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.