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.