EURHYTHMICS

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Over one hundred years ago, the Swiss theoretician and pedagogue, Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950), realised that true musicianship requires musical concepts and processes to be physically internalized, to the extent that they become intuitive.  He noted that while many of his students intellectually understood music, they did not really ‘feel’ it and were rhythmically unstable.   They were deficient in what Howard Gardner was to identify a century later as bodily-kinesthetic intelligence (See Multiple Intelligences)

The well known Alexander technique addresses this deficiency as a malaise resulting from Western civilisation’s artificial separation of mind and body.  With civilisation, survival has become less and less dependent on our intuitive, sensory and physical capabilities with the result that they have atrophied. Our bodily-kinesthetic intelligence - or kinaesthesia - has become unreliable with consequences more far reaching than rhythmic instability only.  The Alexander technique aims to re-educate kinaesthesia in order to remedy a range of debilitating physical conditions.  

Kinaesthesia

 Kinaesthesia has been defined as “the feedback mechanism of the nervous system which conveys information between the mind and the body.”  It is essential in all forms of musicing because it is what coordinates “all the capacities we use when we engage in music: our senses of hearing, sight, and touch; our faculties of knowing and reasoning; our ability to feel and to act on our feelings."   (from the homepage of the Dalcroze Society of America)

What is eurhythmics?

Eurhythmics literally means ‘good rhythm’.  It was the name Dalcroze gave to his methods of stimulating, developing and refining kinaesthesia through activities that require musical concepts to be expressed physically through movement.  These activities, starting with the most basic concepts (e.g. a steady pulse) become increasingly complex, challenging and integrative. 

Eurhythmics is in fact only one of three aspects to Dalcroze pedagogy, the others being solfege and improvisation.  Solfege, solfeggio, or what is some­times called solmization is the system of naming the notes of a scale with syllables instead of letter names, i.e. doh, re, mi, fa, soh, la and ti instead of C,D,E,F,G,A and B.  Generally, the term is applied to the ‘fixed-doh’ system where doh always is C.  This is unlike the moveable doh system (Tonic Sol-fa) that is so well known in Africa where doh is applied to the first degree of the major scale whatever pitch that should happen to be.   The moveable doh or ‘relative sol-fa’ system is more widely used in the world, probably due to the influence of Kodály pedagogy.   Improvisation is the third aspect of Dalcroze pedagogy.

Kinaesthesia and intuition

Recent research is pointing to an integral connection between kinaesthesia and the faculty we call intuition, the complex yet instantaneous ‘processing’ that precedes and informs all conscious thought and action. If action could only proceed from conscious thought, activities like riding a bicycle, dancing, or playing a musical instrument would be impossible.  In each of these, the participant must act spontaneously; time does not allow for thinking things through.  The brain must instantly con­vert a complex of physical sensations (information received through the senses) into information about bodily position, weight, force, muscle tension and movement AND this information must then be converted into electro-chemical impulses that prompt the muscles to respond appropriately.

Movement, like conscious thought, requires the processing of concepts stored in memory.  However, the concepts that give rise to movement are physical; they are not mediated by or dependent on discursive symbols (e.g. language); they are kinaesthetic, not verbal.   Nevertheless, the processing that is required is largely the same, involving  ‘schema’ or ‘operations’ that make it possible for stored concepts (physical ‘memories’) to be accessed, sorted, prioritized, linked and integrated with sensory input received but an instant earlier. 

Improvisation

Improvisation in music and dance means spontaneous composition, i.e. one composes at the same time one is playing or moving.  Improvisation is the equivalent of extemporisation in speech.  But while one could never be considered linguistically competent if unable to extemporise in a language, improvisation has somehow never been regarded as that vital in music education.  Indeed, many music educators are themselves unable to improvise, even at a basic level.   Imagine not being able to speak beyond saying words that have been worked out and written down in advance, usually by someone else.

Dalcroze placed great importance on improvisation, as have those who have been influenced by him, e.g. Carl Orff.  For it is here that intuition is exercised at the highest level.  Even at the simplest level, improvisation requires concepts to have been internalised to the extent that they have become kinaesthetic. 

 Collective improvisation is even more challenging.  The participant is not provided with an explicit set of instructions to ensure that his contribution integrates successfully with what the rest are doing.  Rather s/he has to imagine intensely so as to successfully anticipate where others are going, to know when to take the lead, when not to, when to be silent, where and when to effect changes, etc.  

Eurhythmics and Orff pedagogy

The Orff approach to music education is well known.  Many of its premises are Dalcrozian, most significantly the common sense realisation that feeling precedes conscious thought as well as the golden rule of education: proceed from the known to the unknown.  Orff drew on the chants, rhymes and games that were already part of the vocabulary and day to day experience of young children, using these to help them internalize a repertoire of rhythmic and melodic pat­terns that could later be accessed and employed in their own creative efforts.

The child-friendly instruments Orff designed are superb as vehicles for developing kinaesthesia. The Orff melodic percussion includes glockenspiels, xylophones, and metallophones in all pitch ranges.  These are mostly diatonic, but because the keys/bars can be removed and replaced with chromatic notes, many scales and modes are possible.  Also, being able to remove keys makes it possible to configure the instrument for the greatest possible ease of playing, e.g. to create pentatonic patterns and thereby remove any possibil­ity of harmonic clashes.  Effective rhythmic and harmonic accompaniments to singing and movement are easily arrived at through the combination of simple ostinati, drones and what Orff called ‘borduns” (drones of open fifths).  These sound great together with and as a support for pentatonic and modal improvisations.  Later, as the children acquire greater confidence, improved kinesthesia and an increased repertoire of internalized patterns, the parameters are made more challenging structurally, rhythmically, melodically and harmonically.  

Extra-musical outcomes

The discussion regarding the link between kinesthesia and intuition suggests eurhythmics as a means of enhancing cognitive functioning; it develops individuals who literally can ‘think on their feet’, who are able to solve problems more quickly and creatively.  Research in the USA has shown that students who are musically active perform significantly higher on the national Scholastic Achievement Tests (SATs).  But there are other important extra-musical benefits, especially as regards the development of social competence and self-esteem.  Eurhythmics has proved especially beneficial in the education of special needs children.

With its emphasis on collective activity, eurhythmics assists the socialisation of students. All forms of collective activity, team sport for example, require and cultivate cooperation -  the willingness to subordinate self interests to collective interests.  But what collective musical activity is especially effective in developing is empathy - the capacity to enter imaginatively into the feelings and thoughts of others.  Empathy involves much more than the subordination of self interests; it involves self transcendence - “a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful that exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.” - the precondition to an authentic social conscience.  (Percival Bysshe Shelly, “A Defence of Poetry,” in English Critical Texts, ed. D.J. Enright and Ernst de Chickera (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 233-234.)

EURHYTHMICS RECONSIDERED - Jeff Robinson (2005)

EURHYTHMIC ACTIVITIES / LESSON PLANS