, and further performances of the music of Dalcroze and his contemporaries!
The music, ranging from the 1890s to the 1930s, had a lush, expressive quality, still exploring the compositional possibilities of late tonality and Romanticism. It is perhaps not surprising that a Brahmsian influence, very audible in Dalcroze’s compositions, survived in the improvisation of American master teacher Hilda Schuster (a first generation protégé of Dalcroze central to the spread of his teaching in the U.S.), and in turn that of her pupils.
ADALBERTO RIVA [PHOTO CREDIT: FRANCESCO BRAMBILLA]
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BY FUMIKO HONDA
[PHOTO CREDIT: DAVID TUCKER]
DEMONSTRATION PARENT-CHILD CLASS IN JAPANESE (ABOUT 30 MINUTES) Editor’s note: At the 2016 Conference in Princeton, NJ, Fumiko Honda presented a demonstration of her work with children and their adult caregivers. The class was presented entirely in Japanese (the first language of her students), and was a model of all that Dalcroze can offer. Fumiko’s deep artistry was present in every moment of her work with the children. I sat with the observers spellbound – not understanding a word of the language, but feeling a deep connection to the music she conveyed through her voice, her gesture and gorgeous piano playing. I asked Fumiko if she would be willing to offer up her lesson plan, which I reprint here exactly as she submitted it. Not everything will be clear to the reader, especially without having seen the demonstration, but there is a kind of instructive beauty to be found in her economical notes. The way the goals and activities fit together make me want to run to the nearest classroom and try them out. They are clearly hard-won from many years of experience with young children. Many thanks to Fumiko for sharing these with us. – Michael Joviala Note: Teacher sings all instructions to the children, improvising a melody to match the speech rhythm and contour. Students: Five Two- & Three-year old children, each child with his or her mother or father
FUMIKO HONDA DEMONSTRATION LESSON [PHOTO CREDIT: ANETTA PASTERNAK]
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The
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The Classroom: Before the class, look at the room from your students’ perspective, including their general eye level.
Main goals: 1. Listen carefully.
During the lesson, put away the things you don’t need during a part of the lesson. In addition to keeping them in a basket, cover them with a big scarf or cloth (simple is best).
2. Feel comfortable being with friends and sharing music with each other. 3. Work together to create a safe atmosphere and environment
Consider the children’s movement (locomotion). Cover or put away anything that has sharp edges or corners.
Notes:
Make a simple space. Children need space to use their imagination and playfulness/playful mind.
For many if not most of the children, this parent-child Dalcroze class is often the very first classroom activity in their lives. Therefore, the parents need to have the following understanding:
Use seasonal songs, plays, and stories in the class. To help the class progress smoothly, base your material on living objects that the children are familiar with, such as a tree, leaves, flowers, birds, pets, and so on.
1. No need to compare to your child and others. Apparent differences are not significant.
You might bring up only one new topic to class.
2. The class is a great opportunity to observe your child outside of the home.
At the end of the class, use the same basic activity you used at the beginning. This is very important, as it helps make a safe atmosphere. When children feel comfortable, they can try new activities, as long as they’re simple, smooth and positive.
3. Relax and enjoy your own child. 4. Let relationships with class mates and their parents form naturally.
Do not change the flow of the lesson plan.
5. Music has an almost magical power to gently give shape to and support children’s experience.
Make a simple lesson plan. Resist the temptation to add various ideas. Try to expand your idea. After that, enjoy the variation and transformation of class dynamics.
6. Simple is best 7. All sounds must have a purpose: try to avoid any unnecessary sounds (Do not make noise).
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DSA PUBLICATIONS JOB DESCRIPTIONS PAID POSITIONS Graphic Designer Current responsibilties include three journal publications per year (two Dalcroze Connections and one Journal of Dalcroze Studies), conference print collateral & advertising. With the right candidate, we will expand the position to include web design & production in order to integrate our on- & offline channels under a unified style. The ideal candidate has 2+ years of experience with InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator as well as web design & production experience. Responsible for Dalcroze print collateral including the layout of both the The Journal of Dalcroze Studies and Dalcroze Connections. These publications are distributed in both an electronic and print format and must be created with both in mind. The web role will be discussed with each candidate as the scope is still to be fully determined. Rate will be commensurate with experience & final position responsibilites.
VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES The positions below are great ways to volunteer some time to help ensure that as many people as possible know about the practice of Dalcroze. A limited number of internships are available for full time students. Internships include free 1-Year memberships to the Dalcroze Society of America. Email editor@dalcrozeusa.org for more information.
Advertising Manager (aprox. 3-5 hours per year) Respond to inquiries via email regarding format, rates, deadlines; submit invoices to advertisers and follow-up for payments; manage advertising swaps with sister organizations.
Reporter (aprox. 1-5 hours per assignment) Create short (500-1000 words) news item pieces for Dalcroze Connections. Gather facts and information (via internet, email, phone); submit copy for publication within 1-3 weeks. Assignments can come from editorial staff or suggestion of reporter.
Associate Editor (aprox. 3-5 hours per month) Develop content for Dalcroze Connections. Solicit feature articles from member contributors. Work with authors in early stages of editing process to shape content. Assist authors in submitting drafts for copy editing by publication deadlines. Help guide the overall look, feel and direction of Dalcroze Connections, the DSA’s trade magazine.
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NEW! Dalcroze Level 1 Certificate July 3–14, 2017
•
Monica Dale, instructor
Monica Dale, a nationally-recognized Dalcroze teacher, brings Level 1—The Introductory Credential to Eastman this summer. Dalcroze Education is valuable for teachers of any instrument; it can be applied to students of all ages and levels. Dalcroze provides an experiential way of understanding music through the body. By exploring music’s structural and aesthetic elements in a physical way, students develop a stronger mind-body connection, improve musical precision and accuracy, and attain more freedom of expression.
Open to collegiate and adult students, especially music teachers and performers. No previous Dalcroze experience required; basic piano proficiency recommended. Students will receive Level 1—The Introductory Credential certification from the Dalcroze Society of America upon completion of the two-week course.
Please contact Howard Spindler at hspindler@esm.rochester.edu for more information about course requirements. Enrollment limited to 12 students.
summer.esm.rochester.edu
summer@esm.rochester.edu (844) 820-3766 or (585) 274-1074
REFLECTIONS
A PATH OF DISCOVERY
BY ANDREA KLEESATTEL
[PHOTO CREDIT: TORI RODGERS]
I have spent less than a year within the Dalcroze world, and yet it is hard to imagine having lived in a different way. I wonder if it isn’t because so many Dalcroze principles are a part of what I have unknowingly sought my whole life, both as a cellist and a teacher. As a classical musician I have often equated music with a certain amount of work, discipline, frustration, stress, and yes, at times, satisfactory release. Of course, I have always loved music very deeply. I danced to it as a child, loved singing in vocal groups and enjoyed the interactions I had in many chamber music ensembles. But somehow as a cellist there has almost always been some sort of block which has prevented pure joy and deep sorrow from coming through. This was all the more troubling because I had a sense of what music could be from my physical interactions with it. It is curious that it has taken so long for me to validate a physical approach to music. It was there all along and yet hiding. It makes me wonder how much is outside our realm of awareness, interaction and possibility. How aware are we of our potential? Maybe we have a sense that something is there— the delicious smell of some unnamed seasoning, a chord that twists us in a mysterious way, the magic of light
dancing on water. There is something there and yet we cannot fully embrace it, cannot interact with it, cannot recreate or interpret it. In Dalcroze I am finding, a widening of the lens through which I perceive the musical world. There are so many more ways to hear and feel, and from this comes many more possibilities for creating and performing, not to mention teaching.
My ear is still coming to embrace the fixed Do solfège system of Dalcroze, but I am warming up to it quickly. Through my voice, I have a reference point to understand the harmonic and melodic world around me. Intervals, which suggest certain harmonies, are pointing the way to understanding familiar and new melodies, and listening feels different, more open.
I came to Dalcroze because of my interest in movement and music. I had read the word “Dalcroze” in my research, but wasn’t able to experience it until I moved to New York. It’s funny to think about how little I knew of what I would experience when I first entered the class: that there are various components to Dalcroze, that the way one moves matters, that I would have to learn fixed Do, and that I would have to touch a piano!
But perhaps most new, most daunting, most intriguing to me is improvisation. For most of my life I have wanted to have the freedom to improvise, but having always been on the lookout for the right (and wrong) way of playing, I had always found it next to impossible to do. “Right” was doing premeditated technical exercises and scales; ”wrong” was wasting practice time by just playing. The lesson for me has been one of shaking off the judgment and starting to listen. And what is more valuable in music than listening? Not only is this not wasting time, it is opening up my ears and my mind.
But in all of these things I have found a source for change in my approach to playing. Feeling a rhythm, a tempo, an articulation, or a dynamic in one’s body brings a new dimension to it. Music is not a graphic on a page. But after years of orchestral playing and a pride in a fine-tuned notational system, it caught me off guard to put away my eyes and to engage with music in another way. Also liberating was that the concepts of rhythm and tempo are not only about duration, but also about space and energy. For a cellist with a bow arm that moves back and forth and a left hand that must shift in space, the time between notes is crucial. Time within notes is crucial. How does one fill out the time? It is not about getting from point A to point B. It is about how one gets from point A to point B. If one can feel the emotional time, space, and energy of the musical dimension in which one plays their instrument, one can hope to share the visceral experience of that emotion with the audience. I discovered eurhythmics as a way to embody music in the same dimensions that we live life as emotional beings.
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I attribute my engagement with improvisation to the acquisition of an additional skill: memorization. During the act of improvisation, one listens ahead and in the moment. I have struggled with memorization my entire life. My eyes tend to suggest I should refer to what the music looked like on the page, or the spacing of my fingers on the fingerboard, but my ears were left out of it. I’m now learning that if I sing it from the inside, it comes. Learning to trust in the ear is a scary thing, and the connection with improvisation surprises me. Along with solfège, it has helped me to hear and play differently, my ear is now more engaged. As a Suzuki student and teacher, I am curious about the ways that I can bridge the approaches of Suzuki and Dalcroze in my teaching so that I can share the benefits of both to all the children that I teach. There are some similarities to both methods—using natural ability to
find musicality (for Suzuki, the innate ability of language; for Dalcroze, the innate ability of walking), learning first by ear, the belief that every child can, the importance of group interaction— but from my perspective, there is ground to be covered in merging the two. I would like to help children find their voice through a specific instrument, and I would like to help parents understand what is needed to make this happen. Suzuki provides ways to encourage those things such as group classes, which can be a wonderful opportunity to blend the interactive practices of Dalcroze with Suzuki. The more I teach, the more I am finding ways to bring these two worlds together. Why not teach the intervals within a scale from early on? Why not do short improvisations with one another in private lessons or group classes with one another? We can step rhythms, change them, sing things for better understanding, do any sort of music in different parts of our bodies. We can share it with, and receive it from, others.
Perhaps most exciting in teaching Suzuki as a Dalcrozian, is blending the traditional Suzuki approach of giving carefully thought-through, stepby-step instructions with the Dalcroze emphasis on discovery. It is so helpful for a student to have the next step, and only the next step, for which they are capable. One small thoughtful piece at a time, if done well, can prevent frustration, fear, and bad habits. But so, too, is it exciting to discover something with a student, and to teach them that it is ok to be confused or to not know the answer right away. We can give them a safe space to experience this as they learn. As a teacher, it is extremely helpful to be familiar with all the steps that are needed to build a skill. Suzuki Teacher Training, along with the shared ideas of its community of teachers, provide wonderful and invaluable resources for acquiring this familiarity. Dalcroze provides wonderful resources for guiding students’ self-discovery in a safe place. These two approaches can be a wonderful balance to one another.
As a performer and a teacher, it is exciting to be starting work in the Dalcroze world, but it is also strangely natural. As I experience the benefits of the approach to my own playing, I am more convinced of the importance of incorporating it in my teaching and continuing on the path of discovery with my students. AUTHOR’S BIO Andrea Kleesattel currently lives in New York City where she freelances and teaches private and group cello lessons. She is a former member of the Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra in Japan, the Madison Symphony Orchestra, and the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra. She holds a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is a registered Suzuki teacher. She is currently on faculty at the Lucy Moses School, the Suzuki Music School of Westport, Opportunity Music Project, and is a faculty mentor with the Harmony Program.
CHAPTER NEWS
PHOTOS FROM THE NORTHWEST CHAPTER
The five-day workshop with Lisa Parker and Eiko Ishizuka in Seattle has rekindled the Dalcroze enthusiasm in Seattle again! Lisa and Eiko’s wonderful presentations not only revives the passion of old Dalcrozians along the west coast, but also intrigues the interest of new people to join the Dalcroze society. During the week, participants from Japan, Korean, China, Canada and different cities of the USA (Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Portland, etc.) enjoyed sharing, learning and growing together. A huge thank you to Lisa and Eiko for the inspiring week! - Xing Jin
[PHOTO CREDIT: XING JIN]
[PHOTO CREDIT: LAUREN HODGSON]
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DALCROZE SUMMER INSTITUTE AT LONGY
Mark Your Calendar!
JUNE 26TH - JULY 14TH 2017 Join us this summer at the Dalcroze Summer Institute at Longy. Learn how to use rhythmic movement, intense listening, and improvisation to unlock creativity and open the doors to enriched and enlivened music making.
Learn More: Longy.edu/dalcrozesummer
WHICH WITCH IS WHICH BY WILLIAM R. BAUER
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DALCROZE TRAINING CENTERS (Sites where candidates can earn Dalcroze credentials from qualified Dalcroze educators.)
A FULL LIST OF UPCOMING WORKSHOPS, ONGOING CLASSES AND OTHER TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES IS AVAILABLE AT DALCROZEUSA.ORG, OR BY EMAILING LAUREN HOGDSON AT ADMIN@DALCROZEUSA.ORG. COLORADO DALCROZE SCHOOL OF THE ROCKIES Dalcroze Certificate and License programs, and classes for adults, teenagers, and children. Long-distance studies, monthly weekend intensives, and Online lessons in Solfège and Improvisation are also available. Denver, CO Instructors: Dr. Jeremy Dittus, Diplôme Supérieur; Katie Couch, MM, Dalcroze License; Emma Shubin, MM, Dalcroze License; Lauren Hodgson, BM, Dalcroze Certificate Contact: jeremydittus@gmail.com www.dalcrozeschooloftherockies.com NEW YORK DALCROZE SCHOOL AT THE KAUFMAN CENTER THE DALCROZE SCHOOL AT LUCY MOSES SCHOOL at the Kaufman Center Dalcroze Certificate and License programs and classes for adults, teens and children New York, NY Anne Farber, Diplôme Supérieur, Dalcroze School Director Cynthia Lilley, Michael Joviala and Leslie Upchurch, faculty Contact: 212-501-3360 www.kaufmanmusiccenter.org DILLER-QUAILE SCHOOL OF MUSIC Dalcroze Certification opportunities, as well as graduate credits available Ruth Alperson, Diplôme Supérieur, Director Cynthia Lilley, Michael Joviala, faculty 24 E. 95th St. New York, NY 10128 Contact: Kirsten Morgan, Executive Director 212-369-1484 www.diller-quaile.org
HOFF-BARTHELSON MUSIC SCHOOL Dalcroze Teacher Training Course Classes taught by Dr. Ruth Alperson Classes in Dalcroze Eurhythmics, Solfège and Improvisation are necessary pre-cursors to teacher training and eventual certification. Hoff-Barthelson offers these three courses at the Beginning/Intermediate level. Students enrolled in the Teacher Training Course have the opportunity to observe Dalcroze classes for children. Contact: Terry Wager 25 School Lane, Scarsdale, NY 10583 914-723-1169, twager@hbms.org MASSACHUSETTS LONGY SCHOOL OF MUSIC OF BARD COLLEGE 3-YEAR DALCROZE CERTIFICATE & MASTER OF MUSIC (in performance or composition) Combined Program Eiko Ishizuka, Director Faculty: Eiko Ishizuka Contact lisaparker035@gmail.com DALCROZE SUMMER INSTITUTE Lisa Parker, Director Faculty: Lisa Parker, MM, Diplôme Supérieur, Eiko Ishizuka, Candidate for the Diplôme Supérieur, Adriana Ausch, MM, Dalcroze License, Ginny Latts, Dalcroze License, Melissa Tucker, Dalcroze License 27 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
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PENNSYLVANIA CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY Marta Sanchez, Dalcroze Training Center Certificate and License Programs Summer and Academic Year Dr. Annabelle Joseph, Diplôme Supérieur, Director 5000 Forbes Avenue, CFA 105 Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 412-268-2391 music-dalcroze@andrew.cmu.edu INSTITUTE FOR JAQUES-DALCROZE EDUCATION The Institute for Jaques-Dalcroze Education, LLC is owned and operated by Monica Dale and Jack Stevenson, two internationally recognized JaquesDalcroze pedagogues. The program provides hands-on experience of the Jaques-Dalcroze method: Eurhythmics, Solfège, and Improvisation,in addition to Jaques-Dalcroze pedagogy, philosophy, and plastique anime, and prepares candidates for the examinations leading to the Jaques-Dalcroze Certificate. St. Francis Center for Renewal 395 Bridle Path Rd Bethlehem, PA 18017 July 2015 Faculty: Jack Stevenson, Diplôme Supérieur Contact: Jack Stevenson 610-691-5544 jack@jdalcroze.org
DALCROZE TRAINING CENTERS IN PROFILE Editor’s note: we begin the first of a series of reports from training centers in the United States with The Dalcroze School of the Rockies, directed by Jeremy Dittus. Here’s what’s been happening in this very active and vibrant Colorado center for Dalcroze Education. THE DALCROZE SCHOOL OF THE ROCKIES The Rocky Mountain chapter of the Dalcroze Society of America is thriving, as it continues to support both teachers and students both from across the globe and here in Colorado. The 2016 Dalcroze Academy was a resounding success! A total of 37 students, 10 of whom attended the License and Pre-Diplôme Course, and 5 faculty members from 4 continents, 11 countries, and 13 states, were in attendance. The instructors, music educators, dance and theatre professionals and music therapists participated over the 3 week intensive Dalcroze training course. Additionally, these students now have the opportunity to continue their studies during the academic year through Skype lessons and/or weekend intensives through the Professional Studies Program at the Dalcroze School of the Rockies. All Dalcroze School of the Rockies professional studies students are supported with Embodying Music: A Textbook for Dalcroze Teacher Training, written by Jeremy Dittus.
[PHOTO CREDIT: LAUREN HODGSON]
The Dalcroze School of the Rockies community celebrates Rosa Kim, who recently earned her Dalcroze Certification!
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DALCROZE TRAINING CENTERS IN PROFILE Several of our students from the DSR have made a real splash this year in several different locales in Colorado and beyond. Here are some quick highlights that show just how powerful Dalcroze Education is and how it impacts the lives of students in music and other disciplines: • All DSR students passed their juries at the end of the year with flying colors! • Catherine Kelly (Dalcroze AP III) received a perfect score on her Music Theory Advanced Placement Test. She also performed on the honors concerts at the Denver School of the Arts.
[PHOTO CREDIT: NATASHA LEE]
DSR’s Katie Couch is off to Geneva this autumn to pursue her Diplôme Supérieur!
• Several students from RS V and Dalcroze AP II presented in Princeton at the Dalcroze Society of America National Conference. Anna Staton, Brigid Dix, Maria Ciabanu, Ella Bondy, and Leslie Wilburn presented a demonstration class, performed a Plastique Animée, and wowed audiences with stellar performances on their solo instruments. • Several students won Top Performer, Honorable Mention, or Superior Ratings at the Colorado Federation of Music Clubs Festivals this year for their solo performances and/or compositions: Leslie Wilburn (AP II), Brigid Dix (RS V), Nichole Graham (RS V graduate), Emma Graham(RS IV), Jerry Krim (RS II), Carl Krim (RS II), Liam Gibson (RS II), and Carson McConnell (RS I).
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• Ella Bondy (AP II) placed 2nd in the state of Colorado for the National Flute Association competition. • Several DSR students past and present were accepted to the Denver School of the Arts including Catherine Kelly (Dalcroze AP III) Leslie Wilburn (Dalcroze AP II), Luke Poirier (RS V graduate), and Rachel Kelly (RS V). • Several students are members of excellent music ensembles in the metro area including: the Denver Young Artist Orchestra, Colorado Youth Orchestra, Front Range Youth Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Children’s Chorale, and Rocky Mountain Children’s Choir. These students include Tristan Regini (RS V) Avery Delgado (RS V), Maria Ciobanu (RS V), Morgan Ward (RS V), Ella Bondy (Dalcroze AP II), Leslie Wilburn (Dalcroze AP II), Jerry Krim (RS II), and Carl Krim (RS II). • Several students can be found in dance and theater productions including East High School, Between the Bones, Phamaly, and the JCC including Kate Logan (Dalcroze AP II), Avery Logan (RS II graduate), Max Rabbi (RS V graduate) and Tristan Regini (RS V), Leslie Wilburn (Dalcroze AP II), and Maria Ciobanu (RS V).
DALCROZE CONNECTIONS Kathy Jones 25 School Lane Scarsdale, NY 10583