DALCROZE THEN AND NOW
Dana Howell
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
This paper is designed to relate the life, work and method of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze to problems in music of the present day. In a sense, this is an update to the body of knowledge of the Dalcroze Eurhythmics method, an approach to music education conceived more than a century ago and practiced today in a number of university and children’s programs in Europe, the United States, Australia and Asia. But such an “update” presumes the readers’ familiarity with the subject, either by experience or by encounter. In Marie-Laure Bachmann’s 1991 book Dalcroze Today: An Education through and into Music, the Swiss Dalcrozian goes to considerable ends to articulate how the Dacrloze system of education works, offering an attempt at explaining it to the uninitiated reader. And yet she ultimately holds to the notion that to understand the Dalcroze approach there is no substitute for personal experience. One can know only the standards, framework and outward features of the method without having participated in a class and explored the visceral connection between movement and music, which is the principle promised fruit of this type of guided study.
My objective, however, is not to explain, characterize or define the state of the Dalcroze method as it is now practiced. Rather, it is to build a case for the unique advantages the Dalcroze method offers in understanding and enriching the musical world of today. The impetus for this study is born out of my own personal experience with the Dacrloze method and the sense that something that happened in the late 19th century that spurred Emile Jaques-Dalcroze to work so tirelessly to create his new approach to music education is absolutely linked to my own personal struggles as a performer and composer in 21st century America, I felt this link intuitively through my study of Dalcroze.
Carnegie Mellon University, where I earned undergraduate degrees in both performance and composition, offers one of the most robust Dalcroze Eurhythmics programs for adults (college level music students) anywhere: the program requires a full four semesters of Dalcroze Eurhythmics of all music students. My first two years of Dalcroze study were compulsory, and I was not always so easily convinced of its value. However, through those two years I began to feel something extraordinarily compelling about the use of music both as an ends and a means, realized through liberal and creative use of the body in motion. I then took the four graduate level courses offered in Eurhythmics applications, teaching and improvisation and attended two international workshops held at the university in 2001 and 2006. At the international workshops, I was able to study with renowned European teachers such as Marie-Laure Bachmann and Jean-Marc Aeshermann, American teachers of international stature such as the late Martha Sanchez and Lisa Parker as well as Hiroaki Yoshida of the now well established school in Nagoya and pioneers in the budding Korean and Taiwanese programs. What was so valuable to me personally from this experience was the perspective to be gained from collaborating with this body of practitioners from so many backgrounds and comparing the manifestation of the ideals we held in common in such diverse applications and climates. Jaques-Dalcroze was himself Swiss, and the Geneva school he founded bears his name. Yet the method has been practiced in America for more than 80 years, with a long and rich history dealing with music in a climate that is culturally unique and distinct from Europe. The progress of the East Asian schools provides even more furtile ground for discussing the whys, whats and hows of music in a cultural context in which casual assumptions can not be taken for granted.
TOWARD A WORKING DEFINITION
It was common knowledge among non-music students at Carnegie Mellon University that there was a large, wood-floored classroom in an old building at the center of campus (which also served as an invaluable sheltered corridor during brutal winters) where many hours a week one could peer inside a small square window and see ten to twenty college students performing all sorts of unusual activities. Sometimes they would appear to be dancing joyfully, while at other times they sat on the floor puzzling over some frustrating paperwork. There was often a teacher playing music on the piano, and students would variously engage in partner, group or solo activities to somehow interpret some stimulus given in the piano. On some days an eavesdropper might see all the students take hand-drums, tennis balls or even colored nylon stockings out of the closet and use them in different ways.
Non-participating visitors to a Eurhythmics class tend to be confused about what exactly it is they are watching. Passers-bye will often immediately take the class for some beginning level dance class, the bare feet, piano music and whole body movement giving such an impression. Yet the students do not look like dancers, and likely exhibit considerable sophistication in their approach to their activities (it is certainly not a “beginners” dance class, despite some noticeable physical awkwardness). The confusion that Eurhythmics is Dance has been around since the early days of the work of Jaques-Dalcroze, and teachers have been careful to disambiguate the two disciplines. Dr. Annabelle Joseph often remarks that Eurhythmics “probably looks like a bad dance class” and sternly insists that it is in fact not dance and that the principle difference is that the objective of dance is to show something, while that of Eurhythmics is to work something out internally through movement (and the resulting successful outcome may or may not be something pretty to look at). This distinction is rather helpful in holding off the “bad dance” critique, though Jaques-Dalcroze’s work with dancers as well as his frequent public demonstrations of La Rythmique and performances of plastique anime have rendered an easy distinction between Eurhythmics and dance perpetually problematic.
Bachmann is keenly aware of the failure of Eurhythmics to concisely identify itself and follows the problem from its roots in Jaques-Dalcroze’s stubborn refusal to accept simple classification of his ideas. While acknowledging the inherent “Achilles heal” of such a stance, she maintains that the lack of clear identity is necessary, for “vulnerable it certainly is, for this is inevitable in any person or system which keeps nothing hidden and holds nothing back, and yet, being necessarily unable to reveal all its facets at once to any single observer, cannot be grasped from one point of view without being misunderstood or misrepresented as a whole.” (24). But it would be unfair to engage the reader in a discussion of the formation and utility of a method or movement that has very real participants who engage in very real activities without providing at least some working definition of what this hard-to-know structure is. Vague as they are, there are some features of the method - ideals or “scientific” assumptions held by proponents at its core of that are extremely useful in developing a framework from which familiarity with the method can be developed.
Many Dalcrozian’s refer to “Dalcroze” as an approach or perspective, and avoid whenever they can the term method. There are in the marketplace plenty of examples of how within the notion of “method” there seems to be a diversity in what it really means. A teacher might achieve admirable success teaching students with a book series such as the Bastien piano method but would encounter considerable frustration in using a Suzuki method book in the same way, which is fairly useless unless used as a tool in teaching with Suzuki’s approach - a deeply considered way of teaching which relies on assumptions about child development and a pronounced humanistic perspective. Acknowledging this distinction between method and approach is key to understanding Dalcroze and why easy definition and user-friendly publications are not forthcoming. While I find the use of the words “approach” and “perspective” preferable as they avoid the problematic confusion of “method,” it is impossible to avoid using the term method as it is the primary means of referring to the educational work of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze and has been such in print for over a century.
A working definition for Dalcroze Eurhythmics or, as Jaques-Dalcroze referred to it, “the method that bears my name,” should clearly identify the method’s intentions (the “promises” of what it hopes to accomplish) as well as the basic means by which this goal should be accomplished and the assumptions made about the material used in service of these means. What Jaques-Dalcroze intended to accomplish is quite clear in his many writings about his teaching as well as his recommendations for music education (music in schools and in the conservatory) and dance. Identifying the objectives of Dalcroze-Eurhythmics should also take into account statements of qualified, well-regarded practitioners. Jaques-Dalcroze provides a clear and concise statement of his objectives in forming a new system in the introduction to his 1914 essay, “Rhythmic movement, solfege and improvisation” where he writes:
A special gymnastic system, habituating muscles to contract and relax, and corporal lines to widen and shrink in time and space, should supplement metrical feeling and instinct for rhythm. (115).
And later:
The fact is, that for the precise physical execution of a rhythm, it is not enough to have grasped it intellectually and to possess a muscular system capable of interpreting it; in addition, and before all else, communications should be established between the mind that conceives and analyses, and the body that executes. (116).
Bachmann, nearly eighty years later, writes in very similar language that eurhythmics “facilitates the discovery of the laws governing relations between space, time and energy.” (Bachmann 19). Jaques-Dalcroze also wrote famously that the aim of eurhythmics “is not to enable pupils at the end of their course, to say, not ‘I know,’ but ‘I have experienced,’ a catch-phrase echoed by eurhythmics practitioners to this day.
The means of accomplishing stated goals is a fuzzier matter, since there is no set curriculum (practitioners tend to be directly opposed to the idea) and comparative observation of various teachers’ approaches at a conference will confirm a distinct plurality in course content, sequence and exercises. But the basic notion that the body should be used for its natural capacities in learning music and that the body should also be trained to accommodate the nuances of musical material is apparent across the spectrum of the diverse population of instructors. A class that failed in this general use of means would clearly lie outside what is “Dalcrozian.” Also, while contemporary Dalcroze Eurhythmics courses are not specifically bound to the structured content spelled out in Rhythm, Music and Education (which leans heavily on the ideas of Matthias Lussey and will be explored in the third chapter), such direct documentation of process should be taken into account in determining the means of Eurhythmics as it is frequently used today and also provides a model for creating structure (structure, even as a generality, is an important feature of how the method works).
The assumptions made about the materials used in accomplishing the stated objectives of eurhythmics (namely, the nature of the mind, body, musical rhythm and the space-time-energy relationship) are paramount to describing the identity of the approach. In an era coinciding with huge advances in the field of psychology but predating by nearly a century the discoveries of neuroscience through brain imaging, Jaques-Dalcroze committed to an understanding of the human mind, how it perceives music and how the experience of music is simultaneously both locomotor and intellectual. While apparently taking for granted a mind-body dualism prevalent in earlier psychological and scientific thought, I will show in chapter 3 how Jaques-Dalcroze’s scientific assumptions can be better understood through looking at Matthias Lussey’s remarkable empirical distillation of musical gesture. The notion that layers of musicality can and should be dissociated and reintegrated in education reveals a significant assumption about the nature of musicality, namely that it is not mysterious or unusual (as is frequently held to be an immutable fact).
Finally, to produce a framework for building an understanding of Dalcroze Eurhythmics without impeding on its flexible nature, we can identify it thus: Dalcroze Eurhythmics is an approach to teaching musicality that uses the body’s natural functionality to explore music as well as the existing structure in music to develop the body’s locomotor sensitivity to music through structured exercises based on the assumption that the body’s experience in physical space and time is analogous musical gesture.
THE IMPORTANCE OF DALCROZE TODAY
Why study the life, work and legacy of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze? There are, after all, myriad marketable methods for educating pupils and encouraging interest in the arts. The Dalcroze method at times seems to be at a disadvantage as its enthusiastic proponents struggle to articulate even its basic tenets while clearly defined, trendier methods publish glossy lesson supplements and open pastel colored, profitable enrichment schools for children faster than paint can dry.
A more pertinent question would be, “what is the point of musicians (performers, composers and amateurs) studying Dalcroze today, in America, in the early years of the 21st century?” To begin to answer this question, we must begin by associating the conditions of musical society today with the conditions under which a particular young Swiss composer named Emile Jaques-Dalcroze struggled in his early career in the late 19th century and which led him to make some remarkable discoveries about the nature of musicality - discoveries that eventually materialized into a method that would elicit considerable recognition in its early years and survive more than a century under the collective stewardship of a group of dedicated and talented teachers.
The Dalcroze method is an approach - a proposed solution. And solutions are responses to frustrating problems that gnaw at the consciousness of the perceptive individual until he or she discovers a novel response that breaks through, bypasses or evades the frustrating roadblock that hinders further accomplishment. Emile Jaques-Dalcroze was one such individual who, frustrated as an unconventional student of classical music in Geneva, Paris and Vienna, as a composer and as a proponent of music in education sought to unlock the blockage that perturbed him. In the following chapter, I will relate his experiences, particularly in his early years, for the purpose of identifying these frustrations as a necessary factor in the formation of his method.
Frustrations that antagonize musicians today are abundant, ranging from the complaints of teachers whose pupils render masterpieces without expression to sociologists who apply new modes of social criticism to once sacred Great Works to composers who struggle to be relevant to an ambivalent audience (or scoff at the notion of social consciousness in pursuit of the absolute ). The financial woes of musicians, mundane as they may seem, frequently trigger practically existential crises among performers who feel lost amid a seemingly apocalyptic decline of classical music.
In merely associating our present situation with the conditions at the inception of the curiously effective yet somewhat mysterious Dalcroze method, we gain remarkable perspective on the truth behind many of these frustrations that hinder fluency of performance, satisfaction among audiences and compliance with ethical standards. They can be divided roughly into two groups: one, frustrations that are common with the previous era, and the other, those that seem to have sprung up only in our own era as a result of our unique historical context. For the former group, we need only look to Jaques-Dalcroze's extensive writings on subjects of education, performance, dance and composition, where he complains endlessly about the state of music in schools that could easily be mistaken for an address delivered to a music education conference of the present day.
Frustrations of the latter group - those that seem to be new issues faced only by musicians today - are the reason I believe a new, up-to-date discussion of Jaques-Dalcroze's ideas is so important. The method itself is principally a perspective or an approach, not a set of instructions to accomplish a particular task. The method in practice therefore tends to be at its source the very real struggles and personality of a particular man, and in its dissemination the collaborative and self-correcting effort of a multitude of diverse personalities over the course of a century. Since Jaques-Dalcroze's death in 1950 and even since the most recent significant text written by a Dalcrozian exponent in 1993 (Marie-Laure Bachmann's Dalcroze Today ) a lot has happened. In the last twenty years, feminist and post-colonial critique of music have revolutionized the discipline of Musicology, asking tough questions about the gender and racial codings that apparently exist as a significant layer in the fabric of works once held to be absolute and immutable to criticism. In 1993, the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, ending decades of culture wars and paranoia that had profoundly affected American schools, universities, foundations and symphony orchestras. And in that time, scientists have looked inside the physical reality of the human brain and seen for the first time how music is really produced and listened to on a neurological level.
A PROPOSAL
I hold that these recent events and discoveries are not simply issues of the day but are in fact game-changing phenomena that will shape our perspective on music, classical or otherwise, in the coming years. Jaques-Dalcroze matured as a musician and conceived his method at the end of the Common Practice, an era of roughly two centuries where composers of a particular (though notably international) geographic region used the common language of tonality and a number of assumptions about music to collaboratively develop and evolve a notated body of work that would ultimately collapse under the weight of increasing complexity and its own fundamental undoability. Classical music of the early years of the twentieth century plunged into violent fragmentation and myriad isms as the gigantic cultural and political forces of Europe fought for identity and direction in the wake of catastrophic loss. Yet nearly a century later, the world of classical music is as fragmented as ever with no overall trend or direction - and will most likely remain so forever. However, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze's principle objective was a humanistic and universal one: to advocate the simple enjoyment of music and the freedom for people to be their natural, inherently musical beings. In his life, music and teaching, Jaques-Dalcroze appears to have been rather ambivalent to what was old and what was new, classical or folk, tonal or atonal. His most revolutionary quality was not to assault establishment with some newfangled, fractured style, but rather to embrace musicality as a substance and a human right in preference to objects of cultural or extrinsic value. The results of a study of the formation of the Dalcroze method according to Msgr. Jacques-Dalcroze's historical context, experiences and personality will demonstrate the value of the method in confronting both frustrating issues inherited from the past as well as those unique to the present day.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Leiermann Poem
Leierman:
Now that you’re here, my sad, lonely friend,
And a long winter’s journey has come to an end,
At the edge of a brave new world you now stand,
Just one step across the line drawn in the sand.
I know why you came here, through cold ice and snow
What drove you to press on, what you had to know.
It’s all on the other side waiting for you
To take that step forward. And then when you do,
The phantom companion you saw in your head
Will no longer haunt from the shadows; instead
He will be always with you, not far from your side,
Lost not to the Shadowlands. Nor does he hide
His face among those souls forgotten, erased,
Dead, gone and buried in graves, laid to waste
In Lethean bliss. No, your twin is quite real,
The man whose cold fingers you sometimes can feel
Press soft on your shoulders. So no longer fear
The presence of him whom you saw in the mirror.
The device I have here, a peculiar contraption
Has not yet been tested, nor proven to work in
All situations. But once in a trial,
As I stood waiting for my results to compile
I saw standing next to me there in the room,
My own figure. Surely, my heart filled with doom,
But later I realized his countenance bore
No trace of ill guile; rather he wore
The benevolent smile of one who would bear
Good will, and not the cold empty stare
Of death or lost hope. No, he was my friend.
Born of my own flesh. But then in the end,
I turned the machine off, for my strength had expired.
What would have happened if I hadn’t retired
From my phantom encounter, and took one step t’ward him?
My brain might have melted, or I would have come to some grim
Veg’tative end. But still in my soul
I believe the illusion could have made me whole.
So my boy, I have watched you, from when you were born,
And I know of the brother from which you were torn.
I offer this glorious Thing to your using,
That in sound theory should help you in fusing
Your soul to the lost shadow I have extracted
To relieve the cruel penance that Fate has exacted.
Now that you’re here, my sad, lonely friend,
And a long winter’s journey has come to an end,
At the edge of a brave new world you now stand,
Just one step across the line drawn in the sand.
I know why you came here, through cold ice and snow
What drove you to press on, what you had to know.
It’s all on the other side waiting for you
To take that step forward. And then when you do,
The phantom companion you saw in your head
Will no longer haunt from the shadows; instead
He will be always with you, not far from your side,
Lost not to the Shadowlands. Nor does he hide
His face among those souls forgotten, erased,
Dead, gone and buried in graves, laid to waste
In Lethean bliss. No, your twin is quite real,
The man whose cold fingers you sometimes can feel
Press soft on your shoulders. So no longer fear
The presence of him whom you saw in the mirror.
The device I have here, a peculiar contraption
Has not yet been tested, nor proven to work in
All situations. But once in a trial,
As I stood waiting for my results to compile
I saw standing next to me there in the room,
My own figure. Surely, my heart filled with doom,
But later I realized his countenance bore
No trace of ill guile; rather he wore
The benevolent smile of one who would bear
Good will, and not the cold empty stare
Of death or lost hope. No, he was my friend.
Born of my own flesh. But then in the end,
I turned the machine off, for my strength had expired.
What would have happened if I hadn’t retired
From my phantom encounter, and took one step t’ward him?
My brain might have melted, or I would have come to some grim
Veg’tative end. But still in my soul
I believe the illusion could have made me whole.
So my boy, I have watched you, from when you were born,
And I know of the brother from which you were torn.
I offer this glorious Thing to your using,
That in sound theory should help you in fusing
Your soul to the lost shadow I have extracted
To relieve the cruel penance that Fate has exacted.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Outline
This is the outline for my current dissertation draft, focusing on the discoveries and method of Swiss composer and educator Emile Jaques-Dalcroze.
Introduction: issues that frustrate contemporary music production (composition, performance and education) and how these issues reflect problems in maintainance of historical traditions and the fragmentation of such tradition in the early 20th century; Concise history of Jaques-Dalcroze's biography; overview of formation and legacy of Dalcroze Eurhythmics method; introduce case for studying the process of the formation of his method as valuable to realizing its utility in the present day.
I. Emile Jaques-Dalcroze: Personal frustrations in forming his musical personality. Emile Jaques-Dalcroze wrestled with norms in the Conservatory both as a student and as a teacher. In his early days of study, particularly in Vienna, he struggled with the lack of "profundity" in his performance and composition. This event can be see both in his personal motivation toward discovery as well as manifestation of historical crisis in the general issue of musicality. As a teacher, he was a notorious reformer and wrote prolifically on issues of education in his time.
II. Interest in empirical and systematic analysis of music. Jaques-Dalcroze found the work of compatriot Mathias Lussy of particular value and shared his opinion that elements musicality can be rationally dissociated and learned, debunking the "mysteries" of expression. This section examines the close relationship to Lussy's 1874 treatise on musical expression with the content of Dalcroze's method as well as how both educators encountered psychological realities through examination of musical literature that would much later be verified in studies in the purely scientific realm.
III. Emile Jaques-Dalcroze's ambivalence to the West and common practice. While exhibiting considerable frustration with conservatory norms and the shortcomings of music education in schools, Jaques-Dalcroze appears to have been rather ambivalent about the disintegration of tonality and the West's struggle to preserve or modernize itself or to define itself against the Eastern Other. There appears to be no conflict in his thinking or methodology between the concept of Musicality in the Common Practice and after, nor between Western music and the non-Western. Although there is only some evidence of his engagement of non-Western sources in his own experience and writing, his successors have made considerable effort to include non-Western and modern material in the application of the method.
IV. Conclusion: Bringing Dalcroze into contemporary America. As I have established that the three dominant features of the formation of the Dalcroze Method are 1. frustration with educational institutions and norms, 2. systematic dissociation and learning of elements of musicality through analysis and movement and 3. ambivalence to trends in Western self-identification. Thus established, these features and their subsequent successful integration into the Method provide remarkable possibilities in upholding the humanistically necessary value and perpetuation of Musicality amid current issues of post-colonial and feminist critique as well as cultural identification in the post-cold war era. Additionally, assessing the ideals and practices of the Dalcroze method against the social sciences of contemporary thought can better facilitate the dialogue between the music and the sciences, giving the discussion socially informed language and meaning in a hitherto problematic collaboration.
Introduction: issues that frustrate contemporary music production (composition, performance and education) and how these issues reflect problems in maintainance of historical traditions and the fragmentation of such tradition in the early 20th century; Concise history of Jaques-Dalcroze's biography; overview of formation and legacy of Dalcroze Eurhythmics method; introduce case for studying the process of the formation of his method as valuable to realizing its utility in the present day.
I. Emile Jaques-Dalcroze: Personal frustrations in forming his musical personality. Emile Jaques-Dalcroze wrestled with norms in the Conservatory both as a student and as a teacher. In his early days of study, particularly in Vienna, he struggled with the lack of "profundity" in his performance and composition. This event can be see both in his personal motivation toward discovery as well as manifestation of historical crisis in the general issue of musicality. As a teacher, he was a notorious reformer and wrote prolifically on issues of education in his time.
II. Interest in empirical and systematic analysis of music. Jaques-Dalcroze found the work of compatriot Mathias Lussy of particular value and shared his opinion that elements musicality can be rationally dissociated and learned, debunking the "mysteries" of expression. This section examines the close relationship to Lussy's 1874 treatise on musical expression with the content of Dalcroze's method as well as how both educators encountered psychological realities through examination of musical literature that would much later be verified in studies in the purely scientific realm.
III. Emile Jaques-Dalcroze's ambivalence to the West and common practice. While exhibiting considerable frustration with conservatory norms and the shortcomings of music education in schools, Jaques-Dalcroze appears to have been rather ambivalent about the disintegration of tonality and the West's struggle to preserve or modernize itself or to define itself against the Eastern Other. There appears to be no conflict in his thinking or methodology between the concept of Musicality in the Common Practice and after, nor between Western music and the non-Western. Although there is only some evidence of his engagement of non-Western sources in his own experience and writing, his successors have made considerable effort to include non-Western and modern material in the application of the method.
IV. Conclusion: Bringing Dalcroze into contemporary America. As I have established that the three dominant features of the formation of the Dalcroze Method are 1. frustration with educational institutions and norms, 2. systematic dissociation and learning of elements of musicality through analysis and movement and 3. ambivalence to trends in Western self-identification. Thus established, these features and their subsequent successful integration into the Method provide remarkable possibilities in upholding the humanistically necessary value and perpetuation of Musicality amid current issues of post-colonial and feminist critique as well as cultural identification in the post-cold war era. Additionally, assessing the ideals and practices of the Dalcroze method against the social sciences of contemporary thought can better facilitate the dialogue between the music and the sciences, giving the discussion socially informed language and meaning in a hitherto problematic collaboration.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Dalcroze: the personal connection
So why is the work of Emile Jacques-Dalcroze important to me personally? This is a critical point in my research, as my motivation to study the work of the Swiss composer/educator hinges on this attachment.
First of all, I have intuitively felt that my own plight as a composer and musician in the late 20th/early 21st century must still be seen in the context of the cultural catastrophe of the late 19th century. Rather than transitioning from one era to the next as composers of the past transitioned in widespread consensus from the ideals of the Baroque to those of the Classical and then the Romantic, there has been no clear trend at all in the century following the collapse of tonality except for the uncomfortable obsession with our relationship to the past, manifested in preservation, imitation, fragmentation, destruction, evasion and purposeful ambivalence. Little seems to have been resolved except for the slow resignation to the fact that the past is indeed gone and that the sun will rise tomorrow and the next day on an uncertain landscape. I look to the twilight moments of the Common Practice in much the way residents of Pompeii must have looked at the rumbling mountain in the distance - my fortunes and frustrations are tied deeply to it.
The life and work of Emile Jacques-Dalcroze coincides precisely with this transitional era. Born in 1865, he stood to inherit the legacy of Brahms and the great Romantics, but reached maturity as a musician just as the whole tonal paradigm unraveled. Furthermore, his Swiss background and personal interests fostered a taste for folk songs which, with their modal vitality, manifested a quiet assault on the Beethovenian tonal archetype from every corner of Europe. Jacques-Dalcroze seemed almost ambivalent to the chaos of early modernism as he created his Rhythmique amid the turbulence of cultural upheaval and the violence of war. His idea of human musicality was to be universal, and the role of the physical body in movement and space as a parallel to and even the source of music would transcend the abrupt difference between the music of the past and the music of the future. The biographical aspects of Jacques-Dalcroze's life in music that contribute directly to the nature of his method are 1.) his ambivalence to the supremacy of the Common Practice, 2.) his relationship to exotic, non-Western ideas and 3.) his theory of time, space and energy which unite the body to music which related directly to scientific ideas of the turn of the century.
But studying the significance of Emile Jacques-Dalcroze's work does not end in simply identifying the sources of his inspiration or even in studying his actual activities in disseminating the method. Dalcroze died in 1950 at the age of 85. By that point the method had already been brought to many other cities and countries including the United States, and a rigorous process of training and certifying teachers was already in place, centralized in the Geneva school. Jacques-Dalcroze's work had therefore already become a large scale collaboration at the time of his death and continued to flourish for the next 59 years until the present day, dealing with every kind of difference in institutions, style, politics, culture and personality it would encounter. Designed for flexibility and self-correction, the 'method' is really an approach in the hands of trained facilitators who have "experienced" how it works to explore the human essence of music, to shape it and be shaped by it.
As a composer in 2009, I struggle with a great many conflicts and uncertainties. In addition to the long disconnection from the canonical past and estrangement to the institutions which conserve the powerful but crushing legacy of the past, I face new challenges as well. "Classical" music has recently become the subject of never before seen criticism, probing its once held to be absolute and apolitical content. Gender signification, ethics of appropriation of ethnic music, class struggles and the wake of the Cold War have all raised serious questions about the music that comes down to me and the music I do and will produce. I could easily look at the dwindling audiences, the mounting criticism, the Quixotic Conservatory and irrelevance of contemporary music and choose to throw up my hands in dismay at the futility of persisting as an exponent of the classical tradition as a useless, shriveled Sybil. But when I put aside the cruel demands of 19th century progressivism for a moment, I feel a simple urgency to engage in some visceral activity so fundamental to the core of being human it seems silly to even imagine its "utility" or purpose. Jaques-Dalcroze's approach was not merely observational, meant to draw remarkable connections and say "look, there it is, isn't that interesting?" Rather, he had a distinct humanistic objective which forms the kernel of his observations, solutions, method and legacy. In Dalcroze I find kinship in frustration, idealism and pragmaticism in confronting the musical reality of today. The formation and development of his method, both during and after his lifetime, is not a panacea to fix everything that is wrong with music and education today with a few drops of a magic cordial, but is for me a useful thread into the labyrinth of understanding music and how I relate to it.
First of all, I have intuitively felt that my own plight as a composer and musician in the late 20th/early 21st century must still be seen in the context of the cultural catastrophe of the late 19th century. Rather than transitioning from one era to the next as composers of the past transitioned in widespread consensus from the ideals of the Baroque to those of the Classical and then the Romantic, there has been no clear trend at all in the century following the collapse of tonality except for the uncomfortable obsession with our relationship to the past, manifested in preservation, imitation, fragmentation, destruction, evasion and purposeful ambivalence. Little seems to have been resolved except for the slow resignation to the fact that the past is indeed gone and that the sun will rise tomorrow and the next day on an uncertain landscape. I look to the twilight moments of the Common Practice in much the way residents of Pompeii must have looked at the rumbling mountain in the distance - my fortunes and frustrations are tied deeply to it.
The life and work of Emile Jacques-Dalcroze coincides precisely with this transitional era. Born in 1865, he stood to inherit the legacy of Brahms and the great Romantics, but reached maturity as a musician just as the whole tonal paradigm unraveled. Furthermore, his Swiss background and personal interests fostered a taste for folk songs which, with their modal vitality, manifested a quiet assault on the Beethovenian tonal archetype from every corner of Europe. Jacques-Dalcroze seemed almost ambivalent to the chaos of early modernism as he created his Rhythmique amid the turbulence of cultural upheaval and the violence of war. His idea of human musicality was to be universal, and the role of the physical body in movement and space as a parallel to and even the source of music would transcend the abrupt difference between the music of the past and the music of the future. The biographical aspects of Jacques-Dalcroze's life in music that contribute directly to the nature of his method are 1.) his ambivalence to the supremacy of the Common Practice, 2.) his relationship to exotic, non-Western ideas and 3.) his theory of time, space and energy which unite the body to music which related directly to scientific ideas of the turn of the century.
But studying the significance of Emile Jacques-Dalcroze's work does not end in simply identifying the sources of his inspiration or even in studying his actual activities in disseminating the method. Dalcroze died in 1950 at the age of 85. By that point the method had already been brought to many other cities and countries including the United States, and a rigorous process of training and certifying teachers was already in place, centralized in the Geneva school. Jacques-Dalcroze's work had therefore already become a large scale collaboration at the time of his death and continued to flourish for the next 59 years until the present day, dealing with every kind of difference in institutions, style, politics, culture and personality it would encounter. Designed for flexibility and self-correction, the 'method' is really an approach in the hands of trained facilitators who have "experienced" how it works to explore the human essence of music, to shape it and be shaped by it.
As a composer in 2009, I struggle with a great many conflicts and uncertainties. In addition to the long disconnection from the canonical past and estrangement to the institutions which conserve the powerful but crushing legacy of the past, I face new challenges as well. "Classical" music has recently become the subject of never before seen criticism, probing its once held to be absolute and apolitical content. Gender signification, ethics of appropriation of ethnic music, class struggles and the wake of the Cold War have all raised serious questions about the music that comes down to me and the music I do and will produce. I could easily look at the dwindling audiences, the mounting criticism, the Quixotic Conservatory and irrelevance of contemporary music and choose to throw up my hands in dismay at the futility of persisting as an exponent of the classical tradition as a useless, shriveled Sybil. But when I put aside the cruel demands of 19th century progressivism for a moment, I feel a simple urgency to engage in some visceral activity so fundamental to the core of being human it seems silly to even imagine its "utility" or purpose. Jaques-Dalcroze's approach was not merely observational, meant to draw remarkable connections and say "look, there it is, isn't that interesting?" Rather, he had a distinct humanistic objective which forms the kernel of his observations, solutions, method and legacy. In Dalcroze I find kinship in frustration, idealism and pragmaticism in confronting the musical reality of today. The formation and development of his method, both during and after his lifetime, is not a panacea to fix everything that is wrong with music and education today with a few drops of a magic cordial, but is for me a useful thread into the labyrinth of understanding music and how I relate to it.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
introduction
What does it mean for music to have vitality? What is the significance of its alleged “loss?” Is it possible to analyze and quantify that mysterious ingredient which defies the normalization of theory and yet persists in the casual discourse of musical culture? At first, any investigation into such an obviously overblown and conspicuously subjective topic would seem Quixotic, if not ill-advised. In fact, the subject of vitality is problematic both from a formalist view as well as a social-critical view: for the former, such soft and anecdotal hearsay is not much help in the task of identifying patterns in sets, structures and techniques, and for the latter, the idea that music should even have the capacity to contain or lose a “vital essence” would make it dangerously immutable to skeptical criticism. And yet, it is precisely in this space that I wish to present the problematic yet stubbornly ubiquitous concept of vitality.
The idea that there is, could be or should be vitality in music is not something of my own invention. Rather, it has been a nagging topic throughout documented musical history. This study does not begin with a wishful, laden assumption that vitality either does or does not exist in the music, nor is so simple a conclusion likely to be reached. The germ of this investigation is the very real discussion among composers, performers and audience members over many years where verifiable tension has existed. Hot spots for such remarks are especially prevalent in times of stylistic transition, the self-conscious maintainance of performance practice of historical literature and the inter-generational process of music education.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Outline for discussion of Vitality
Vitality in music has been a contentious issue in areas of composition, performance practice and musicology for more than a century. Evidence of the importance of the issue can be seen in comments made by composers, performers and musicologists throughout the years.
An investigation into what this Vitality is and how it works is important for the following reasons:
1.) It reflects a perceived loss of continuity in a tradition that claims the legacy of the past.
2.) Because of reasons discussed in the second section of this paper, the perception of relative levels of vitality among musics of varying traditions creates an ethical problem.
3.) Besides the perceived loss of vitality, there are ways of describing it objectively, and the creation of various educational methods to reinforce certain practices is testament to a pragmatic approach to improve "lost" or unsatisfactory vitality in music.
Vitality can be studied through several solutions used by composers and performers in re-vitalizing music. These solutions include:
1.) Vitalizing by injection: Material of another tradition is appropriated as it is perceived to be more vital, and reinvigorates the new work.
2.) Supplanting tradition: Historic forms, perceived to be unsustainable in modern context, are abandoned and supplanted with borrowed, exotic forms where greater potential for vitality is assumed to be possible.
3.) Vitalizing by resuscitation: As decades and centuries place contemporary performers further and further from the origin of music preserved in manuscripts, techniques are devised to interpret music through informed guesswork toward the composer's intent. Thus, a work is "brought to life" through the efforts of the scholar-performer. Teachers in today's musical world vary in their approaches, as some prefer to rear young students in a "passed down" tradition while others seek to imbue in students the ability to apply principles of performance pratice as tools in resuscitating older works. Similar techniques are also used in the performance practice of newly composed music, where the composer is often unwilling or unable to communicate his intentions beyond the notated score and a few suggestions.
4.) Removing blockages: Modern music education methods use exercises to increase fluidity in music performance, often by means of associating musical ideas with physical movement of the body through time and against gravity.
Defining what exactly vitality is in music is not quite possible. That is because music is itself a thing that can exist only in the space of the performer and listener and in its means of transmission. However, the discussion of music having or lacking vitality persists, and ranges from highly subjective tastes to very objective, knowable points. Assessing what is "going on" in music that would grant it properties of vitality can be analyzed according to it's affect or appeal.
Music appeals to people in the following ways:
1.) Appeal to intellect
2.) Appeal to emotion
3.) Appeal to visceral sympathy ("can you dance to it?")
Additionally, we must look at the basic ways in which music exists in the service of human activity. Some of this is guesswork, but there are some ways in which scientists believe music may have emerged in our evolutionary history (see Levitan). These include:
1.) Group bonding
2.) Sexual selection
The success or failure of music in appealing to humans in the above ways and fulfilling these functional roles should be some indication of its vitality.
Thus, a basic outline of a paper on vitality should include the following:
I. A case for the study of Vitality (why it's important)
II. An assessment of means to achieving vitality, particularly when it is considered to be deficient
III. A working definition of what vitality is
IV. A proposal for how this knowledge is useful in:
a.) Improving performance practice of historic literature
b.) Improving communication between composers, performers and audiences
c.) Improving the ethical nature of transmission of material between cultures in transnational encounters
An investigation into what this Vitality is and how it works is important for the following reasons:
1.) It reflects a perceived loss of continuity in a tradition that claims the legacy of the past.
2.) Because of reasons discussed in the second section of this paper, the perception of relative levels of vitality among musics of varying traditions creates an ethical problem.
3.) Besides the perceived loss of vitality, there are ways of describing it objectively, and the creation of various educational methods to reinforce certain practices is testament to a pragmatic approach to improve "lost" or unsatisfactory vitality in music.
Vitality can be studied through several solutions used by composers and performers in re-vitalizing music. These solutions include:
1.) Vitalizing by injection: Material of another tradition is appropriated as it is perceived to be more vital, and reinvigorates the new work.
2.) Supplanting tradition: Historic forms, perceived to be unsustainable in modern context, are abandoned and supplanted with borrowed, exotic forms where greater potential for vitality is assumed to be possible.
3.) Vitalizing by resuscitation: As decades and centuries place contemporary performers further and further from the origin of music preserved in manuscripts, techniques are devised to interpret music through informed guesswork toward the composer's intent. Thus, a work is "brought to life" through the efforts of the scholar-performer. Teachers in today's musical world vary in their approaches, as some prefer to rear young students in a "passed down" tradition while others seek to imbue in students the ability to apply principles of performance pratice as tools in resuscitating older works. Similar techniques are also used in the performance practice of newly composed music, where the composer is often unwilling or unable to communicate his intentions beyond the notated score and a few suggestions.
4.) Removing blockages: Modern music education methods use exercises to increase fluidity in music performance, often by means of associating musical ideas with physical movement of the body through time and against gravity.
Defining what exactly vitality is in music is not quite possible. That is because music is itself a thing that can exist only in the space of the performer and listener and in its means of transmission. However, the discussion of music having or lacking vitality persists, and ranges from highly subjective tastes to very objective, knowable points. Assessing what is "going on" in music that would grant it properties of vitality can be analyzed according to it's affect or appeal.
Music appeals to people in the following ways:
1.) Appeal to intellect
2.) Appeal to emotion
3.) Appeal to visceral sympathy ("can you dance to it?")
Additionally, we must look at the basic ways in which music exists in the service of human activity. Some of this is guesswork, but there are some ways in which scientists believe music may have emerged in our evolutionary history (see Levitan). These include:
1.) Group bonding
2.) Sexual selection
The success or failure of music in appealing to humans in the above ways and fulfilling these functional roles should be some indication of its vitality.
Thus, a basic outline of a paper on vitality should include the following:
I. A case for the study of Vitality (why it's important)
II. An assessment of means to achieving vitality, particularly when it is considered to be deficient
III. A working definition of what vitality is
IV. A proposal for how this knowledge is useful in:
a.) Improving performance practice of historic literature
b.) Improving communication between composers, performers and audiences
c.) Improving the ethical nature of transmission of material between cultures in transnational encounters
Saturday, May 30, 2009
redraft proposal
My existing blogs represent ideas that I compiled (after substantial revision) into a draft of my dissertation (which is not posted here). The following is a proposal for redrafting the work as a whole.
In rethinking the structure of my paper (which seems to be the main problem, as the relationship of the content is not too clear in places), I realized that the main error was to separate the theoretical (and objective) discussion of rhythm from the more subjective (and politically volatile) idea of musicality. In the introduction, which was meant to make a pitch for connections between the objective and subjective aspects of music, I hesitated and fell into repeating the same segregation between content and culture I had aimed to relate. Looking back on it (after recovering from quite a bit of lost sleep) I realize this is largely due to structuring the paper before reaching the conclusions.
My proposed solution (toward which I'm curious to know your reaction) is this: Begin the paper directly exposing the issue of vitality. Vitality is a slippery issue for sure, but one with a long history of discussion and controversy. Classical musicians have spent more than a century bemoaning the loss of vitality in the West. This widely held view, that music (composition of new works as well as performance practice of historic literature) has lost something and must be reinvigorated (or else loathed) has contributed to 1) the ethically sticky issue of appropriating exotic material to "inject" vitality into the West's music (to revive a "moribund tradition" (Taylor's Beyond Exoticism, 87), 2) reinforcing the mythology of the past and thus creating an unattainable standard shrouded in the aura of mystery (and in this area, I've found Stephen Jay Gould's work reevaluating the meaning of trends and complete systems in evolution and baseball to be particularly helpful), and 3) developing modern educational methods (such as Dalcroze, Orff, Kodaly, and Suzuki) to compensate for deficiencies in music/talent education.
The last area (education methods) brings us to the very real possibility that something indeed was lost in the transmission of musical culture from past to present, from uncanonized to canonized. I feel, therefore, that confronting vitality in these various ways (defining it, tracing its history, and parsing fantasy from neurological fact) is critical in affirming the relevancy of contemporary music and musicianship and encouraging its future in controversial and uncertain times (the seemingly biased interest in the perpetuation of musical culture is actually a humanistic pitch for the value of music as fundamental human activity, rising out of our evolutionary past and relavent to our present).
Many if not most of my previously written chapters and subsections contribute to what vitality is and how it works. But I think where they fit together loosely along some subconscious frame that I felt intuitively but couldn't really deliver an explanation of, the chapters contribute far more powerfully toward unlocking the very real problem of Vitality. This is a problem that I neither invented nor wished to exist, but one that I've grown up with as a composer, performer and teacher.
In rethinking the structure of my paper (which seems to be the main problem, as the relationship of the content is not too clear in places), I realized that the main error was to separate the theoretical (and objective) discussion of rhythm from the more subjective (and politically volatile) idea of musicality. In the introduction, which was meant to make a pitch for connections between the objective and subjective aspects of music, I hesitated and fell into repeating the same segregation between content and culture I had aimed to relate. Looking back on it (after recovering from quite a bit of lost sleep) I realize this is largely due to structuring the paper before reaching the conclusions.
My proposed solution (toward which I'm curious to know your reaction) is this: Begin the paper directly exposing the issue of vitality. Vitality is a slippery issue for sure, but one with a long history of discussion and controversy. Classical musicians have spent more than a century bemoaning the loss of vitality in the West. This widely held view, that music (composition of new works as well as performance practice of historic literature) has lost something and must be reinvigorated (or else loathed) has contributed to 1) the ethically sticky issue of appropriating exotic material to "inject" vitality into the West's music (to revive a "moribund tradition" (Taylor's Beyond Exoticism, 87), 2) reinforcing the mythology of the past and thus creating an unattainable standard shrouded in the aura of mystery (and in this area, I've found Stephen Jay Gould's work reevaluating the meaning of trends and complete systems in evolution and baseball to be particularly helpful), and 3) developing modern educational methods (such as Dalcroze, Orff, Kodaly, and Suzuki) to compensate for deficiencies in music/talent education.
The last area (education methods) brings us to the very real possibility that something indeed was lost in the transmission of musical culture from past to present, from uncanonized to canonized. I feel, therefore, that confronting vitality in these various ways (defining it, tracing its history, and parsing fantasy from neurological fact) is critical in affirming the relevancy of contemporary music and musicianship and encouraging its future in controversial and uncertain times (the seemingly biased interest in the perpetuation of musical culture is actually a humanistic pitch for the value of music as fundamental human activity, rising out of our evolutionary past and relavent to our present).
Many if not most of my previously written chapters and subsections contribute to what vitality is and how it works. But I think where they fit together loosely along some subconscious frame that I felt intuitively but couldn't really deliver an explanation of, the chapters contribute far more powerfully toward unlocking the very real problem of Vitality. This is a problem that I neither invented nor wished to exist, but one that I've grown up with as a composer, performer and teacher.
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