by
Thomas J. Parente
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I recently attended a master class in which two highly skilled teachers
were helping a student interpret the two against three rhythm which
occurs in the sixth measure of Debussy’s First Arabesque. The student
was having a devil of a time trying to coordinate her hands in order to
execute the rhythm musically. Instead of a flowing performance conveying
the uniqueness of these two rhythms she was "over duplifying" the
triplets. That is the duple rhythm of the left hand totally overwhelmed
the triplet subdivision of the right. The aggregate result was something
much closer to a Latin American rhythmic feel than two against three.
The first teacher attempted to solve the problem by having the student
work on each hand separately and then together. He asked that the
student "feel" the rhythm of both parts simultaneously. The result of
this effort did enable the student to play beautifully each part
separately. However, when putting them together the "samba-like" rhythm
returned in all it’s glory!
The second teacher dealt with the problem in a more mathematical manner. The student was asked to say "don’t give a darn" to the rhythm of q ee q (quarter eighth,eighth, quarter) . She asked the student to insert the notes while saying this rhythm in the order: Together, right, left, right. While the mathematical-spatial challenge of the rhythm was resolved to some extent, the result was forced and unmusical. I found myself preferring the Latin American version. Very few of us has not been tempted to tear our hair out over this passage at one time or another. When confronted with such a seemingly innocuous problem even the most experienced among us can feel frustrated and somewhat helpless. Most of us resort to the second teacher’s solution and pray that eventually it will smooth out and miraculously become musical. However, sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. The problem can’t be solved by counting alone since verbalizing numbers or a rhythmically spoken phrase such as "not dif-fi-cult" overwhelms the expressivity of the music. The root of the problem lay firmly within the student’s basic kinesthetic intelligence which had not been developed sufficiently to elicit a musically intelligent rendering of this passage. To restate this somewhat differently: the level of the student’s kinesthetic intelligence would not permit her musical intelligence to deliver the 2X3 in a coherent flowing manner. I will provide the reader with a possible solution to this passage later on in this article. The subject of kinesthetic intelligence is dealt with in depth by Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education and co-director of Project Zero at Harvard University in his book "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences". In this book Gardner redefines the traditional concepts of IQ and identifies Kinesthetic Intelligence and Musical Intelligence as being two among the basic seven intelligences that we are hypothesized to possess. About Kinesthetic Intelligence Gardner writes: "Characteristic of such an intelligence is the ability to use one’s body in highly differentiated and skilled ways, for expressive as well as goal directed purposes....... . {and} those that involve the fine motor movements of one’s fingers and hands and those that exploit gross motor movements of the body" (H. Gardner: Frames of Mind, p 206). In this quote Gardner succinctly describes the kinesthetic intelligence that we as pianists must possess in order to function. About Musical Intelligence Gardner asserts: "Many composers....... have stressed the close ties that exist between music and bodily or gestural language. On some analyses, music itself is best thought of as an extended gesture - a kind of movement or direction that is carried out, at least implicitly, with the body". (H. Gardner: Frames of Mind, p 123). Gardner has obviously recognized the inter relatedness of KI and MI. It follows logically that the growth of one influences the growth of the other. Based on Gardner’s observations it behooves us to include overall body training as an essential component in the education of the whole musician. The prolific Swiss composer and legendary pedagogue, Emile Jaques Dalcroze (1865-1950) observed that the more expressive aspects of music were often absent in his theory students. He felt that his students’ early training had been overly concerned with exercises and the observance of strict rules which had the unfortunate effect of separating the student from his or her musical nature. He also observed that the musical flow of his students often was interrupted due to a blockage of their kinesthetic sense. To remediate this began he asked his students to participate in a series of physical exercises or games which he had invented. The purpose of these games was to connect a student’s kinesthetic sense with his or her musical intellect and vice versa and thus to eliminate these breaks of musical flow. Modern medical science has since verified Dalcroze’s intuition by confirming that the nerves responsible for the perception of movement (the vestibular nerves) are located in the inner ear and are the first to form in the fetus. Thus, the connection between hearing and movement is established extremely early in the development of the individual. The extraordinary aspect of this is that Dalcroze sensed, over one hundred years ago, that by training the entire body the students’ hearing and overall musicianship would improve! Dalcroze entitled his approach of studying music through movement, Eurhythmics, from the Greek words eu and rhythmos "meaning good rhythm or good flow". Eurhythmics is a unique means of internalizing musical concepts through body movement and the kinesthetic experience. It is a form of whole body-ear training which places emphasis on the musical development of the entire individual through the coordination of listening, feeling, thinking and physical action (all of which are prerequisites for pianists). Through movement activities or games students learn, in the deepest manner, such musical concepts as phrasing, rhythm, meter, nuance and a host of other musical subjects. Eurhythmics can be used as a tool to enable students to more deeply internalize the flow required by their piano music. I first began teaching eurhythmics when I graduated from the Manhattan School of Music and after receiving my Dalcroze teaching certification. My students were children aged 3-10. Many of these same students also studied piano with me privately. I quickly realized that those students who exhibited the most talent and the greatest ease at the piano were also in my eurhythmics classes. It became obvious to me that the musical training of thse students entire bodies through eurhythmics games was having a profound effect on their musicality. For instance, students who had eurhythmics had little or no problem understanding the rhythmic relationships which occur in subdivisions since in their early eurhythmics classes I had used subdivisions as a means of playing games. One game which the children loved and asked for over and over again was entitled "The Sun, Rain and Seeds". The story revolves around the farmer who plants his seeds and after several days of sunshine with no rain finally sees a cloud on the horizon. A rainstorm occurs and when the storm is over the seeds begin to grow. The children (aged four to six) would enact this story. One third would carry hula hoops above their heads and pretend to represent the sun moving very slowly above the seeds. The storm would ensue and another third of the children would become raindrops as they ran among the seeds. The sun would return and as they moved slowly, the seeds would begin to grow. The entire story was enacted in movement while I improvised at the piano. The children representing the sun moved to a rhythmic value of a whole note (carrying the hoops above their head made it subsequently quite easy for me to explain what a whole note looked like!). The children representing the rain moved in a bouncy fashion and ran among the seeds four times as fast or in quarters. The children representing the seeds grew to an accompaniment of a legato scale played in half notes in the right hand while the children representing the sun moved to whole notes in the bass clef. Each group performed the three rhythms accurately (the delight they experienced in repeating the game made it easy to insist on perfection) and at varying tempi and in so doing would experience the relative values of the whole, half and quarter notes. When we finally talked about those note values theoretically and gave them their names, the children had already performed them many times in this and similar mini-dramas. The spatial-time relationship between the various note values was therefore established in their entire body at a very early age (and before they actually knew what they were doing!) and thus made their eventual execution at the piano a non-issue! Another set of games was designed to give students the understanding of anacrusis - crusis, phrase and form. For this activity each child (aged 7-9) was given a ball and asked to bounce while I called out "bounce-catch and"(q ee)(quarter eighth,eighth). The meter for these improvisations was 2. The students ended up bouncing on one, catching on two and preparing to rebounce on "and". The "and" was of course the anacrusis. For fun (or so they thought) I would vary the meter and improvise in 3. The result was that the children bounced to "bouououounce-catch and" (h ee). As in two, during the "and" they would have to wind-up and get ready to bounce again. I would make sure that the music was highly accented and this would result in a rather large wind-up (which of course is the anacrusis) leading to a large bounce (which was the crusis). As you could well imagine they loved doing this - particularly the boys! They especially loved it when the tempo became quite slow which necessitated a giant bounce (the size of the bounce is a great way to experience the relationship between time and space). After the students were able to accomplish this easily, I asked them to step the beat while bouncing and catching. When this became easy, I then improvised phrases of equal length and had the students turn and go in a different direction after the cadence and at the beginning of the next phrase. To facilitate this I would first call out “change” at the appropriate time. After doing this for a while the students were able to sense where the cadence was and thus knew when to change directions without help from me. Several games such as this led easily to discussion of the terms Anacrusis and Crusis. I was also able to explain cadence and phrase since they had already been responding to these in movement. The students became proficient enough to be able to realize in movement such pieces as the first Dance from "Six German Dances" by Beethoven. I would introduce this by asking the class to first find where the crusis and anacrusis were and to bounce in time. After asking them to put away the balls, I would then request that they step the beat and show the downbeat by bending their knee. As before, the students were then asked to move in a different direction at the beginning of each phrase. Since, in this piece, the phrase after the repeat sign is the only one which begins differently from the other three phrases, I would ask the class to find the "different phrase" and stop and clap or gesture that one. When this was done easily, I would then divide the class in half and have half the class move to phrases one and three and the other half to phrase two and four. This easily led to discussions concerning binary form as each group moved an equal number of times with one group clapping the third phrase - which is the beginning of the B section. This lesson would often culminate in my requesting that the children themselves devise a choreography which would show anacrusis, crusis, phrase and form. Their ideas were always unique and imaginative. I remember one group transported themselves to a circus - complete with clowns! Through these and similar exercises students can gradually master the kinesthetic-body organizational skills necessary to take on the technical and expressive demands of music. When teaching my piano classes at Westminster Choir College, one very simple exercise which I use involves the students learning to clap or gesture in turn, the rhythm of both the bass and treble parts while stepping the beat in place (they’re in a piano lab after all). The opposite is then attempted whereby the student claps or gestures the beat and steps each part in turn. When both steps are learned thoroughly I then ask them to put both parts together - that is, step the bass part while clapping or gesturing the treble. Again, the students are then asked to do the opposite - that is step the treble while clapping or gesturing the bass part. When students can organize themselves physically to change freely from one to the other, they have internalized the rhythm at a much deeper level and have gained the rhythmic framework or pre-knowledge necessary to better approach the learning of the piece. All the aforementioned exercises are aimed initially at the large muscle groups. Dalcroze felt it best to train the large muscle groups before the smaller muscle groups since the larger muscle groups involve more of the individual. Thus, Gardner’s inference to the interconnection between the large and small muscle groups takes on additional meaning. It is the kinesthetic knowledge attained through the large muscle groups such as the legs which informs the smaller muscles such as the wrists and fingers. The student having performed these rhythmic tasks in whole body movement comes to the piano with an abundant pre-knowledge of the challenges contained within the music. Consequently, a firmer path toward eventual mastery is effected. The study of Dalcroze Eurhythmics involves the development of inner hearing - that is the ability to imagine the sound. Many of the exercises that we Dalcrozians create and utilize are aimed at the development of this very important skill. As piano teachers, we often guide our students at first to imagine the sound that he or she wishes to attain and then and only then to play the passage. The great pianist Abby Whiteside addressed this connection in an article entitled "The Physical Sensation Comes First" which was written in the December 15th, 1951 edition of Musical America. Whiteside wrote, "the teacher should begin with the physical sensation and build up to the mental concept, but the physical sensation must involve the entire body". She went on to observe, "The basic reaction to music, to the mood, one might say, takes place in the torso ...... nature coordinates from the center out". It is this training of the center referred to by Abby Whiteside and the inner hearing’s linkage to the body which eurhythmics does so well. Now back to our young lady with the three against two problem. If she had been fortunate enough to have studied music as as young child with a Dalcroze Certified Teacher, this probably would not have been the case as she would have had numerous classes involving triplet and duplets. It is very unlikely, however, that she would have had this advantage, due to the shortage of trained teachers. I will, therefore, provide a lesson that should be helpful in solving this problem. The lesson plan is somewhat involved because of the complexity of the problem and because the student needs to experience both subdivisions side by side and simultaneously and in many different ways before internalization can fully take place. It is important that the student first have many whole body experiences with these subdivisions. Running or jogging each of these is a fun way to provide this. Naturally, one needs a decent size space to allow the student the freedom to move without inhibitions. On a nice day I have even brought my students outside to my back yard which they enjoyed thoroughly! It is important that you accompany this experience by alternately improvising one subdivision then the other either at the piano or with a hand held percussion instrument such as a drum or rhythm sticks (which will enable you to move along side your student). Since we want to model creative use of the piano, it is best to improvise at the piano (unless outside). Switch freely from duples to triples and ask your student to change directions upon hearing the other (you can help out at first by calling out "change" at the appropriate time). It is particularly useful to use rhythmic phrases with your younger students such as "jog-ging" (ee) (duple eighths)and "fly-ing high" (eee)(trile eighths) in imitation of a bird. With the older students I use "du-ple" and "tre-o-lay". When they can move from one to the other smoothly, provide only the basic pulse (q)(quarter). At this point I like to play "opposite" with my student. I play one rhythm while the student does the other. If the student is having difficulty, you may find it necessary to help the student by playing what he is doing in the left hand while you play the other rhythm in your right hand (in this case you will be playing and your student will be hearing 2X3). When this step is accomplished try having the student clap or play rhythm sticks while he is moving. Bringing it to sound at this point will enable your student to hear how the two fits into the three. You may now try performing in duplets while your student moves and plays rhythmic sticks in triplets. This can be accomplished with both of you clapping and stepping simultaneously (remembering the rhythmic phrases of before can be helpful), or only playing rhythm sticks together or by playing a black note improvisation at the piano. It is important at this point to tell your student to listen to how both parts fit together. At first, he will most likely be pulled into your rhythm but gradually he will be able to be independent and be able to listen to you simultaneously. This step is all important! To be able to perform one rhythm while hearing the other is an indication that a degree of internalization of both rhythms has taken place. Before attempting the Debussy you may try tapping one rhythm with your right hand into your student’s left hand while he does the opposite with the other rhythm. A good duet to play with your student before going on to the Debussy is the fourth duet from "Melodic Pieces for Piano" op. 149 by Diabelli. This piece is full of 2x3 rhythmic patterns in each part. When implementing a lesson plan such as this, do not go on to a step until the previous one is fully internalized. When you observe your student moving easily and gracefully, internalization has most likely taken place and he is thus ready for the next step. The student’s KI has now been raised to the point where he can put his MI to work. The student can now more successfully unite the intellectual, kinesthetic, expressive and rhythmic elements resulting in an understanding of musical flow which heretofore left these disparate elements un connected. I would now like to provide the reader with a sample blueprint for preparing your student to play the well known Minuet in G, from Bach’s Anna Magdalena Notebook, as this piece affords interesting rhythmical counterpoint issues which can be clarified through the use of eurhythmic strategies. The following lesson plan demonstrates how we may use movement in our studios to help evoke a greater sense of musicality from our students. Note that this is ideally done with two or more students in order to better accomplish the "For Further Exploration" step.
Eurhythmics Lesson Plan for Preparing Minuet in G
Musical issues which will be addressed: twice as fast, twice as slow,
dotted halves, musical counterpoint.
Teacher Student1. Improvises music in 3/4 or plays sections Dances freely to the spirit of the of the Minuet. Music. 2. Same Steps and gestures the beat in the air. 3. Plays steady eighths and quarters alternately Claps (or patsches) then walks in 3/4 using a percussion instrument. the eighths or quarters. N.B. It is important that the student(s) clap all exercises in a free, circular manner. 4. Plays each part of the Minuet, Sings on la and using graceful hands separately, phrase by phrase. hand gestures “paints” the music on an imagined canvas. 5. Teacher plays hands together. Steps gestures, and sings the treble, then the bass alternately, indicating cadences by changing directions. Group Lesson 6a. Plays the Minuet phrase by phrase. Half the class steps and sings the treble and the other half steps and sings the bass.
Private Lesson6b. The individual piano student can sing and move one part while the teacher sings and moves the other part. 7. Plays the Minuet phrase by phrase. Steps the treble and claps the bass simultaneously. Alternates. 8. The student should now sing and "play" the notes in the air while the teacher plays each hand separately at the piano. 9. THE Piano STUDENT SHOULD now BEGIN playing THE PIECE.
FOR FURTHER EXPLORATIONIn a class environment, one half of the class can clap the treble part while the other half claps the bass part. The class can also realize the rhythm of the piece through clapping each part into another partner’s hands. An additional way in which this piece can be experienced is by having one half of the class move and sing the treble part while the other half steps and sings the bass part. They could also hold hands with a partner from the other group while performing the previous step. This exercise is fun and a great way for students to experience both parts simultaneously while getting to make musical friends! By employing Dalcrozian principles students will have made a fundamental connection between the Minuet and their musculature, nervous system, and voices. Over a long and sustained period of time our students music-kinesthetic connection will grow exponentially. Eurhythmics offer s the means of promoting and raising our students’ KI and MI through the use of fun activities. To provide your students with a moving experience try a movement experience!
BiographyThomas J. Parente is a former vice president of the Dalcroze Society of America and an Associate Professor of Piano at Westminster Choir College of Rider University. He is a frequent clinician and most recently presented at the Dalcroze Council of Australia’s International Summer Session. He has also given workshops and clinics at the Gina Bachauer Piano Festival, the Conservatorio de Puerto Rico, the National Piano Pedagogy Convention, the Delaware State Music Teachers Convention, Westminster Choir College’s Summer Session, Montclair State University, Towson State University, The Northwest Chapter of the Dalcroze Society of America and for many other organizations. His book entitled "Essential Materials for Class Piano" and several new works for intermediate piano will be distributed in September by Subito Music Corp. He maintains a private studio in his Montclair, N.J. home. |