The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze | Page 3

FRENCH OF E. JAQUES-DALCROZE[1]
[1] First published in Le Rhythme (Bâle) of December, 1909.
It is barely a hundred years since music ceased to be an aristocratic art
cultivated by a few privileged individuals and became instead a subject
of instruction for almost everybody without regard to talent or
exceptional ability. Schools of Music, formerly frequented only by
born musicians, gifted from birth with unusual powers of perception for
sound and rhythm, to-day receive all who are fond of music, however
little Nature may have endowed them with the necessary capacity for
musical expression and realization. The number of solo players, both
pianists and violinists, is constantly increasing, instrumental technique
is being developed to an extraordinary degree, but everywhere, too, the
question is being asked whether the quality of instrumental players is
equal to their quantity, and whether the acquirement of extraordinary
technique is likely to help musical progress when this technique is not
joined to musical powers, if not of the first rank, at least normal.
Of ten certificated pianists of to-day, at the most one, if indeed one, is
capable of recognizing one key from another, of improvising four bars
with character or so as to give pleasure to the listener, of giving
expression to a composition without the help of the more or less
numerous annotations with which present day composers have to
burden their work, of experiencing any feeling whatever when they
listen to, or perform, the composition of another. The solo players of
older days were without exception complete musicians, able to
improvise and compose, artists driven irresistibly towards art by a
noble thirst for aesthetic expression, whereas most young people who
devote themselves nowadays to solo playing have the gifts neither of

hearing nor of expression, are content to imitate the composer's
expression without the power of feeling it, and have no other sensibility
than that of the fingers, no other motor faculty than an automatism
painfully acquired. Solo playing of the present day has specialized in a
finger technique which takes no account of the faculty of mental
expression. It is no longer a means, it has become an end.
As a rule, writing is only taught to children who have reached a
thinking age, and we do not think of initiating them into the art of
elocution until they have got something to say, until their powers of
comprehension, analysis and feeling begin to show themselves. All
modern educationalists are agreed that the first step in a child's
education should be to teach him to know himself, to accustom him to
life and to awaken in him sensations, feelings and emotions, before
giving him the power of describing them. Likewise, in modern methods
of teaching to draw, the pupil is taught to see objects before painting
them. In music, unfortunately, the same rule does not hold. Young
people are taught to play the compositions of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven,
Chopin and Liszt, before their minds and ears can grasp these works,
before they have developed the faculty of being moved by them.
There are two physical agents by means of which we appreciate music.
These two agents are the ear as regards sound, and the whole nervous
system as regards rhythm. Experience has shown me that the training of
these two agents cannot easily be carried out simultaneously. A child
finds it difficult to appreciate at the same time a succession of notes
forming a melody and the rhythm which animates them.
Before teaching the relation which exists between sound and movement,
it is wise to undertake the independent study of each of these two
elements. Tone is evidently secondary, since it has not its origin and
model in ourselves, whereas movement is instinctive in man and
therefore primary. Therefore I begin the study of music by careful and
experimental teaching of movement. This is based in earliest childhood
on the automatic exercise of marching, for marching is the natural
model of time measure.
By means of various accentuations with the foot, I teach the different

time measures. Pauses (of varying lengths) in the marching teach the
children to distinguish durations of sound; movements to time with the
arms and the head preserve order in the succession of the time
measures and analyse the bars and pauses.
All this, no doubt, seems very simple, and so I thought when beginning
my experiments. Unfortunately, the latter have shown me that it is not
so simple as it seems, but on the contrary very complicated. And this
because most children have no instinct for time, for time values, for
accentuation, for physical balance; because the motor faculties are not
the same in all individuals, and because a number of obstacles impede
the exact and rapid physical realization of mental conceptions. One
child is always behind the beat