Discovering Music through Dalcroze Eurhythmics

Author(s): Anne Farber and Lisa Parker

Source: Music Educators Journal, Vol. 74, No. 3, Focus: Music and Movement (Nov., 1987), pp.
43-45
Published by: MENC: The National Association for Music Education
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3397940
Accessed: 26/08/2008 17:44

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=menc.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the
scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that
promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

http://www.jstor.org
 bYAnn1e
LSa
Farber
and a er

What can the musical body teach the musical mind, and how does this
take place in a Dalcroze class? Visitors to Dalcroze eurhythmics classes are
traditionally invited to participate in the activities of the lesson, and the
experience yields a different sort of appreciation of the work than mere
observation. Of course, this is not always possible or appropriate-the age
group, skill level, or current project occupying the class may make it
unrealistic for a guest to join in. But where participation is feasible it is also
encouraged, and as any Dalcroze teacher will testify, it makes all the
difference.
A moving past
Eurhythmics originated with Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, whose seminal con-
tributions to the idea of music education began to take shape at the turn of
the century and have extended well into our era. An enormously lively,
dynamic, and provocative character, Dalcroze was active and innovative up
to his death in 1950.
His frustration with the lifeless theoretical grasp and mechanical
Anne Farber and Lisa Parker teach at Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

MEJ/November '87 43
performance habits of his own con-
servatory students led him to ques-
tion the conventional music educa-
tion methods of his time. He devel-
oped radical new notions,
practices, and props: bare feet and
legs, tunics and hoops! Dalcroze's
passion was not gimmickry but dis-
covery; his great "new" idea was
that musicianship began with
whole body and resided there.
Therefore, the body should be the
point of educational focus. In 1898,
he wrote:
I am beginningto think of a musical
educationin which the body wouldplay
the role of intermediarybetween sound
andthought,so becomingan expressive
instrument. Bodily movement is an
experience felt by a sixth sense, the
muscular sense. This consists of the
relationshipbetween the dynamics of
movementand the position of the body
in space, between the durationof move-
ment and its extent, between the prepa-
ration of a movement and its perform-
ance. This muscularsense must be ca-
pable of being graspedby the intellect,
and since it demandsthe collaboration
of all the muscles, voluntaryand invol-
untary, its rhythmic education needs
movementof the whole body.'
The compelling delight
What does happen in an eurhyth-
mics class that is more compelling
to do than to look at? Early in this
century, the French painter Paul
Perrelet declared, "It is not possible
to form an opinion on eurhythmics
without having taken part in it. I did
criticize it, stupidly, with my eyes
only, as a painter would, before
experiencing it myself. The joy of
setting in motion all one's physical
and mental faculties has remained
with me as an unforgettable memo-
ry."2 We do not have a record of
what particular eurhythmics activi-
ties provided Perrelet this joy of his
faculties, but since many other stu-
dents and masters of the discipline
have expressed similar reactions of
delight, we can begin' simply with a
description of what is likely to oc-
cur in the eurhythmics classroom.
Students typically are barefoot
and dressed in comfortable cloth-
1. Claire-LiseDutoit,Music, Movement Therapy
(Surrey,England:The DalcrozeSociety, 1971, 10.
2. Quotedin Dutoit.
44 MEJ/November'87
ing. They probably are moving in
some way-in locomotion around
the room, in gesture with hands,
arms, heads, upper bodies, either in
groups or alone. Their movements
are responsive to the music that is
sounding in the room. The teacher
probably is improvising this music
on the piano. However, this is not
always the case. Recorded and
composed music are used in the
eurhythmics class, but the most
common situation is an improvisa-
tion collaboration. In this case, the
teacher improvises on the piano a
piece of music appropriate to the
task that has been set the students.
This task typically is to move in
space using certain guidelines that
are specific to the occasion or mu-
sical piece. The teacher shapes the
music not only to the rules of the
task, but to what he or she observes
the students doing. The students, in
turn, shape their accomplishment
of the task to the nature of the
music-its tempo, dynamics, tex-
ture, and style.
What might such a task be? "Step
to my beat" is perhaps the funda-
mental one. The students simply
walk to the underlying beat of the
music, expressing its qualities in
the nature of their walk. It is a
simple task, walking comfortably
and rhythmically, using a skill that
has been second nature to them
since babyhood. Like many simple
things, however, it contains riches
of complexity that skill and focus
can uncover.
What is the sensation of weight
transfer in response to a slow, fluid
legato from the piano, or a disso-
nant, percussive staccato? What are
the issues of balance on the floor
and in the music? What is the upper
body doing? Is there a conscious-
ness of measure groupings or of
phrase? How can the simple walk
show the long pull of a melodic line
against repeating beats and down-
beats? How is harmony propelling
or retarding the rhythmic motion?
Is the music turned inward, or is it
aiming outward toward the group?
Is there a style of movement im-
plied in the music? Can the walkers
incorporate it, and what happens if
they resist?
Thus, the study of eurhythmics
begins with natural, ordinary move-
ments, and extends their range of
speed, energy, style, expressivity,
helping the students build a vocab-
ulary of physical responses to mu-
sic. Walking leads to other locomo-
tion possibilities such as running,
skipping, galloping, and to the mim-
ing of different locomotion situa-
tions such as skating, swimming, or
floating. Gesture, design, shape, iso-
lation, as well as opposition and
coordination of parts, are explored
for their capacity to enact musical
realities in physical space.
Dance vs. eurhythmics
That's all very nice, but why eu-
rhythmics? Dance does that job,
using the human body to concretize
music in visual space, doing it on
the whole rather more handsomely
than eurhythmics. So, is eurhyth-
mics a sort of semiskilled and over-
literalized dancing?
No, but there are important dis-
tinctions. Eurhythmics and dance
have much in common. Both in-
volve physical training; concern
themselves with the relations of
movement and music (not exclud-
ing stillness and silence); build and
depend on technique, knowledge,
and experience; have a visual com-
ponent (which in dance is primary,
in eurhythmics secondary). Both
may involve improvisation, compo-
sition (choreography), and evalua-
tion. But dance is an art; eurhyth-
mics is a course of study.
The aim of learning to dance is to
present and perform the artwork of
the choreographer. To this end bod-
ies are stretched and strengthened,
techniques and styles of movement
are studied and practiced, steps are
learned. Music is usually present,
and must usually be attended to-
but not in an urgent, controlling
way. A dancer may of course also
study music, but the aim of the
dance class is not the study of
music. On the other hand, the aim
of the eurhythmics class is precise-
ly that: to study music.
In the eurhythmics class, the
body is trained to be the instru-
ment, not of the performance of
eurhythmics, but of the perception
of music. The body is understood as
the original musical instrument, the
one through which everyone first
realizes music in both its senses:
apprehending and creating, and the
primary, personal, trainable utensil
for musical understanding and pro-
duction. The movements a student
makes in a eurhythmics class do
not have the essential purpose of
training the body to convey a cho-
reographic picture to an audience.
Rather, their essential purpose is to
convey information back to the
mover himself. The movements
should set up a circuit of informa-
tion and response moving continu-
ously between brain and body,
which,with training and experience,
rise to ever higher levels of preci-
sion, coordination, and expressive
power.
To this end, a eurhythmics stu-
dent's body is stretched and
strengthened, and techniques are
studied and practiced to increase
his awareness of and control over
movements, particularly those that
pertain to the representation of mu-
sical elements. The student learns
the conductor's beats, which he
sometimes executes as he moves.
He learns how the Newtonian laws
of time, space, and energy control
his physical relation to space, and
how to obey and use these laws to
shape his physical enactment of
music now in the eurhythmics
classroom and later on his chosen
musical instrument.
The eurhythmics student does
not learn steps; certainly not in the
sense a dancer does. He learns to
use his body to solve in his own
way certain problems. The essential
challenge is how to enact particular
musical meanings in physical
space. The point of meeting that
challenge (and the aim of the eu-
rhythmics class) is to deepen both
his understanding of, and ability to
produce, music.
Frances W. Aronoff describes the
process this way:
Coordinationof cognitive and physi-
cal actions is the first step of a given
activityin the eurhythmicsclass, but it
is only a means to an end... by experi-
encing the juxtapositionof the musical
elements kinesthetically, the student
can discover and come to understand
musicalideas in terms of theirpotential
expressiveuse. He acquiresin this way
a storehouse of aural and kinesthetic
images,and then uses them for achiev-
ing concepts, as a repertoirefor sensi-
tive performanceand hearing,and as a
vocabularyfor improvisationand com-
position.Thus,DalcrozeEurhythmicsis
a means towardkeener perceptionand
response;it is in no sense an indepen-
dent art medium.3
The physical potential
In conventional music education,
the focus is on instrumental or vo-
cal study as the primary route to
musical learning; the larger, more
personal involvement of the whole
body is bypassed. As every instru-
mentalist knows, the body is highly
trainable and capable of executing
extraordinarily complex rhythmic
coordinations with very small mus-
cle groups. So this training in a
sense "works," producing some ex-
traordinary, some merely compe-
tent, and some dropout musicians.
Whether or not this state of af-
fairs is good for the musical com-
munity at large, it is certainly less
than ideal for the dropouts, and
perhaps for a number of the merely
competent musicians as well. The
3. FrancesW. Aronoff,Musicand YoungChildren
(New York:Holt,Rinehart&Wilson,1969), 168.
extraordinary few are an exception,
in all ways. Even so, it is not that
they have no need of what a Dal-
croze education offers; it is just that
they have learned it in their own
way. Of course, some of them actu-
ally have had Dalcroze training,
proving very little either way.
Let us inquire into what may be
missing from this ordinary educa-
tion. Although instrumental prac-
tice can produce dexterity, musical
feeling and understanding do not
originate in the small muscles.
These capabilities come to life in
the child's whole body and, if nour-
ished and educated there, are easily
made flexible and can be focused
into whichever muscle groups are
appropriate to whatever musical
task lies at hand.
Even when not nurtured in early
life, musical feeling and the capaci-
ty to understand and even make
music are not lost; the musically
disadvantaged adult still carries
within him all the necessary equip-
ment of response and learning. In
Dalcroze, it is never too late. Never-
theless, when training is narrowly
vocal or instrumental, the most im-
portant element of music educa-
tion-the development and refine-
ment of the musical intelligence of
the whole person-is probably not
being addressed.
In a Dalcroze class, students are
freed from the constraints of per-
formance to experience the deep
musical knowledge and feeling
evoked through movement. When
they have discovered themselves as
the source of their own musicality,
they have much to bring to the
practice room. Based on the philos-
ophy that we are the instrument,
Dalcroze invites us to live what we
hear. A1
MEJ/November '87 45