Music as Culture: The Importance of Relationships

(James Cuskelly is Co-ordinator of Aural Studies and Music Education at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.)

I would like to begin this paper by posing a question. “What is good music?” Whenever this question is asked, responses, particularly among those with formal music training, inevitably include pieces of music written by the ‘great composers’ – Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. In some cases, less immediate names appear – Cage, Coltrane or Kats-Chernin. Individuals without formal musical training also have very definite ideas about what constitutes good music and when I asked this question of a group of teenagers recently, suggestions included Sly, Silver Chair, Sarah McLaughlin and Savage Garden. This tendency to ascribe a sense of great value to particular pieces indicates a certain attitude toward music that is bounded by notions of a canon – a group of musical works that are esteemed for preconceived, yet ill-defined, notions of conformity to a certain style, expression or sensibility.

It is interesting to note that this process of identifying the pieces or style that one values as “good music” necessarily involves processes of measuring against some standard. Regardless of whether that standard be personal, discipline-based or socially proscribed, the act of asserting that this music is ‘good’ and that music is ‘not good’ involves judgements about the music against certain criteria, and is a reflection of the individual workings of the phenomenon of the canon.

Christopher Small believes that “Those taking part in a musical performance are in effect saying – to themselves, to one another, and to anyone else who may be watching or listening – this is who we are.” (Emphases in original) (Small, 1998, p. 134) Small has coined the phrase musicking to explain that engagement with music is not restricted to those who are actively performing, and that musicking is “To take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing, or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing.” (Small, 1998, p. 9) Such a broad definition includes all of the activities associated with music, and by implication, all such activities reflect a certain consciousness in humans about identity – about “who we are”. Thus, preference and decision making around participation in music is inherently associated with human consciousness, self and identity.

However, musical preference - the music to which we listen and dance, that we perform or compose, the concerts that we attend and the CDs that we buy – cannot simply be explained as a simple matter of a cause and effect, of education and the cultivation of good taste. Our individual and collective notions of the canon also indicate deeper ideals and values that we hold in regard to our relationship to our cultural context and the ways in which that music captures, endorses and reflects those ideas. The act of naming particular music as ‘good music’ may thus serve to identify or place us within the social milieu, and in this way produce feelings of affiliation with or exclusion from certain groups or particular echelons within society. In short, the music that we hold as ‘good music’ is not only a reflection of our exposure to, experience of and knowledge about music, but may also serve as litmus test for our sense of social allocation.

Thinking in terms of the canon - a body of musical works that represent something about our essential individual identity and values – inevitably gives rise to the notion that certain music is privileged over other music. In the Western Art Music tradition, this has led to the idea that the music of particular composers - Handel, Haydn and Hindemith for example – is esteemed over other music and is somehow ‘more worthy’ than other examples of music. According to Grove Music Online, the canon “stands as an image of timeless perfection in sharp contrast to the contemporary world.” (Accessed 10.07.2005)

Particular music is often included in the canon on the grounds that it conforms to aesthetic notions, embodying ideals of design and form, and the notion that certain examples of instrumental music represent a pinnacle in this form of artistic endeavour gives rise to the term “absolute music.” Ideas of ‘good music’ are thus defined by the ways in which certain pieces conform to culturally encoded notions of structure and form. While the emphasis is on formal musical relationships, underlying principles about the nature of human relationships is embodied within such thinking. Susanne Langer believes that music – at least, ‘good music’ - captures and reflects something of the morphology of human emotional experience and expression. (Langer, 1953, p.27) She believes that artistic education is the “education of feeling” and that the “real education of emotion is not the conditioning effected by social approval and disapproval, but the tacit, personal, illuminating contact with the symbols of feeling.” (Langer, 1953, p. 401)

Langer has expressed only a partial understanding of the human experience here; her somewhat compartmentalised view of human emotion reflects her own culturally delineated dispositions. There is no recognition that the symbols of feeling and the ways in which such feelings are captured within musical structures are themselves culturally bounded. Further, she has a rather shallow appreciation of the influence of the environmental and cultural context and its influence on emotion and expression; there is great danger in making generalisations about the universal as a basis for musical expression, let alone music education. Thinking about human feelings and expression only in idealised forms, realised musically, both reinforces established mores and proscribes against divergent activity (either musical or personal). Sociologists such as Bourdieu (1984) have posited the idea that notions of good taste realised as the Western Art Music canon operate more as mechanism for social exclusion rather than as peak expression of musical thinking and artistic endeavour. While there is insufficient time in this paper to address the complexity of the issues surrounding notions of the ascendancy of the musical canon, it is important to note that such a view of music and musical works is elitist, in the negative sense of the word, and perpetuates notions of power and supremacy inherent within Western society. Suffice to say that, in our post-modern world, a more pluralistic view is more prevalent, wherein a broad range of musical expression, deriving from a range of traditions and contexts is equally held to be valuable.

The tendency to value certain music over others, to formulate ideas about which music is good music and which isn’t, would appear to be fundamental to our thinking as social beings, and reflects something not only of our personal tastes and preferences but also our social perceptions and enculturation. It has become popular to belittle the Western canon as being narrow, exclusive and obsolete, and such criticisms do have some validity. The point to be emphasised here however is that there is a strong tendency in human beings to identify with cultural materials as part of the process of social contextualisation and identity formation. Thus, excessive criticism of a specific genre of music, in this case, music in the Western Art tradition represents a flawed way of thinking about music in the broadest sense. There is little to be gained in jettisoning the study of the western canon and merely replacing it with another body of material lifted from another genre, whether that be popular, jazz or world music. Such a process merely replaces one canon with another. Which music is being privileged may have changed but the underlying values of hierarchy and power have not altered at all. Significantly, such a process fails to tackle the complexity of the issues surrounding the selection of cultural materials and their suitability for use in curriculum, and adds little to the profession. Music educators not only need materials appropriate to the target group, but also require materials that directly and meaningfully contribute to the systematic development of an informed and intelligent understanding of music. Merely substituting contemporary materials without due consideration of their efficacy in promoting understanding and meaning for students in the biggest picture serves to mask the real issues and is essentially, a flawed way of approaching the task at hand.

Despite the pre-eminence of the Western Art music canon, it is evident that we cannot comprehensively answer the question, “What is good music?” by responses based only on form and design, or supposed emotional content and expressiveness. While the majority of people, in westernized society at least, are surrounded by music in a myriad of forms, it is apparent that most do not base their opinions about good music on an understanding and aesthetic appreciation of structural elements. Indeed, most people are substantially lacking in formal knowledge concerning the intrinsic relationships exemplified in the canonic repertory, are not able to bring to the music a preset of propositional knowledge and are not actually involved in the world of music as active music makers at all. Rather, the majority are engaged with music as consumers. In the main, those within broader society are lacking in substantial Formalist knowledge in music and the implication is that individuals and the population collectively respond principally, if not exclusively, to music only in terms of the Referential meaning – that set of relationships not within music but more around it, and which refers to that complex set of personal, social and cultural relationships that exist around any music.

It is apparent then, that music has at least two sets of relationships that can be considered when determining its value, Referential meaning and Formalist meaning. In universities and conservatoria, and traditionally within many approaches to music education, music is often esteemed predominantly for its Formalist meaning – those intra-musical relationships that are evident within the fabric of the structure of the composition. In other circles – the popular world in particular but also within certain supposedly cultivated sectors of Western society – music is overwhelmingly dominated by meanings that are unrelated to the internal relationships in the music. Thus, the meaning that an individual holds in regard to music may vary from piece to piece or from one experience of a particular piece to another, and is dependent, upon other things, on prior experience and knowledge.

The significance of relationships both within and around music needs to be carefully considered and there are a number of important issues to be reflected upon if we are to achieve the aim of supporting students in the development of a holistic sense of meaning in music. Firstly, it is apparent that music acts to delineate certain social groupings within broader society. Thus, classical music is most often associated with the conservative, middle class while most genres of popular music are clearly skewed toward the younger generation. In his book Music: A very short introduction (1998), Nicholas Cook explores the ways in which rock music ”stands for youth, freedom, being true to yourself” while classical music “encodes maturity and, by extension, the demands of responsibility to family and to society”. (1998, p. 3) Even within these sweeping categories, there are sub-categories, and an almost infinitesimal fragmentation of cultural association with music. The point for music educators is that these associations and presumptions about various types of music can result in a very real “clash of cultures” within the classroom. It is important that music teachers manage classroom environments in such a manner as to avoid pitting certain types of music against another. The careless inclusion of examples from the Western Art tradition, justified on the spurious grounds that “this is good music”, can be seen by students as the imposition of music that is culturally other and contrary to their own projections of self identity. The resulting difficulties are not discipline-based as such, but are more sociological in nature. If students are lacking in formal musical knowledge, it is more likely that they will respond to music from a referential platform only and consequently, see the music in terms of its cultural associations rather than in terms of its inner structures and relationships. In short, they are not engaged in a process of trying to understand the music in its own right at all, but rather, are engaged in a process of trying to understand the ways in which the music helps them to define and articulate their own sense of self. DeNora (2003) suggests that there is a paradigm shift needed here, from teaching – which sociologically can be seen as a process of imposing and maintaining hierarchical structures, particularly in music, of talent and achievement – to learning, which is more focussed on the social construction of knowledge and the ways in which students engage in processes of knowledge construction that affirm their sense of belonging and social identity.

Secondly, referential associations with music tend to reflect the individuals broader cultural experiences, expectations and definitions of self. The music becomes the tool for the affirmation of cultural identity - Small’s “this is who we are “ - and it seems that it does so regardless of the depth of formal knowledge that the individual holds regarding the intrinsic relationships to be found within the music. Music may perform a powerful social function, emphasising or accentuating referential associations between music and social identity.

“You only need to hear a second or two of music in a commercial to know what kind of music it is, what genre (classical, trad jazz, heavy metal, house) is being referenced, what sort of associations and connotations it brings with it. (I don’t mean that everyone can say that the music is heavy metal or house or whatever, but that you somehow know that the music goes with fast food or financial institutions or whatever the commercial is about – or, if it doesn’t, that it is being used ironically.)” (emphases in original) (Small, 1998, p.4)

This link between music, referential meaning and identity has been ruthlessly exploited by rapacious corporations in the pursuit of profit. The pervasive and insidious influence of the mass media has served to emphasise the referential in music, attaching a product, a lifestyle or particular emotional content to music regardless of the intrinsic qualities of the music itself. The commercial world is not alone in such appropriation however, for there are numerous instances of music, divorced from its original cultural or musical context and intent, being used to express particular points of view or for the political advancement of individuals or specific ideologies. Sadly, protestations about such manipulative behaviour are unusual and there seems to be a broad social acceptance that music, regardless of its particular cultural or intrinsic meaning, should be thus utilized. Indeed, Scott (1990) believes that “To the average American, music in advertising is a commonplace… Advertising music is ashared experience we can parrot and parody together.” (p.223)

This lack of knowledge and heavy dependence upon the referential for meaning allows the individual to be manipulated by others who do have access to particular knowledge. Indeed, some researchers would argue the consumer is not only vulnerable to manipulation, but that many are susceptible to classical conditioning by the major advertising and marketing organisations. (Bierley, McSweeney, & Vannieuwkerk, 1985; Gorn, 1982) The ubiquitous use of music in advertising underscores the pre-eminence and magnitude of music’s importance in the commercial world: in the minds of marketing professionals, there is a strong correlation between mood and purchasing habits, of sales and profit. The inducement of particular emotional states has been the subject of much research, and the use of music continues to be a vital component of any marketing strategy. While Gardner and Vandersteel (1984) believe that there are many variables affecting mood, Milliman found that the speed of traffic within stores can be markedly influenced by tempo (1982), and that diners stayed longer and drank more when music with slow tempi was played (1986). Modality too plays a significant part in influences shoppers moods, and Infante and Berg (1979) affirmed earlier findings that the major tonality was linked with pleasurable and happy experiences, thereby positively affecting consumer sentiment and willingness to spend. Gorn’s research (1982) concluded that through classical conditioning, particular products become associated with the positive feelings of liked music: the pairing of a conditioned stimulus (a brand) with an unconditioned stimulus (music) produces emotional responses which may then be associated with the brand. Such findings were endorsed by Gardner (1986) who believes that there is a correlation between mood states and evaluations and judgements.

The real-world situation is that most individuals are avidly consuming products - both musical and general products - with little understanding of the music itself (the internal relationships to be found within the music) nor the ways in which that music has been controlled by the marketing machine to achieve profit targets. It would seem fair to claim a direct relationship between consumer choices and consumption, and levels of knowledge and information; the more informed an individual is as a consumer, whether in terms of music or general products, the more discerning that individual’s choices become. There is no doubt that this process of being educated musically must include Formal knowledge – the internal and structural relationships within the music itself - alongside referential associations, issues of performance ethics, and the means and processes of production. Decision-making processes that only draw on referential meanings invariably leaves the consumer open to exploitation by the manoeuvring of cynical marketing organisations. Part of the process of music education must be a commitment to empowering individuals with knowledge, knowledge that they can use to make informed and intelligent decisions regarding their purchasing habits.

This ability of music to be associated with other meanings highlights the fact that, without formal propositional knowledge of music, the majority have only a superficial understanding of the intricate workings and relationships found within music and are thus, ultimately unable to independently critique, and formulate ideas and opinions about music. In fact, such a lack of skills and knowledge fundamentally dis-empowers, and serves to perpetuate paradigms that accrue power (and money) to specific individuals and groups within society.

“What is good music?” The noted musicologist, Christopher Small, says that this is the wrong question to ask because there is no such thing as music. Of course, we have physical evidence of music in the form of scores and recordings, but Small believes that music is not found in these objects; music is not an object. Music is not something we have, or buy, or merely read about or discuss – music is something we do. Small believes that music is concerned with action, and he calls the action of making music, musicking. To answer this question, Small believes that we need to look at music in action, and that it is in understanding the relationships in and around music, that we are able to make judgements about its value.

Small’s emphasis on dynamic music making and engagement with music is critical here – music must remain a vibrant form of discourse, living within a contemporary context. It is the active engagement with music, whether in performing, listening or composing that is the key to maintaining a vital, dynamic musical culture. There is no doubt that the great works of the canon are valuable and that they should feature within school curricula and in our broader cultural lives. However, without specific and substantial knowledge, the meaning, the relationships between the sounds themselves as they are ingeniously laid out within the musical fabric, are sadly, hidden from many.

It is clear that performance is a crucial component of music but engagement with music is not only concerned with performance. Research in this area, particularly by Edwin Gordon, indicates that we are engaged with music when our musicianship and audiation abilities are active. According to Gordon, audiation forms the basis for all of the processes connected with music.

Audiation is to music what thought is to language. Consider language, speech, and thought. Language is the result of the need to communicate. Speech is the way we communicate. Thought is what we communicate. Music, performance, and audiation have parallel meanings. Music is the result of the need to communicate. Performance is how this communication takes place. Audiation is what is communicated.

(Gordon, 1999, p.42)

Participation in and engagement with the Formalist meanings found within music require knowledge that is grounded in an internalised sense of musicianship. Thus, it becomes apparent that when we are making judgements about the value of any particular musical performance, such decisions must also weigh up the quality of musicianship, of audiation, in the equation.

Small puts it this way:

The relationships that are created in a musical performance are of two kinds: first, those among the sounds that the musicians are making, whether of their own initiative or following directions, and second, those among the people who are taking part. …These two sets of relationships themselves relate in an ever more complex spiral of relationships, which become too complex for words to articulate but which the musical performance itself is able to articulate clearly and precisely. (Small 1998, p.184)

The philosopher and music educator, David Elliot, has captured similar ideas in his praxial philosophy of music education. Strongly influenced by the work of the ancient Greeks, particularly Aristotle, Elliot believes that good music programs must not only be involved with techné (technique) – the relationships between the sounds – but also with telos (goals) and eidos (ideals) - the relationships between the people. He believes that, in order to be successful, music educators must be highly trained within the discipline and enact their practice with a strong sense of ethics. Like Kodály and Gordon, Elliot believes that musicianship is at the heart of music education and that it is the development of musicianship, particularly procedural musicianship, which most significantly contributes to a sense of achievement, progress, confidence and esteem. Further, he believes that musicianship is context specific and that educators must always approach the teaching and learning with great sensitivity, both in terms of the people involved in the learning context but also in terms of the people who feel some sense of connection or ownership with the music.

This paper has considered the question, “What is good music?”, and has explored notions of identity and cultural expression. It is clear that all people – students, teachers and parents – have strong notions about what constitutes good music. It is equally clear that an individual’s definition of good music is connected to a sense of self, belonging and social context. The imposition of hierarchically based notions of ‘good music’ may very well lead to conflict, particularly where referential meaning constitutes an essential component of the curriculum. This is of vital importance if we bear in mind that students in the secondary school in particular are in transition in terms of their social assignment and definition, and music often serves a pivotal role in an individual’s sense of belonging.

This paper has also investigated the role of knowledge in an individual’s sense of meaning in music, and has highlighted the pre-eminent importance of formal musical knowledge if we are to produce intelligent and informed consumers of music. A music education framework that values knowledge about the internal relationships of music via personal experience and connection may very well provide a suitable conceptualisation for general classroom music education. While it is clear that repertoire selection is a complex issue, and that materials need to be carefully considered for inclusion within the classroom, it is important to note that a purely theoretical approach to music education is not being advocated here. Indeed, the contrary is true. The challenge for music educators everywhere is to order curriculum such that students are involved in processes that are engaging, intellectually stimulating and challenging, and which cumulatively contribute to the development of an independent and comprehensive sense of musicianship and a substantial and informed body of formal knowledge in music.

I would like to conclude with the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

If you want to build a ship,

don't herd people together

to collect wood, and

don't assign them tasks and work,

but rather,

teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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Bierley, C., McSweeney, F.K. and Vannieuwkerk, R. (1985). Classical conditioning of preferences for stimuli. Journal of Consumer Research, 12 (3), pp.316 – 323.

Blacking, J. (1973). How musical is man? Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Cook, N. (1998). Music: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Elliot, D. J. (1995), Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gardner, M. P. (1986). Mood states and consumer behaviour: A critical review. Journal of Consumer Research, 13, (3), 281-300.

Gardner, M.P. & Vandersteel, M (1984). The consumer’s mood: An important situational variable. In T. Kinnear (Ed.), Advances in consumer research, 11, 525 -529.

Gordon, E.G. (1999), All about Audiation and Music Aptitudes. Music Educators Journal, Sept 1999, p 41-45.

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Infante, D.A. and Berg, C.M (1979). The impact of music modality of the perception of communication situations in video sequences. Communication Monographs, 46, (2), 135-148.

Kellaris, J.J. & Cox, A.D. (1989). The effects of background music in advertising: A reassessment. Journal of Consumer Research, 16 (1) 113-119.

Langer, S. K., (1953). Feeling and Form. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Meyer, L. B. (1956), Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Milliman, R.E. (1982). Using background music to affect the behaviour of supermarket shoppers. Journal of Marketing, 46, (3), 86-91.

Milliman, R.E. (1986). The influence of background music on the behaviour of restaurant patrons. Journal of Consumer Research, 13, (2), 286 – 289.

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Swain, J. P. (1997). Musical Languages. New York: Norton.

Kodály, the whole man, and his inspirational gift to the 21st century”

XVIIth International Kodály Symposium, August 13th-20th 2005

Leicester University Conference Centre, Leicester, Great Britain.

Form, harmony and content in the lifework of Zoltán Kodály.

Paper by Klára Nemes

Associate Professor, Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music, Kecskemét, Hungary

I. Kodály, the whole man

It is well known that the lifework of Zoltán Kodály embraces three main areas: he was a composer, an ethnomusicologist and an educator. His immeasurable impact on Hungarian musical culture and education reached beyond the Hungarian borders: in all three areas of his activities Kodály is of international significance.

Kodály, the composer, – together with Béla Bartók - was the founder of twentieth-century Hungarian art music. His compositions have their roots in the Hungarian folk tradition. At the same time they have many connections to the different eras of European art music and are understood and appreciated all over the world.

Kodály, the ethnomusicologist, was one of the pioneers of comparative folksong research.

Kodály, the educator-pedagogue, - as professor of composition at the Liszt Academy in Budapest- has trained several generations of 20th century Hungarian composers.

From the late 1920s he inspired the re-organization of music education in Hungarian schools along with a nation-wide choral singing movement. These gestures - with their outstanding results – sparked interest all over the world.

Regarding his work in the field of music education, different terminologies have been used. Among them, the three most frequently heard ones are: 1.The „Kodály philosophy”, 2. The „Kodály concept”, 3. The „Kodály method”.

The term „ philosophy” may refer to his fundamental thoughts about the role of education and music in human life and development. For example: „Let music belong to everyone” or „Music is a spiritual food”, and so on.

The term „ concept” may refer to his complex general principles such as: music education should be based on singing; music education should be based on the genuine traditional national folk music; music education should start early; music literacy is one of the main goals, and so on.

The term „method” is mainly used in connection with the didactical tools of the system such as: relative sol-fa, hand signals, the different methods of musical skill training, and so on.

None of the above terms alone can represent Kodály’s music education ideals, because they form an organic, cohesive unit.

By the same token one can not truly understand the „kodályen music education” without placing it in the context of his whole life work. To be able to take the inspirational gifts of his rich heritage we must understand Kodály the whole man. Not just the Kodály concept, but also the „Kodály content”.

Form, harmony and content in the lifework of Zoltán Kodály – cont’d.

II. The Kodály content

What is the true Kodály content? Where can it be found?

I am among the lucky ones who had the opportunity to see the master listening to concerts at the Liszt Academy from his place of honour. I participated at solfege competitions initiated and financed by Kodály for students of the Liszt Academy. Such personal memories greatly enrich and help my search for the Kodály content. However, for the questions: ”Who was Kodály?” „What is the Kodály content?” I try to find answers especially from his compositions and from three thick volumes of his compiled speeches and writings entitled „Visszatekintés” [„In Retrospect”].

The „ Selected Writings of Zoltán Kodály” published by Boosey and Hawkes contain a selection from these Hungarian volumes translated to English.

The Kodály content clearly shines through his compositions and his writings, and it may be characterised by such words as: humanism, human values, as well as high aesthetic, moral and cultural standards. He possessed these values and high standards, but wanted to make them available for the entire population, for his whole country. He was a highly educated man, and aside from his work I already described, he also pursued scientific and literary interest, published numerous articles in Hungarian and foreign periodicals, and was a respected music critic. He was also a linguist, able to speak several languages. He was a doctor of Hungarian and German language, an honorary doctor of the University of Kolozsvár (1944), Budapest (1957) and Oxford (1960). He was a member and later the president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and holder of numerous Hungarian and international awards.

Kodály’s own words said in tribute to Pál Járdányi perfectly describe himself as well:

„In Járdányi the different activities supported each other. The scientific culture enriched the composer, the artist’s imagination the researcher, and both of these the pedagogue. We could admire in him the unified, harmonic personality. From all areas of his activities we can see a most human person, who has no greater desire than to help others, to make life of his fellow-men easier and more beautiful…”

The many facets of Kodály’s lifework form an organic unity. His ethnomusicological work was the basis and inspiration for his compositions as well as for his educational activities. With his work in music education and with his pedagogical and choral compositions he wished to educate future audience and draw them to concerts of excellent quality.

We can regard all of Kodály’s activities as different venues in which the content was manifest. The Kodály content is: establishing Hungarian music culture of high level through quality music education throughout the country.

III. The Kodály concept of music education

Concerning music education three fundamental questions could be raised:

1. Why to teach music? or: Why do we believe that music education is indispensible?

2. What music to teach?

3. How to teach music?

Form, harmony and content in the lifework of Zoltán Kodály – cont’d.

For the first two questions Kodály gave very definite answers, and shall be dealt with later.

For the third question Kodály gave a full range of basic guidelines as well as many practical advice; however, he never wrote any methodology books. On the contrary, he encouraged teachers to be creative and find the most appropriate methods and techniques. He also pointed out that this can only be done with a solid musical and educational foundation. On this basis it is obvious that the methods can and should be different, or even should change according to circumstances or the personality and creativity of the teacher.

At the same time, the Kodály content is unchanging because it is of lasting value.

In my view the most important topics concerning music education could be placed in the following sequence:

The purpose, role and significance of music in human life

The role of the school in education - particularly in music education

The most important qualities of a good teacher

The training of professional musicians and music teachers

Musical taste

Musical material in the school curriculum

Teaching methods and tools

In this sequence the methods and didactical tools are found at the end. However important these tools might be, they do not represent the substance of the concept. During the past decades it has become obvious that the adaptation of the Kodály concept has been successful only in those countries, in those schools, and with those teachers who understood the substance, placing the methods and pedagogical „tricks” not in the forefront, but appropriately supporting the global vision. Wherever only the „tools and tricks” were emphasized without clear cultural-educational goals, the Kodály concept couldn’t blossom, and couldn’t develop beyond a very basic level.

What were Kodály’s thoughts about the above topics? Let us try to find them in his writings:

The purpose, role and significance of music in human life

From his writings it becomes obvious for us that Kodály’s interest for collecting and researching Hungarian folk music in the early 1900s, as well as his interest for education in the 1920s was awakened by his belief in human values and ideals.

Kodály believed that music must be in the core curriculum of human education, that it is indispensible,

because „Music is a spiritual food, and can not be substituted by anything else. There is no complete spiritual life without music. There are regions of the soul which can be illuminated only by music.”

„…what else can be the vocation of music, than to mirror the eternal harmony of the Universe, and to herald to people to learn to fit in.”

„The purpose of music is to get to know better our inner world, to make it fluorish and grow. The legends of people hold it for origin of God.”

Elsewhere Kodály quotes one of the greatest writers of history, William Shakespeare:

„…man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, strategems, and spoils;

The motions of his spirit are dull as night,

And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted! „Shakespeare: Merchant of Venice. Act V, Sc.1

Kodály states: „I believe that music makes mankind better” .

Form, harmony and content in the lifework of Zoltán Kodály – cont’d.

It is obvious that the role of music in human life is not merely refreshment, nor entertainment. Without music there is no complete spiritual and intellectual life.

„Music is an organic part of human culture.” „Music, as part of universal culture, must belong to everyone.”

„Real art is one of the most powerful forces in the rise of mankind and he who renders it accessible to as many people as possible is a benefactor of humanity.”

The role of the school in education - particularly in music education

„The role of the school is to lay a foundation for the whole personality.” And Kodály added immediately: „There is no complete human being without music.”

The role of the school should also be: to cultivate culture and spirit in people, to build within the people the need for values through the spiritual-intellectual influence of masterworks.

Kodály’s goal was „To make the masterworks of world literature public property.”

As he said: „Nothing can make up for the message of the greatest masters of muic to the world….”

Kodály refers to Albert Schweitzer’s book about J.S.Bach:

„….with it [the Two and Three-Part Inventions] a lifelong standard of value was established to

to choose between true and false art”.

Among the tasks of the school, Kodály emphasises the cultivation of taste.

„The elementary schools will fulfill their purpose when they teach not only how to read but also how to distinguish between good music and bad music.”

„Bad taste spreads by leaps and bounds. In art it is not so innocent a thing as in, say, clothes. Someone who dresses in bad taste does not endanger his health, but bad taste in art is a veritable sickness of the soul. It seals the soul off from contact with masterpieces and from their life-giving nourishment. In grown-ups this sickness is in most cases incurable. Only prevention can help. It should be the task of the school to administer this immunisation. Powerful sources of spiritual enrichment spring from music. We must spare no effort to have them opened for as many people as possible.”

„Educating the audience …- according to Kodály - must start already in the Elementary School. The goal is that having left the school, high quality art music remains a lifelong need for them.” „Its means is: making musical literacy general through the schools.”

Of course musical literacy is more than just being able to read and write the notes. It is – as in literature - the understanding of the language, the structure and especially the content of the music.

Contemporary social climate seems to contradict to these essential thoughts. Nowadays in school education such subjects as information technologies, business and economics seem to be of primary importance. In a way it is understandable, because they are already tools of our everyday life. However, at the same time in more and more schools, music is not part of the core curriculum, therefore becoming the „exclusive property of the few”.

This is absolutely contrary to Kodály’s principle, whereby music is unique, indispensible for human development and a necessary and essential part of human education.

As we know this idea is not at all new.

The beneficial effect of dealing with music has been known from the beginnings of the history of mankind. In Platon’s ideal State music belonged to one of the seven core subjects. The Medieval educational principle: „Sine musica nulla disciplina potest esse perfecta” [Without music no science, no education can be perfect] was one of the basis for the blossoming of the European culture.

Kodály recognized the extreme importance, and did his utmost to build a music-cultural foundation for Hungary at a time when it was very much needed.

Form, harmony and content in the lifework of Zoltán Kodály – cont’d.

Who is a good (music) teacher?

Let me begin with two statements by Kodály:

„In the music education system a fundamental and decisive link is the teacher”

„There will be good music education in the schools only when we educate good teachers.”

The following summarizes what I believe to be the most important qualities of a good music teacher:

a highly educated and cultured person

who has:

A well founded professional knowledge, in other words a true and well-trained musician

A clear concept about the goals and the directions where students should be led

A knowledge of a vast musical repertoire suitable for education

A well grounded, systematic pedagogical approach

Love of music, students and teaching

Humility

Dedication

Inspiring personality

Creativity

Having these qualities – there is no doubt – the teacher will always find the most effective methods and tools for achieving the goals.

Teacher training

„There is need for able specialists, and today they are still rare like white raven.” – said Kodály in 1954. „In order to increase their number we must change our whole system of professional training. Not only for training good teachers for the Elementary Schools, but also for training better musicians in general.” „The better a musician is the easier it is for him to draw others into the happy, magic circle of music. Thus will he serve the great cause of helping music to belong to everyone.”

How could we achieve successful and meaningful music education? A sufficient number of highly educated and cultured musician-teacher personalities are required. Kodály himself was such a personality.

In order to create musician-teachers, we must

raise the level of teacher training both at the undergraduate and at the graduate level

inspire teachers to participate at refresher courses of the highest quality

- find the best musician-teachers who could be ready to serve as models for others

The training of professional musicians

According to Kodály

„…the characteristics of a good musician can be summarised as follows:

A well-trained ear

A well-trained intelligence

A well-trained heart

A well-trained hand

All four must develop together, in constant equilibrium. As soon as one lags behind or rushes ahead, there is something wrong.” „Sol-fa, and the science of form and harmony together teach the first two points.”

Form, harmony and content in the lifework of Zoltán Kodály – cont’d.

„…a musical experience as varied as possible is indispensable; without playing chamber music and singing in chamber choirs nobody can become a good musician. As for the third point, I cannot find lessons in the curriculum of any school. [It can be] supplied by life; …the reading of great writers’ works, the study of great artists’ creations…”

Through Kodály’s initiative, annual solfege competitions were organized for students, at first in the early 1950s at the Liszt Academy, later in one of the professional high schools as well. While he was alive, he was always the head of the jury at these competitions. Professor Erzsébet Szőnyi remembers that in Kodály’s pocket there was always two-part sight singing material which he had composed especially for the occasion. Later, he published the material with the titles: 33 Two-Part Exercises and 22 Two-Part Exercises. He also had in his pocket the cash-prizes for the best „competitors”. After the competition when the students left, he pulled out some more manuscripts from his pocket and asked the members of the committee to sightsing them.

Musical taste

Good music is not just an ornament of secondary importance in human life, but has a significant message for mankind. As Kodály said: „Perfect morality always projects true art, while the cult of trash is always an indication of moral trouble.”

In his speeches and writings Kodály returns to this point many times. In relation to the question: „Who is a good musician?”, Kodály responds:

„The title of good musician also implies an educated taste.”

„[…] in the overwhelming chaos of music produced today only a past master can find his bearings. It is a hundred times more difficult to acquire sureness of taste today than it was a hundred years ago. Often the genuine can scarcely be distinguished from the counterfeit. But a good musician knows what good music is. He is guided by his familiarity with literature, his theoretical and practical knowledge and his educated taste.”

The musical material in the school curriculum

One of Kodály’s answers states precisely: ”Schools should provide only the best.”

Other times he elaborates more:

„Let us stop the teacher’s superstition according to which only some diluted art-substitute is suitable for teaching purposes. The child is the most susceptible and the most enthusiastic audience for pure art; for in every great artist the child is alive. Conversely, only art of intrinsic value is suitable for children. Everything else is harmful.”

"Let us take our children seriously! Everything else follows from this.”

„I do not deceive myself. Trashy literature and trashy music shall always exist. However, should we not do our best to rescue their prisoners, wherever possible, and take them into the land of valuable art? This is our moral duty towards our children, where this rescue is the most promising. The most important is prevention. We must begin giving the preventing shots already in the Nursery School”

„Strangely enough, children learn what is good much more easily than what is bad. This, too, is a criterion, Masters!”

Form, harmony and content in the lifework of Zoltán Kodály – cont’d.

„An endless number of suitable masterpieces is at the disposal of schools.” [From Palestrina up to our times]. He continues:„Modern language schools could find plenty of excellent material for singing in the languages in question.”

„Of course every school should deal with Hungarian folk music as thoroughly as with the mother-tongue itself. Only then can the pupil reach a proper understanding of foreign music.”

In the same article Kodály calls to our attention that „school orchestras should make their choice of repertoire from the range of irreproachable masterpieces only.”

„Good taste cannot be inherited, yet it can be spoiled very early. This is why teaching in the schools and indeed already in the kindergartens should be of high quality from the start.”

„[…] those who receive good music early, will not be susceptible to bad music later.”

These thoughts make it obvious that Kodály did not consider „entertainment music” to be an essential part of education. (Although he admitted its legitimacy as we can learn from his Speech at the Board meeting of the Association of the Hungarian Librettists, Composers and Music Publishers in 1948.) Nevertheless he believed that with sweets and cakes (or in our time: with drugs, with processed, genetically modified and artificially coloured food) children cannot be brought up to become healthy grown ups. By the same token, spiritual food must also be nutritious and strength-giving. He pointed out that a vast number of masterpieces is available for bringing up spiritually healthy people.

Maybe it is more convenient to eat fast food products. But the results are already well known: a weak immune system, allergies and other severe health problems. Wouldn’t we rather take real nutrition which gives strength to our body? The same is true perhaps for spiritual health even more so, because the damage is not so „visible”.

Teaching methods at schools (How should music be taught?)

Although Kodály never wrote a methodology book, through his writings fundamental educational-pedagogical guidelines, a complete system of music teaching unfolds. He has given much advice on how to teach and also on how not to teach music. Let me now recall just a few crucially important thoughts to find some answers to the above question:

„Only art of intrinsic value is suitable for children” said Kodály.

For me this means that the essence of music education can be equated with a powerful relationship with the masterpieces.

Another time he talked about one of his personal experiences:

„Once, by chance, I witnessed a servant maid whose schooling did not go beyond the 6th grade. While doing her work with the radio turned on, suddenly she stopped, listened to the music and then asked: „What is this beautiful music?” I believe this kind of experience is the beginning of every musical understanding. Unless one has had such an experience…..he/she can only grasp the music superficially.” „For years I have been preaching that the school should provide this experience. After that can come the learning, and then it has a foundation and a meaning, then there is something to build on.”

For me this means that the learning process and skill development should always

be based on beautiful musical experiences.

„…to free the music lessons from every boring meticuolusness in order to make it as it should be: refreshing body and soul, increasing the joy of life, educating for receptivity, sensitivity and interest.”

„What is to be done? Teach music and singing at school in such a way that it is a joy for the pupil; instil a thirst in finer music in him, which will last for a lifetime. If the child is not filled at least once by the life-giving stream of music during the most susceptible period- between his sixth and sixteenth years- it will hardly be of any use to him later on. This experience can not be left to chance, it is the duty of the school to provide it.”

Form, harmony and content in the lifework of Zoltán Kodály – cont’d.

For me this means that music lessons should be carried on in such a way that they refresh the body, soul and mind. I believe that these should be the basic, guiding forces behind every other question concerning methodology.

IV. Kodály, the composer

Finally, let me say a few words about Kodály, the composer. I believe that without knowledge and understanding of his compositions one can not really understand the Kodály content.

In his music we can find his humanistic disposition, the same values, high artistic and moral standards as in his educational concept. Bartók wrote about him in 1921: „His music can be enjoyed only by those who are looking for the substance not in external, but in the internal things, in humanity itself.”

Kodály’s compositions are concise, and at the same time every detail is meticolously elaborated. His music is built in great constructions, with a great sense of proportion and colour.

In his works there is classical balance and harmony. Kodály’s rich imagination is often combined with intense emotion, and passionate tone (like in the Psalmus Hungaricus; Jesus and the Traders), while at other times with lyrical or humorous expression (like in the Sonata for Cello and Piano,op.4; choral works).

The master’s unique work in the field of choral music forms an essential part of the Kodály content.

After the high Renaissance, the renewal of European choral music in the 20th century will always be associated with the name of Zoltán Kodály.

His approximately 150, mainly a cappella choruses were innovative, but also represented a climax in the 20th century choral art. These masterworks have at the same time an unmistakably original, Hungarian voice. The fact that Kodály considered them only as preparatory exercises, a road to the great masters of Renaissance polyphony shows another feature of Kodály’s personality: humility and modesty – a characteristic of the true masters..

Pedagogical works

An example of Kodály’s humanistic and professional disposition is evident in the following story:

In the 1930s Arturo Toscanini encouraged Kodály to compose a Symphony. Kodály complied, and started to compose; however, laid it aside in order to compose solfege excercises for children.

As he commented later: „I considered the future of the Hungarian youth more important than my present.”

Summary

To conclude, one must not identify the Kodály content with some of its didactical tools such as the relative sol-fa system or the different techniques of skill development. The essence lies in its fundamental belief in moral, aesthetic and artistic values.

Kodály believed:„…when the world gets more cultured it will also get more peaceful.”

In my view, Kodály’s most important inspirational gift is his belief in preserving and cultivating the best in human values, instilling these values within our children through the unique tool of music, through the works of the masters. In the 21st century this gift is needed now more than ever.

Kodály was a „whole man”. In his life work there is unity and harmony between content and form, theory and practice, past and future.

It is our task to carry out his heritage in the 21st century, and aspire toward his standards of culture and value-centered music education.

Form, harmony and content in the lifework of Zoltán Kodály – cont’d.

Will the Kodály content survive in the 21st century?

The Kodaly content will survive in the 21st century only if we succeed in awaking, cultivating and increasing within our students, within their families, within all people and all society the thirst for quality and for real human values. Placing the Kodály content and Kodály’s heritage in this context we must realise that the challenge is great.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

KODÁLY, Zoltán: Visszatekintés [In Retrospect], I. Edited by Ferenc Bónis. Zeneműkiadó. Budapest,

1974

KODÁLY, Zoltán: Visszatekintés [In Retrospect], III. Edited by Ferenc Bónis. Zeneműkiadó.

Budapest, 1989.

THE SELECTED WRITINGS of Zoltán Kodály. Boosey and Hawkes. London, 1974

KODÁLY, Zoltán: Music should belong to everyone. Legyen a zene mindenkié.

Compiled by Ildikó Herboly Kocsár. International Kodály Society. Budapest, 2002

EŐSZE, László: Örökségünk Kodály [Our Heritage Kodály]. Osiris. Budapest, 2000

DOBSZAY, László: After Kodály. Kodály Institute. Kecskemét, 1992

BÓNIS, Ferenc: Kodály emlékkönyv [In Memoriam Kodály] 1997. Püski. Budapest, 1997

BREUER, János: A guide to Kodály. Corvina. Budapest, 1990

Main Effect or Side Effect?

Teaching Musicianship and Culture-Awareness through Multicultural Music in a Kodaly-setting Kindergarten

Hsiao-Shien Chen, Ph. D

National Taichung University, Taiwan

Music is the essence of humanness (Gaston, 1968, p. 15). Why music? Gaston (1968) indicates that human is different from animals by making possible speech and abstract thinking, also enables “significant nonverbal communication in the form of music” (p. 15). Gaston’s words reflect the theme of 2010 International Kodaly Symposium in Korea- Music, the Universal Language.

Beyond communication, music also servers other functions within the society in which it is created. In discussion of music’s origins, early speculative theories include the mating call or Darwinian theory, a theory of imitation, a theory of rhythm, a work song theory, a calling signal theory, and several theories related to emotional speech, theory of expression, theory of impassioned speech (Radocy & Boyle, 2003). After decades, biomusicology emerges in the profession, and The Origins of Music (Wallin, Merker, & Brown, 2000) brings focus to evolutionary musicology as a field of study. As mentioned above, music is more functional than aesthetic. In other words, asserted that music’s value lies not in the musical structure, but in its effect on people (Portnoy, 1963).

Merriam’s (1964) classic work, The Anthropology of Music, identifies 10 broad musical functions. Merriam defined functions as reasons to engage in musical activity. His oft-cited functions include a) emotional expression, b) aesthetic enjoyment, c) entertainment, d) communication, e) symbolic representation, f) physical response, g) enforcing conformity to social norms, h) validation of social institutions and religious rituals, i) contributions to the continuity and stability of culture, and j) contributions to the integration of society.

In a sociological view, Kaplan (1990) addresses music’s functions include a) a form knowledge, b) collective possession, c) personal experience, d) therapy, e) moral and symbolic force, f) incidental commodity, g) symbolic indicator of change, and h) link among the past, present, and scenarios of the future.

Gaston (1968) identifies eight fundamental considerations of people in relation to music. His considerations focus primarily on music’s contributions to individual well-being rather than to culture or society, thus we consider them as psychological functions. The eight considerations include a) the need for aesthetic expression and experience, b) the influence of the cultural matrix on the mode of expression, c) the integral relationship between music and religion, d) music as communication, e) music as structured reality, f) music’s relationship to the tender emotions, g) music as a source of gratification, and h) the potency of music in a group.

From perspective of music’s functions, its effect on nonmusical learning has been a big hit in the world while “Mozart Effect” received the most attention in the 90s. Music has been used in a number of different ways in attempts to facilitate nonmusical learning. For example, one approach is to use music or musical activities as a reward for accomplishing a given task, but the extent to which those research results can be generalized and applied to other learning situations is subject to conjecture. Madsen and Forsythe (1975) acknowledged that studies of this type have several problems, including “Hawthorn” and “halo” effects as well as all the effects presumed to operate in school settings.

Another approach of using music to facilitate nonmusical learning is as known as general learning transfer. The study of music serves as mental discipline which expedites the learning of the other subjects (Wolff, 1978), and researchers exam the effects of musical experience and learning on achievement in other areas. The third approach uses background music to facilitate nonmusical learning. How the environment can affect the learning process? University students to kindergarteners were examined s as research participants in various experimental settings. Statistical significances were found in reading comprehension, mathematical achievement, language learning, and other academic subjects as well as learning development, reading readiness, and student verbalization. Hanshumaker (1986) reviewed above studies and made a conservative conclusion for music educators: “school time spent on music and other arts activities has no negative effect on academic achievement” (p. 11). Wolff (1978) was even more cautious than Hanshumaker in drawing conclusions, because many experimental designs were inadequate, therefore the “definitive evidence of the nonmusical outcomes of music education was yet to be provided” (p. 21).

In a more recent review of the extra-musical advantages of music instruction and participation, Cutietta, Hamann, and Walker (1995) reviewed 81 studies and found only six reported results that implied causal effects from music instruction or participation on academic achievement while 34 out of 81 studies relevant to academic achievement in language arts, reading, mathematics, and other academics.

“Mozart Effect” purports that listening to Mozart Music can make you and your children smarter, although the statement is a myth that generates minimal information into something well beyond what it represents (Radocy & Boyle, 2003). Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993) set up an experiment with three groups of college students, one of which listened to Mozart’s D major sonata (K488), another of which listened to an unspecified relaxed music, and the other of which sat in silence for 10 minutes prior to taking tests of spatial reasoning. The test scores were converted to the equivalence of intelligence scores in Stanford-Binet Scale of Intelligence. The research findings showed that Mozart music group scored significantly higher than the other two groups, although results were temporary and did not extend beyond the particular spatial reasoning task. In the subsequent experiments, researchers found that the Mozart effect may be a real phenomenon in carefully limited situation (Rauscher, Shaw, & Ky, 1995; Rauscher, Shaw, Levin, Wright, Dennis, & Newcomb, 1997). The researchers showed how music might enhance cognitive spatial-temporal development in an causal effect between different kinds of tasks with a strong neurophysiological basis. However, the evidences hardly justify claiming that music makes a person “smarter” (Radocy & Boyle, 2003).

Don Campbell misinterprets Rauscher et al. study (1993) and published his book The Mozart Effect and accompanying CDs The Mozart Effect: Music for Children in 1997. His publications draw even more attentions from the public and make another peak of the Mozart effect phenomenon. Based on a comprehensive review, Duke (2000) reminds music educators to think what music education is about. He criticizes that research that fails to meet stringent standards of systematic inquiry, such as replicability, statistical significance, and effect size, therefore it is not a credible basis for making a claim by simply saying “research has shown.”

As music educators, do we merely care about functions of music? Or we should make music for music’s sake? To respond Duke’s (2000) inquiry, the author would draw answers from Zoltan Kodaly. Kodaly is a 20th-century Hungarian composer, and he is also a music educator, ethnomusicologist, and philosopher. While music educators are confused about what they are doing in nowadays, Kodaly establishes his own way to serve music and people clearly. He believes everybody has musical talents and deserves to enjoy music. Music learning makes better ear, better person, better musical skills, and achieves music literacy.

Kodaly asserts that music learning must begin with child’s own natural instrument― the voice, and music education should begin as early as possible, for example, kindergarten and the primary grades, or even earlier if possible. As a child possesses a mother-tongue, the language spoken in his home, he also possesses a musical mother–tongue in the folk music of that language (Choksy, 1981). Through this musical mother-tongue that skills and concepts necessary to music literacy should be taught. In other words, musicianship can be taught through mother-tongued music. Mother-tongue in the folk music of that language can bring learners not only music but also cultural expressions. Folk music and folk songs contains great cultural essences, and they are one of the best materials for music learning. Kodaly educators can expect children to grow musically as well as learn to appreciate and respect their own culture.

Standing in this point, Duke’s (2000) reminder comes up again. Do music educators want children to learn music or benefit from music’s functions? Do we create a cultural music environment to foster children’s culture-awareness or train musicianship? Should we choose one or the other? Is it possible that we can have both? The answers go to Kodaly too. Kodaly states that musicianship could be trained through culture. By singing mother-tongue folk songs, children practice music skills unconsciously.

Musicianship training in kindergartens is more unconscious rather than conscious. Music concepts introduced in this stage include Pitch, Duration, Tempo, Meter, Dynamic, Timbre, Accent, Phrase, Beat, Rhythm, and so on. The mediums used in music teaching and learning are singing, moving, playing, and creating (Choksy, 1981). There are three roles in learning: teacher, students, and materials, and music learning is in the center among them (see Figure 1). Lack of one or another could not make learning happen. Music educators apply Kodaly method to teach students music through materials. Folk music and folk songs represent multi-cultures in the global village.

Figure 1. Roles in music learning.

In Taiwan, many ethnic groups share the land and history. There are more than ten aboriginal tribes before the Han people move to Taiwan from China. Fulao and Hakka people are majorities immigrating to Taiwan in hundred years ago before KMT. Taiwan has a centralized educational system and has governmental agencies in charge at national, provincial and local legislative levels. The Ministry of Education holds meetings that involve all the national, regional, and local agencies that set up guidelines for designing programs (Lai, 1994). Multiculturalism has become an important current issue in the education in the world, and Taiwan government requests educators to lead our children to see the world from the view of Taiwanese culture. Music educators in Taiwan teach children from our own cultures to other cultures in the world.

Multicultural materials must be chosen for not only cultural experiences but also musicianship training. Culture-awareness and musicianship are on a par in music education in early childhood. In a Kodaly-setting kindergarten, we can expect that children sing multicultural folk songs and grow as wonderful musicians. Main effect or side effect? Let’s pursue after Kodaly for music literacy.

References

Campbell, D. (1997). The Mozart Effect. New York: Avon Books.

Choksy, L. (1981). The Kodaly context: Creating an environment for musical learning. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Cutietta, R., Hamann, D. L., & Walker, L. M. (1995). Spin-offs: The extra-musical advantages of a musical education. Elkhart, IN: United Musical Instruments.

Duke, R. A. (2000). The other Mozart effect: An open letter to music educators. Update, the Applications of Research in Music Education, 19 (1), p. 9-16.

Gaston, E. T. (Ed.). (1968). Music in therapy. New York: Macmillan.

Hanshumaker, J. (1986). The effects of music and other arts instruction on reading and math achievement and on general school performance. Update, the Applications of Research in Music Education, 4 (2), p. 10-11.

Kaplan, M. (1990). The arts: A social perspective. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

Lai, T. Y. (1994). Young children’s acceptance of the gifted label. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus.

Madsen, C. K., & Forsythe, J. L. (1975). The effect of contingent music listening on increases in mathematical responses. In C. K. Madsen, R. D. Greer, & C. H. Madsen, Jr. (Ed.), Research in music behavior. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University.

Merriam, A. P. (1964). The anthropology of music. (n. p.): Northwestern University.

Portnoy, J. (1963). Music in the life of man. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

Radocy, R. E., & Boyle, J. D. (2003). Psychological foundations of musical behavior (4th Ed.). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., & Ky, K. N. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. Nature, 365, p. 611.

Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., & Ky, K. N. (1995). Listening to Mozart enhances spatial-temporal reasoning: Toward a neurophysiological basis. Neuroscience Letters, 185, p. 44-47.

Rauscher, F. H., Shaw, G. L., Levin, L., Wright, E., Dennis, W., & Newcomb, R. (1997). Music training causes long-term enhacement of preschool children’s spatial-temporal reasoning. Neurological Research, 19, p. 2-8.

Wallin, N. L., Merker, B., & Brown, S. (Eds.). (2000). The origin of music. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Wolff, K. (1978). The nonmusical outcomes of music education: A review of the literature. Council for Research in Music Education, 55, 1-27.

A Study on Character Education Embedded Integrated Music Project

Jessie H. S. Chen

National Taichung University of Education

Abstract

This study explored the strategies to guide college students enhance and reflect the character aspect through integrated music activities in a general education music course in a university setting in Taiwan. Course instructor introduced various styles of music, and how some of the styles were adapted to musicals. College students comprehended how music functioned in films and learned to integrate music to a self-composed story based on their choice of virtues. Students worked as groups for 7 weeks and demonstrated their creativity in variety of presentation forms.

Keywords: character education, film music, general education, music, music education

Background of the Study

Character education has been the focus of school system in Taiwan more than ten years and intergrated into curriculum and extra-curricular activites through early childhood to secondary school levels. The core virtues as caring, respsect, courage, honesty, responsibility, and cooperation, were promoted through curriculum in various discplines and led character education successfully increase both academic and non-academic perforamnce for children in preschool, home, and the general community (Lee, B. L., 2006; Lee, 2014; Zheng, 2006).

Lickona, Schaps, and Lewis (2011) defined character education as the intentional effort to develop univesal ethical and performance values in young people. Character education meant to provide students with an internal moral compass, therefore they could recognize good, desire what is good, and to do what is good (Healea, 2006; Katilmis, Eksi, & Ozturk, 2011; Lickona, 1991). Katilmis, Eksi, and Ozturk (2011) stated character education was intentional implementations that organize behaviors according to main human values, especially for academically successful individuals. Scholars believed that character education was able to support the development of social competence and a cooperative disposition (White & Warfa, 2011), moreover, it also decreased bullying, conflict and violence while engendered students become more sympathetic, tolerant, kind, compassionate, and forgiving (Bulach, 2002). In short, character education was values education, holistic education, life education, and civic education (Lee, C. M., 2006).

Taiwan Ministry of Education (2004) issued the first character education white paper in 2004 and stated that students needed to unerstand the concept of moral code values which encompasses “caring, respect, courage, honesty, responsibility, and cooperation” (p. 2). Based on the 2004 basis, Chracter Education Promotion Plan was launched (Ministry of Education, 2004, 2006, 2009), and moral code values became a basis on which to establish an understanding of the social constructs associated with a person’s schema of behavior, such as his/her love life and respect for others. The governemnt’s document stipulated that schools need to integrate “moral codes” into formal, informal, and hidden curriculum. Lee, C. M. (2004) addressed that formal curriculum may enhance the systematic knowledge of character education; information education may enforce the action of character education through activities or clubs; hidden curriculum may utlize the environment and atomesphere building to foster students’ feelingsin character education. Elementary and Secondary schools in Taiwan integrated character education into curriculum to impart civic duties and engender intrinsic moral values. However, character education seemed lack of attentions in our university level.

Formal curriculum in the university is compiled by general education and fields of study (professional education), and informal curriculum is activities and clubs operated by Office of Student Affair. Ideally, character education should be implemented in both formal and informal curriculum. Sadly, departmets insist that knowledge of professions is more important than anything else, therefore character education becomes the duty of Office of Student Affair and can only be implemented in informal curriclum.

Office of Student Affair in researcher’s university implemented character education in activities, such providing “open to public” speeches, book exhibition of relative titles in the library, and putting up posters in the campus. However, only informal curriclum did not fulfill the requirements of Ministry of Education, therefore Office of Student Affair cooperated with Center for General Education to complete the mission according to the division of responsibility in the university. Lee, C. M. (2006) believed that character educaton implemented in general education was able to foster students’ competences of moral knowing, critical thinking, and reflective behaviors.

General Education

General education usually contains 26 to 32 credits, varied from school to school, and it is required for all the undergraduates. General education aims to provide broader view for students beyond their majors as well as foster students’ interdisciplinary competences. For National Taichung University of Education, general education requires 26 credits, including eight credits of Chinese and English langues as well as 18 credits of libral arts education. In the libral arts, there are three areas of studies, namely Science, Humanities, and Arts, and students are required to take certain credits in each area though all the courses are elective.

Appreciation to Film Music is a music course in general education art area. The course aims to a) introduce classic film music and classic music film, b) guide students to understand the relationship of music and film, and c) recognize movie directors’ preferences and requirements toward film music. Course instructor first delivers the knowledge of film music followed by hands-on group project as midterm examination. In the second half of the semester, students learn more film composers and music styles, and they will receive an online test as their final exam in the form on multiple choices of music to match the video clips.

Implementation of Character Education

Group project creates “cooperation” in the course. Students in general education courses are from different colleges and departments. They might enroll the course with their friends, or they might know no one in the class. After course overview and review of the literature, students had ideas how music played different roles in the movies, and then course instructor introduced four music styles as classical, jazz, rock, and popular, followed by musicals in those styles. Students chose a music style according to their preference and gathered a group in number of six. As studies suggested, most college students preferred rock and popular music. Classical lovers were minority in the class, and the situation of jazz was even worse.

As musicals suggested that music, drama, and dance were three major elements, course instructor guided the class to make their own audio-musical according to the following plan.

Step 1. Please pick a theme from the following virtues: Caring, Respect, Courage, Honesty, Responsibility, and Cooperation.

Your theme: ____________

Step 2. Keywords of your idea for composing a story.

Keywords: ______________________________________________________

Step 3. Outline of the story.

Step 4. Three or more Songs/Pieces in the style you chose. Please list titles, composers, lyrists, arrangers, performers, and so on.

Step 5. Please match the story and music. Finding good spots to insert the songs/music to your story. Story telling with music is limited in 10 minutes.

Each step took a week. Students discussed with their group members in the class, and continued the discussion beyond the classroom or worked on their assignments. Story was the libretto of the musical, and the theme was based on the five virtues of character education. There were 78 students enrolled in the course, and13 groups were formed according to the music style they preferred. Among 13 groups, nine groups chose popular music, two picked classical music, and Jazz and Rock were each favored by one group. There was no surprise that popular music was “the most popular” style among four music styles, but it was unexpected that Rock music was only chosen by one group.

Students discussed with groups members and chose one virtues of character education as theme of their script. Courage was the most popular virtue chosen by eight groups, followed by Cooperation chosen by three groups, while Caring and Responsibility were each chosen by one group. There was no group choosing Respect. Students were asked to provide three keywords for their story, along with the keywords, they could explore the possibility of their story. “Love” appeared five times among 39 keywords, and four out of five were related to Virtue Courage. Cooperation seemed to be related to teamwork mostly, so “teamwork” appeared twice as well as “trust,” and other positive vocabulary as belief, hope, unity and so on.

Table 1

Chart of Music Style, Virtues, and Keywords

Group

Music Style

Virtue

Keywords

1

Rock’n Roll

Courage

Band, Growing up, Unite

2

Classical

Cooperation

Trust, Belief, Hope

3

Classical

Courage

Love, Choosing, Touching

4

Jazz

Caring

Love, Missing, Reunion

5

Popular

Courage

Mood, Friend, Fight

6

Popular

Courage

Over difficulties, Challenge limits, self-devloping

7

Popular

Courage

Adventure, Love, Friendship

8

Popular

Courage

Dream, Reality, Challenge

9

Popular

Courage

Love, Obstacles, Perseverance

10

Popular

Responsibility

Master, Pet, Adopt

11

Popular

Cooperation

Teamwork, Volleyball, SHBG

12

Popular

Courage

Love, Courage, Hope

13

Popular

Cooperation

Unity, Teammate, Trust

The final productions of students met researcher’s expectation. As the guideline of the project, the form of presentation was their own choice. Slide show with narration was most often used form among groups while one group presented their story with melo-drama. Demonstration of the slides ranged from typed simple script to elaborate animation. Some groups recited conversations from their script while playing slides, some groups prerecorded the conversations with music and sync to the slides. Simply focus on the quality of slides, students from department of Computer Science or Digital Content Technology were more skillful to produce delicate slides. Group 4 ultilized several paintings to demonstrated important scenes in their story while Group 7 fabricated slides from a picture book. Group 10 presented an original story by employing pictures from internet and reproduce the slides to animation. Furthermore, forementioned groups also integrated narration and music to the slides.

Most stories were original and related to college students’ life experiences. There were five stories describing students’ romance and four stories talking about teamworks such as sports and band while dream and friendship were aslo frequently seen. Three stories were animal related, including a cat and a dog as pets, and one rewritten fairy tale with animated characters. As globalization became the trend in higher education, college students’ life desmonstrated diversity of the world. Researcher found multiculturism among their love stories: one was about homosexuality and two of them were inter-ethnic relationship, namely Taiwan and Malalysia as well as Taiwan and France.

From eight “courage” stories, researcher was surprised that college students needed “courage” to face friendship, love, dream, and surviving in the world. Researcher wondered whether changes of thinking and environment created intergeneration gap or college students today were a generation of postponed maturity (Wang, 2013), nevertheless, character education has been the key to guide them for a full exploration of all the possibilities in the life.

The group project integrated language art, music, and technology as “story telling,” “music/song mapping,” and “sound editing.” The competences students gained in the group project contained cooperation, communication, speech, music, technology application as well as reflections to important virtues.

Conclusions

Lickona (1991) and Lee (2006) addressed that character education has three stages such as moral knowing, moral feeling, and moral behavior. In the group project of integrated activity, college students demonstrated their leanring in both moral knowing and moral feeling. Taking a step further, researcher assumed that their stories reflected their real life experiences or they would take what they composed in the stories to the reality, in other words, moral behavior.

Taiwan Ministry of Education (2004) called on teachers to apply 6E, in terms of example, explanation, exhortation, envrionment, experience, and expectation, to implement character education. The group project of integrated activity would be an example of integrating art, speech, technology, and character education in a general education music course.

Character education in higher education aimed to help college students to appreciate the opportunities of learning, either in or outside of the classrooms; apply, integrate, and generate what they learned to their daily life; respect and appreciate the diversity of multicultures; concern disadvantaged peope and take social responsibility. In the perspective of ultilitarianism, art education seemed arguable as well as character education. On the other hand, a world without art and character became insipid and meaningless. Art and character education led a way to foster beautiful minds for the world.

References

Bulach, C. R. (2002). Implementing a character education curriculum and assessing its impact on student behavior. The Clearing House, 76 (2), 79-83.

Healea, C. (2006). Character education with resident assistant: A model for development character on college campus. The Journal of Education, 186 (1), 65-77.

Katilmis, A., Eksi, H., & Ozturk, C. (2011). Efficiency of social studies integrated character education program. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 11 (2), 854-859.

Lee, A. (2014). Implementing character education program through music and integrated activities in early childhood settings in Taiwan. International Journal of Music Education, 0255761414563195.

Lee, B. L. (2006). The study of character education implementation in elementary shcools in Taipei. Taipei: Taipei Kuan Du Elementary School Press.

Lee, C. M. (2004). Curriculum philosopy and teaching model of character education. Student Guidance, 92, 8-23.

Lee, C. M. (2006). Emerging of new character education: Reflection and transformation of American experiences in Taiwan. Curriculum and Teaching Quarterly, 9 (2), 55-74.

Lickona, T. (1991). Educating for character: How our schools can teach respect and responsbility. New York: Bantam Books.

Lickona, T., Schaps, E., & Lewis, C. (2011). Eleven principles of effective character education. In J. L. DeVitis & T. Yu (Eds.), Character and moral education (pp. 30-35). New York: Peter Lang.

Ministry of Education (2011). Character education promotion plan. In Taiwan Ministry of Education, Character Education (pp. 1-13). 2016 March Retrieved from: http://ce.naer.edu.tw/index3-1.html

Ministry of Education. (2004, 2006, 2009). Character education promotion plan. In Taiwan Ministry of Education, Character Education (pp.1-10). 2016 March Retrieved from:

Wang, H. W. (2013). A generation of postponed maturity. Taipei: PsyGarden Publishing.

White, R., & Warfa, N. (2011). Building schools of character: A case-study investigation of character education’s impact on school climate, pupil behavior, and curriculum delivery. Journal of Applied social Psychology, 41 (1), 45-60.

Zheng, C. C. (2006). How to use character education to support classroom management. Ching-e Quarterly, 18 (3), 46-52.

Professor of music at National Taichung University of Education in Taiwan, and also executive director of Taiwan Kodaly Society. She is commissioner of ISME Commission on Music in Special Education, Music Therapy and Music Medicine, and she also serves in the editorial committee of International Journal of Music Education: Practice (A&HCI Journal). Professor Chen represents Taiwan, R. O. C. in the Board of Asia-Pacific Symposium for Music Education Research (APSMER, regional conference of ISME). She joins many professional associations and serves as director of Music Educator Association of Taiwan and committee member of Arts and Humanities Textbook Certification Committee (National Academy for Educational Research). She was the 7th and 8th President of Taiwan Kodaly Society.

Dr. Chen is specialized in music teacher training from early childhood to elementary level. Her teaching and research interests are applications of Kodaly and Orff approaches in all levels and populations.

Emőke Solymosi:

Back to Kodály!

The Psalmus Humanus Art Educational Programme – a New Means in Implementing Kodály’s Vision

It can hardly be denied that the role of music in public education in Hungary needs to be re-defined. The crisis is, of course, not new. Over 40 years ago, Kodály said: “The whole curriculum is heavily biased towards cognitive development at the cost of the emotional.” And later he added: “My life is drawing near its end. You might appreciate my impatience seeing that the musical curriculum, thin as it is already, is being cut shorter and shorter, and the main aim of my entire life is drifting farther and farther into the future.”

What would he say seeing that today only 1% of all children in Hungary are attending a school accepting the principle, “music is necessary for our development; it is part of our education”? There are some parents who take their children to special schools and individual lessons in the arts. The statistics in this area speak for themselves: 97,000 children attended such music and arts schools in 1993-94, whereas ten years later this number was as high as 284,000. of which 128,000 children were taking music lessons. This is about one seventh of all children. But what about the others?

The core of the problem does not lie in the number or quality of music lessons but in the structure, attitude and orientation of our school education. This becomes evident as soon as we take a serious look at the physiological, psychological and brain research data. They provide an exact proof of the importance and the life-long positive effects of regular, frequent, and professionally conducted artistic activities. If we want to put music and the arts back to their well-deserved place within our educational system, we cannot do so without changing the whole system which is currently restricted by lexical knowledge. The changes need to gravitate toward a direction which, over 40 years ago, Kodály so clearly saw: clearing away the disproportion between cognitive and emotional education that cannot be explained scientifically.

I am putting all this forward, because the new, important initiative I am going to speak about can be useful for exerting some influence on the whole structure of the educational system, because of its scientific basis.

Thanks to the efforts of an enthusiastic music teacher, a spectacularly successful civil movement was launched in 1998. Devoted representatives of the arts, of the sciences and of music education joined their efforts in replacing philosophy with practice. This professional team was officially registered as the Psalmus Humanus Art Educational Association.

How did all this start? The cello teacher Katalin Udvari began her school education in the first Kodály-school founded in Kecskemét. Her headmistress was Márta Nemesszeghy Szentkirályi, the charismatic founder of the school, and Kodály himself made several visits to the school in those years. Half a century later, Katalin Udvari collected the personal experiences of her school mates, her later colleagues and pupils regarding their daily music activities in their childhood. The title of the book, Psalmus Humanus which means Human Psalm, is taken from the poem written by the Hungarian Nobel-Prize scientist Albert Szentgyörgyi.

This book, published in 2000, contains several scientific studies about the way Kodály’s ideas are backed up by recent research data from neurological research and psychological studies of effectivness. In collecting material, she came upon a number of music workshops working in isolation, and realised that a number of new, excellent and efficient music teaching methods were based on Kodály’s concepts. She then decided to make a conscious effort to find teachers and institutions working with this kind of approach. From 2000 to 2001 she organised a forum to introduce 18 new approaches to a highly qualified professional committee.

It became obvious that it is possible – while keeping the master’s original ideas before your eyes – to develop and effectively use methods that are able to accommodate various kinds of groups while adjusting to the new socio-economical and technological requirements of the third millennium. The second volume of Psalmus Humanus was edited by Katalin Udvari and published in 2002. After her lead-in study, this volume contains the introduction of all the above mentioned approaches written by those who had invented them. In the preface of the book, Erzsébet Szőnyi wrote: “it gives a comprehensive picture of the present situation in our music education, shows exemplary models and ways of combining tradition and novelty without losing values.”

In this same year (2002), the Psalmus Humanus Art Educational Association was founded. Today the Association consists of 38 members who are at the same time representatives of various educational institutions of all levels, from the nursery to the university.

In March 2004, a two-day conference and demonstration of methods took place under the title Psalmus Humanus Days –Integrated Art Education at School and in the Family. The conference was chaired by Sándor Falvai, the president of the Academy of Music in Budapest and Erzsébet Szőnyi, the world-famous travelling ’ambassador’ of the Hungarian music education. The conference of the only two-year-old association was opened by the president of Hungary and greeted by the International Kodály Society and UNESCO. And even more importantly: young college and university students streamed into the conference from all corners of the country.

After this short summary of how the Association came into being, let me introduce you to the goals and activities of the Association and point to a few characteristics that emerged as particularly important within the last few years.

Disseminating information

One of the main goals of this association is to educate the public, and to spread the original ideas of Kodály to all groups of our society. Strange as it may sound, in Hungary most people are unaware of Kodály’s educational concepts which reach back to the Greek practice. According to Kodály “The mission of music is to create civilisation: music can contribute to building up a better world both in terms of aesthetics and of morality” and that art is “an indispensable condition, basis, and nourishment for becoming a whole person.” The somewhat misused term “Kodály-method” is mainly associated with solmisation.

In a study pupils were asked to rate the importance of various school subjects. The first place was taken by informatics whereas the last (15th) place by music. We cannot realistically hope for a change of attitude and for a re-thinking of our value system without making new information available to the widest possible public. Apart from the two thick volumes by Katalin Udvari, the Psalmus-program was introduced in a television film, in a number of radio programs, and in interviews in the written press.

Differentiation between aims and means

The most important achievement of the Association is to have made a clear distinction between the original aims and the often too dogmatically used means. This is a very important point because the most frequent critical judgements against Kodály’s ideas are, in fact, referring to the practical realisations of these ideas rather than to the ideas themselves.

It is a widely held view that Kodály’s heritage is an incommutable methodology carved in stone and that it is a heresy to drift away from it. This attitude, indeed, prevents the teachers from working out their own individual methods and from the freedom of adjusting those methods to the abilities, needs, and demands of their pupils and of the institution they are working for. This is a real problem in Hungary because in this country for a very long time we have known virtually no other methodology for teaching music than the guide-lines worked out by Kodály’s students. In my experience, most music teachers in Hungary have never heard of Dalcroze, Willems, or the Orff-method, and – in lack of an overview – they had no conception of what makes the so-called „Hungarian method” different from methods developed and used in other countries. Yet, it was Kodály himself who never stopped urging his students to experiment, and he allowed them absolute freedom in reaching their pedagogical goals. As Irma Bors, the headmistress of the first Kodály-School in Budapest, said: “Most of the time he defined a few general guide-lines; the practical realisation of the details was my task. Occasionally he helped me on with a few new ideas.” She also mentions that although Kodály was first rather against the early start of instrumental lessons, the excellent results soon convinced him of the opposite.

Scientific background

Kodály, already in the 60’s, urged his disciples to research the effects of music scientifically because decision makers are rarely moved by nice words but can, indeed, be convinced by numbers, figures, diagrams, and objective data. “This is the only means – said Kodály – by which music can gain a stronger foothold in school education. The closed lines of teachers with no appreciation, or even hatred for music can only be broken, if we can prove to them that our efforts to promote music education in the primary school system are not aiming at the propagation of music for its own sake but at improving the development of the whole personality.”

The first large psychological study into the effects of music were conducted by Professor Dr. Ilona Barkóczi and lasted for four years. Her convincing results were published in English under the title Music Makes a Difference: The Effect of Kodály’s Musical Training on the Psychological Development of Elementary School Children (Kecskemét, Kodály Institute 1982). The Hungarian version, published in 1978, is not available in book stores, therefore her still valid conclusions have exerted no influence whatsoever on anybody working either in education or in decision making positions in Hungary. For example she concluded that regular musical activity had the power to level out cultural disadvantages resulting from one’s social background.

The Psalmus-program, however, used this study as its starting point. At the conference in March 2004, Professor Barkóczi summarised the results of this earlier study and compared them with new research conducted by a student of hers, Andrea Sulyán. Once again it was confirmed that active music making significantly increases creativity – among other things.

Katalin Udvari won over several leading experts in psychology and brain research right at the beginning of the project, and asked them to confirm the importance of music and the arts in education on solid scientific grounds. At the above mentioned conference, Tamás Vekerdy, a prominent psychologist gave a lecture about the way emotional intelligence can be developed and improved by the arts. The famous brain researcher József Hámori talked about some new research data focusing on hemispheric differences and emphasised that the role of music cannot be replaced by anything in the harmonious development of the personality.

Plurality of approaches

The Psalmus project has introduced a number of possible approaches to widen the professional horizon of all colleagues working in the field of pedagogy. Let me highlight a few of the different approaches.

Kindergarten education

The basic idea of Barbara Kovács is that during singing, music and dance activities, learning skills undergo a certain automatic development whereby these activities are very helpful in preventing various learning difficulties. This method is founded on neurophysiological research and is aimed at 3-6 year old children.

Psalmus Humanus-concerts by music primary school children (Pre-Maternity Course)

One approach is closely associated with intrauterine development. A small choir of 9-10 year old children (led by Veronika Vass) teaches nursery rhymes and songs to would-be mothers and fathers at a gynaecological ward, while expert professionals explain to them the possible effects of exposure to music in the pre- and postnatal periods. The leader of this programme is Katalin Udvari.

Complex arts education. Musical and visual section in a free art school

The method of Mária Apagyi and Ferenc Lantos integrates music and the visual arts by discovering the common systemic features of their structures and constituting elements.

Church music education in the 21st-century Hungary

At the Budapest Singing School – lead by Tamás Bubnó and Dr. János Mezei – children and adults sing in the same choir from the earliest age on. Thereby they go through a gradual initiation into the Gregorian plain chant and polyphonic church music. This 1400 year old tradition of musical education was one of the most influential models for Kodály himself.

Using the computer in music teaching

Zoltán Baráth from the Hungarian town of Nagykanizsa has drawn up a little curriculum for a new subject called computer music and reaped fantastic results in using the computer as an aid in learning music. This method seems to have its best results in the development of children’s creativity.

A presentation of the score anthology The World of Improvisation and The Anthology of Popular Music, a handbook for use in primaries and music schools

The method of the world-famous jazz musician János Gonda helps music teachers develop their improvisational skills with the help of well-structured teaching manuals.

Musical acoustics

The physicist and acoustician Dr. János Pap approaches music from the side of the natural sciences. For example children, mainly the small ones, tend to be most enthusiastic about discovering the nature of sound as a physical phenomenon, or the principles on which various musical instruments work.

The Maintenance of Musical Work Capacity

The so-called Kovács-method (further developed by Dr. Zsuzsa Pásztor) consists of relaxational body exercises combining body movement with music and singing. These movement exercises can be used for preventing and correcting specific problems resulting from extended instrumental practice of professional musicians, as well as teachers and pupils. They also help to make an even more efficient use of the time spent with music.

For socially and culturally disadvantaged children

Creative musical exercises

Creative exercises of the composer László Sáry can be used to create music with literally everybody: from the earliest childhood, through the realms of persons living with physical or learning difficulties, right to the level of professional musicians.

Singing, music and craftsmanship

Children (mainly socially or culturally disadvantaged children) tend to be very fond of handicrafts. The pupils of Mátyás Csirmaz make their own little and simple instruments that allow them a rather special access to the realm of music.

Complex arts training. A day-care programme for middle-school classes

As the traditional culture of gypsies has a significantly less verbal character than that of the Hungarian population, the education of gypsy children is often a great challenge for schools and teachers alike. However, gypsies tend to have a special talent in singing, dancing, and graphics, and they are also very attached to their cultural traditions. It was for them that a new integrated method for arts education was developed by director Lajos Orosz and his colleagues at a boarding school in the Hungarian town of Marcali.

For the physically handicapped and injured children

The artistic education of blind and visually impaired children

Methods for children and adults living with physical or learning difficulties make up a whole chapter for themselves. Teaching blind children dance is one such method that reached the wider public through the activity of Rita Büky teaching at the School for the Blind.

The musical education of motor impaired children

Another method known world-wide is the regular musical activity of the Pető Institute (music teachers: Aladárné Őrfalvy and Katalin Őrfalvy Rónaszéki) leading to excellent results in the development of children born with disturbances of the central nervous system.

Music education in the special education of handicapped children

The musical education of mentally challenged children with the help of the ULWILA colour score system

The ULWILA-method of the German Heinrich Ullrich is based on colour-notation, on the ULWILA family of musical instruments, on other simple hand-made instruments, and a lot of hours spent with music and all kinds of artistic activities. This method is used mainly with persons living with learning difficulties. The method was adapted to our Hungarian circumstances by Anna Vető.

Without the Psalmus 2004 conference most teachers working within the Hungarian school system would never have had the opportunity to get to know the work of these creative workshops. Not only did the demonstrations call attention to the important role of the arts – and especially of music – in the lives of those living with disadvantages or handicaps, but they also emphasised the fact that ideas developed for these special purposes can easily be adapted to work with the healthy population as well.

Practical orientation

The main feature that makes the Psalmus-program so useful is its practical orientation. This practicality can be helpful to teachers trying to widen their répertoire of teaching methods. It can also capture the attention of those experts who – understandably – are little touched by incomprehensible theoretical arguments, statistics and complaints. The demonstrations of methods, the conferences, and the books, CD-ROMs, and video tapes all serve the purpose of making the specific methods available to all for closer study.

Interdisciplinarity

As the above examples might have testified, the Psalmus-program places great emphasis on the relationship between music, the other artistic disciplines, and all other school subjects.

Many quotations could be cited from Kodály about the importance of making it common knowledge, that the transfer effect of music education improves one’s capacity and ability to learn all other school subjects. It is also helpful in the development of a more complex and colourful personality. In 1962 he said: “... music education has the capacity to ease mathematics by rhythm, fluent reading skills by melody, as well as writing and spelling. Musical notation turns accuracy into a habit and develops our sense of graphics, singing sharpens our awareness and more exact pronunciation of syllable,s and teaches us proper articulation ... – all positive side-effects resulting in a more positive attitude to work.”

Nicolaus Harnoncourt, the prominent musician of our age talks about the same thing when he briefly poses the question: “What would Einstein have thought, what would he have discovered had he not played the violin?"

Addressing the young

When Katalin Udvari, the founder chair-person of the Psalmus Humanus Association started organising the Conference 2004, she turned directly towards students studying at Hungarian colleges and universities, because it is they who are going to make up the new generation of teachers. Interestingly, young people of this new generation have literally no information about the Kodály-concept. It came as a real revelation to them when they were learning about the ideas and educational system of Kodály, that his ideas had been confirmed by the latest scientific research. They realised that the Kodály-schools represent the most up-to-date approach in education, although, today, there are hardly any such schools left in Hungary. These university students also understood that they need to ask questions, experiment, improve, introduce new things, or reach back to things long forgotten.

Above all, it is the freedom of thinking that the Psalmus-program wishes to offer to all teachers of the future.

In closing, I would like to once again call attention to the fact that the Psalmus Humanus Art Educational Association is a grass-roots, non-profit organisation. There is no institution behind it, although the Academy of Music and a few ministries, which agreed with their goals and saw their results, did offer their support. The association is fueled by the talent, expertise, and enthusiasm of its members and open both for any new workshops and international co-operation.

We hope that the huge amount of practical experience and the scientific research data will exert a powerful influence on those in decision making positions. As Gilbert de Greeve, the chairman of the International Kodály Society said at the conference in Budapest: whether the music education in Hungary will be able to maintain its model-role, or whether it will be able to keep the heritage of Kodály alive is not only important for Hungary, but for the whole world.

***

The Voice Within: Audiation and Inner Hearing in the 21st Century

Aural Perception? Inner Hearing? Audiation? Auralisation? Aural Skills?

In Music Education in 2005, we are bombarded by a myriad of terms which refer to the development of musicianship skills but which are not necessarily analogous. This paper seeks to define audiation clearly, investigate the impact of audiation on our teaching and seeks to examine the parallels between Kodály’s concept of inner hearing and Gordon’s concept of audiation. Are we talking about the same thing? Or does a distinction need to be drawn between these two terms?

When I first posed these questions I imagined the answer to be very straightforward and nicely black-and-white. How erroneous this was, for the issue is much more complex and dense than I had first considered and the scope of the literature is incredibly wide.

There is a significant body of research which has been carried out by psychologists, musicologists, educators and scientists, exploring the complex issues of audiation and its impact on musical ability and learning. Some of these are very weighty scientific documents which would constitute a whole paper on their own and so I will simply refer to some which are particularly relevant throughout the course of this paper.

It is essential to define at this point exactly what is audiation, or perhaps more easily, what is not considered audiation. Learning to hear and read music with understanding and facility is arguably the most important goal we set for our students. Aural training is a concern that spans at least as far back as the beginning of the last millennium, as evidenced by Guido’s advocacy of teaching devices such as solmization. Over the centuries into the 1800s, aural training as a separate discipline grew to focus around two activities: sight singing and dictation.

But the past century saw a rise in the popularity of what some call “atomistic training”: drill, practice and testing of the identification and performance of small, acontextual musical elements. The second half of the twentieth century saw the development and dissemination of textbooks (especially programmed texts) and their successors (computer-assisted instruction software) that featured training in identifying and performing the size and quality of intervals and the quality and inversion of chords. Despite the overwhelming experimental and clinical evidence that there is little connection between the ability to identify intervals acontextually and the ability to do so within a tonal context, such teaching methods nevertheless persist in some textbooks and many classrooms. Despite “inner hearing” being recognised as an important element of musicianship, Beall (1991) notes that it is frequently ignored by many music educators in favour of ‘technique’”.

Pages of journals such as Music Perception and Psychomusicology and books such as David Butler’s Musician’s Guide to Perception and Cognition and Rudolf Radocy and David Boyle’s Psychological Foundations of Musical Behaviour bring us more insight into how the human mind processes music, and all of us who teach and write about aural skills should pay heed and be certain that these advances inform our work. In 1990, in their book Aural Awareness, George Pratt and his colleagues at the unit for Research into Applied Musical Perception proposed an entire rethinking of what constitutes good aural training for musicians. For the most part, however, much aural training today still adheres to atomistic skills such as identifying and singing intervals and chord qualities and inversions and the more contextual skills of dictation and sight singing.

Now, admittedly, I am standing in front of a group of musicians with highly-developed audiation skills.

When I show you a series of handsigns, there is much more than elements of pitch and rhythm which are inferred. For example:

(Practical example demonstrated)

In this incredibly short example, you would have determined:

Tempo

Pitch

Rhythm

Phrasing

Stylistic characteristics

It is important not to over-simplify the process and skills involved in audiation. These are achievable, but not instantly achievable skills. They take time and practice for most people to develop.

Zoltán Kodály was an extraordinary man - there is no doubt that I am preaching to the converted here. He has been described as a visionary, a man whose philosophy of music and its place in the lives of all people continues to inspire and invigorate even the most weary music educator.

Edwin Gordon has also been described as one of the great masters in the field of music education. His lifetime of research has led to an extensive investigation of music aptitude, an unprecedented music learning theory, a comprehensive analysis of rhythm and groundbreaking work in early childhood music.

He has said of himself,

“I know my limitations and I know that I’m not the world’s greatest musician. I’m a better thinker than I am a musician. I think that I’m probably as great a researcher as Kodály was a musician. And, I’m probably as lousy a musician as Kodály was a researcher!”

This is a very telling comment from Gordon! His work - research skills, musicianship, psychology, measurement, statistics, motivation and persistence - aims to take the work of Kodály, Orff, Dalcroze and Suzuki in gestalt. Through observational research, he says, “I was able to take all their ideas a few steps further for the next person to carry on.” This is also what Kodály hoped for the generations to follow - isn’t that why we’re here, examining his inspirational gift to the 21st century?

But this poses the question as to whether the notions and ideals of both Gordon and Kodály have been ‘lost in translation’? Gordon has developed and published empirical tests to measure musical aptitude in students; many would argue that Kodály would have been horrified to think that children’s aptitude would be tested at all, for if music is truly for all, then why the need for this statistical data before we can ascertain how best to teach them in the classroom?

Gordon’s initial idea, however, was not that his measures of musical aptitude would be used as a basis for excluding students, nor that students would be ‘streamed’ into classes according to their ability. I believe that it is due to a lack of contextual understanding of Gordon’s work that many teachers are using his tests in this way today.

Gordon’s work has been incredibly valuable in many different ways. It does beg the question, though, about whether Gordon’s concept of audiation is the same as Kodály’s notion of inner hearing. What are we really talking about here?

Zoltán Kodály wrote extensively on music and education and continues to be studied and quoted by teachers and music students. Although he never taught in a primary or secondary school, Kodály’s ideas on pedagogy challenged generations of musicians and teachers to raise the musical potential of their students. His educational ideas on singing, solmization, reading and folk song material crystallised in what has become known as the Kodály Method. This method was elaborated by students and colleagues, including Jeno Adam, Lajos Bardós, Katalin Forrai, György Kerényi, Benjámin Rajeczky, and Erzsébet Szonyi and is continued by so many excellent teachers in the 21st century.

Kodály himself quoted the words of Robert Schumann when referring to his concept of inner-hearing:

“So who is the good musician? You are not one if you worry about the piece and play it to the end with your eyes glued to the music; you are not one if you stop because someone accidentally turns two pages at once (and even worse if you stop without any turning at all!). But you are one if you guess in a new piece and know in a familiar piece what is coming - in other words, if the music lives not only in your fingers, but in your head and your heart, too.”

This notion of having the “music in your head”, not your “head in the music”, is one which pervades many of Kodály’s writings. The problems facing professional musicians provided the subject of an address given by Kodály at the Lizst Academy in 1946:

With a good musician the ear should always lead the way for those mobile fingers!

The ability to read scores away from an instrument ensures a better understanding of the performer’s text

Visszantekintés (In Retrospect) - Vol I, p 191

We attach great importance to the development of the inner ear. From the very outset many means are employed to achieve this. Children must have a mental image of written music, especially before they actually hear what they are performing. This applies equally to vocal and instrumental music. The most familiar method of checking this sound-image in the inner ear is the so-called silent singing, or inner hearing. How can the preschool child be checked in whether he is hearing correctly a melody without singing it? They should be given a familiar song to sing, and at a given signal they continue, first silently to themselves, then aloud, then again silently and so on.

This activity, begun with very small children, can be followed through at all stages, although later the ways of checking the inner ear may change. Even with secondary and tertiary level music students, however, these most elementary forms of ‘checking’ inner hearing are still valid.

We may ask students to sing a particular melodic element inside their head each time it appears in a known song; we may ask them to sing above or below a part that the teacher is singing or signing; or we may ask them to sing in canon with a piece handsigned by the teacher: (Kodály 333 exercises #221)

However, the condition that the written score be heard inwardly before realising it in sound is valid in every field of vocal and instrumental music. When we use hand-signs to demonstrate the notes of a song or show a short score for one minute to the children and then ask them to sing the song from memory, we are training their inner ear to function accurately. For a similar purpose, we ask them to change parts during a two-part song or to sing, at a signal, ‘silently’ or aloud.

Fostering inner hearing to this degree produces an inner life for the melody when performed and this type of music-making centred on singing forms the basis of Kodály’s educational principles.

The voice is an effective learning tool - apart from being a prime way of engaging students in active music making, singing encourages inclusivity and participation, as every child, regardless of social or financial situation, possesses their own voice. Tacka and Houlahan also discuss the fact that singing requires rapid internalisation of sound. In the same way that speaking evidences thought, singing can evidence a knowledge of pitch and rhythm.

The way in which those who ascribe to Kodály’s philosophy speak and write about his notion of inner-hearing contains much language which is inherently connected to the development of a musician as a person, not just the development of individual, specific skills. This ‘connectedness’, this consideration of the ‘emotional aspect’, if you wish, of a musician’s development, does seem to be somewhat lacking in Gordon’s writings.

American Edwin Gordon (b. 1928), primarily an educational psychologist, began to develop a sequence for music instruction in the 1970s, culminating in the formulation of his Music Learning Theory. He coined the term “audiation” to refer to the goal of music instruction. Similar to Kodály and other major European pedagogues, Gordon supports the sound-before-symbol approach to music instruction. As in the development of language, children listen to tonal and rhythm patterns, imitate them and then read and write them.

Gordon himself defined audiation as the foundation of musicianship. It takes place when we hear and comprehend music for which the sound is no longer or may never have been present. One may audiate when listening to music, performing from notation, playing “by ear”, improvising, composing or notating music.

Gouzouasis (1999) further defined audiation as “the innate human ability to conceptualize and comprehend music when the sound of music is not physically present.”

According to Gordon and Kodály, it is an important, distinctive aspect of music learning that is now supported by close to 40 years of both applied and theoretical research, and has been discussed as part of the music intelligence argument. Gouzouasis also stated that memory is the “storage” and audiation is the mental process with which we may recall, recreate and create music.

Gordon identified 8 different types of audiation, which are not hierarchical:

1. Listening to familiar or unfamiliar music

2. Reading familiar or unfamiliar music

3. Writing familiar or unfamiliar music from dictation

4. Recalling and performing familiar music from memory

5. Recalling and writing familiar music from memory

6. Creating and improvising unfamiliar music

7. Creating and improvising unfamiliar music while reading

8. Creating and improvising unfamiliar music while writing

It is important to note that audiation is not the same as aural perception, which occurs simultaneously with the reception of sound through the ears. It is a cognitive process by which the brain gives meaning to musical sounds. Audiation is the musical equivalent of thinking in language. When we listen to someone speak we must retain in memory their vocal sounds long enough to recognise and give meaning to the words the sounds represent. Likewise, when listening to music we are at any given moment organising in audiation sounds that were recently heard. We also predict, based on our familiarity with the tonal and rhythmic conventions of the music being heard, what will come next. Audiation is a multistage process, with each stage being structured in a hierarchical fashion:

1. Momentary retention

2. Initiating and audiating tonal patterns and rhythm patterns and recognising and identifying a tonal center and macrobeats

3. Establishing objective or subjective tonality and meter

4. Consciously retaining in audiation tonal patterns and rhythm patterns that we have organised

5. Consciously recalling patterns organised and audiated in other pieces of music

6. Conscious prediction of patterns

It is important to recognise here that much of Gordon’s Music Learning Theory involves the practice of repetitive, acontextual drills. We must be very careful not to reduce the development of audiation or inner hearing to these ‘atomistic’ exercises.

So what does all of this mean? Are we really talking about the same thing when referring to inner hearing and audiation? On a superficial level it would seem so - simply “hearing music inside your head”. Gordon’s work tends to focus on the development and recognition of rhythm and pitch patterns, but audiation consists of more than this. It is useful to examine the role played by audiation in the process of musicianship development.

There would be no argument that an important goal in the development of musical skills is the ability to think

in music. Serafine (1988) goes so far as to define music as “the activity of thinking in or with sound” (p69) and excludes thinking that “may be about but not in music” (p70).

Elliott (1996) makes a similar distinction: “it is possible to think about music, discuss music and express ideas about music without ‘understanding’ music” (p71)

Approaches to music education which emphasise the study of rudiments, harmony, counterpoint, form and other subdisciplines of music theory without previous or concurrent training in the appropriate kinds of aural skills usually condemn our students to thinking about music without learning how to think in music.

Music listeners who understand what they hear are thinking in music. Music readers who understand and audiate what they read are thinking in music.

In Queensland, Australia, the music syllabus has as its core goal the development of audiation. Planning for teaching, learning and assessment is done by developing audiation through a study of the seven musical elements within a variety of contexts, styles and genres in order to achieve the general objectives of analysing repertoire, composing and performing.

Audiation is realised through a diverse range of cognitive processes including (but not restricted to)

When musical sound is present, students may:

Recognise what is heard

Recognise patterns in what is heard

Recognise similarities and differences in what is heard

Recognise change in multiple or subsequent performances of the same repertoire

Analyse what is heard in terms of constituent musical elements

Imitate what is heard

Recognise error and self-correction while performing

Notate what is heard

Correlate what is heard with a notated representation

Determine style, genre and possible context

Produce complementary or supplementary sound.

When musical sound is no longer present (i.e. previously heard) students may:

Play or sing by ear - melodically and/or harmonically

Reproduce sound from one sound source onto another - e.g. singing what has been heard instrumentally

Notate from memory

Recognise change in subsequent performance

Improvise on previously heard music

Transpose

Parody

When musical sound is not present students may:

Improvise

Hear notated scores in the head

Anticipate musical sound to follow heard sound

Differentiate and make choices of potential sound

Compose

Notate musical ideas

Play and/or sing at sight.

*QSA Syllabus 2004

Some would define musicianship as the ability to notate what one hears, to sing what one sees, and analyse musical events. I believe it is a far more broadly ranging set of abilities.

Musicianship is a remarkably rich and highly problematic enterprise that is, or at least should be, the engine that drives what the music theorist, musicologist, composer and applied teacher teach. A central goal of musicianship should be to create musicians who are articulate advocates for their art. Indeed, this goal was shared by Kodály himself.

One might view musicianship as the hub in a large wheel whose spokes include:

Harmony

Counterpoint

Analysis

Composition

Improvisation

prose writing

history; and

playing

In order to link these enterprises, students must be able:

to transfer and apply concepts freely from one area to another

to sing and play fluently in multiple styles, clefs, and textures

to accompany themselves from a figured bass and to sing any voice

to improvise in various common-practice styles and forms

to be able to hear what goes on in a work from the literature and present these perceptions in a variety of fashions

to know literature outside of that written for their specific instrument and

to deal with the structure and syntax of any work written in the common-practice style.

I want students to use what they learn for the rest of their lives, transferring these insights from my classroom to the world outside.

In order for such goals to be achieved, the underlying philosophy and content of our teaching must be inherently musical, productive and challenging, and perhaps most importantly, courses which often consist of separate and discrete subjects, particularly at a tertiary level must be integrated. Some would argue that an integrated approach, one in which musicianship skills including singing, keyboard and dictation are wed with analysis, is too difficult given that the development of “musical” skills progresses independently (slower) than “intellectual” skills. While it is true that students’ various skills develop at different rates, few would argue with teaching techniques that require students to identify musical events in both analytical and aural contexts. This Integration need not be defined any more rigorously than the engagement of as many different modes of expression (singing, writing, speaking, conducting) and perceptual senses (sight, sound and touch) as possible. Certainly for me, an integrated approach to musicianship development at a secondary, let alone a tertiary, level has very definite pedagogical implications - most specifically, providing experiences for students that are experiential, aural and visual, and all placed in context as much as is possible.

Unfortunately, music students often suffer through theory and musicianship courses, viewing these activities as painful and not particularly relevant aspects of their musical studies. In essence, thinking about sound, not thinking in sound. The major components of many undergraduate theory and musicianship courses often bear little on students’ music making. Of course as teachers we do our best to balance clear pedagogy with musical creativity. But our teaching can easily become pedantic and rote if we are not careful. It may be difficult to be creative because students, given their often less-than-adequate basic skills, are rarely ready to explore the more interesting, yet difficult topics that comprise a theory and musicianship curriculum.

Indeed, they rarely make it to the perceived payoff, in which their initial work in fundamentals, basic theory and analysis, and introductory musicianship is consolidated, and they can advance to more traditionally ‘musically satisfying’ activities like composition, improvisation and analysis. Why not undertake these activities from the very beginning?

It is interesting, then, to note Gordon’s answer when asked to give advice to music teachers of the next century, in a conversation with Mary Ellen Pinzino in June 2004:

“My best recommendation to music teachers of the next century is to improvise, improvise, improvise! Get rid of the notation. Learn from Music Learning Theory to teach children to make music without the aid of notation or music theory. Follow religiously the process of the way we learn language. That would be the most important thing they could do for themselves and for their children.”

It is interesting that ideas like ‘get rid of the notation’ are so often examined in isolation, rather than in context. This would initially appear to be contradictory to some of Gordon’s earlier writings, and certainly contradictory to Kodály’s approach of sound before symbol, not sound without symbol altogether. Certainly in Australia, where we have curricula that are state-based, there is a big push to remove the requirement of notation from the syllabus, to have students simply experiencing music and responding in their own, personal meaningful way, and it would be easy to refer to this quote of Gordon’s to support this argument. Upon reflection, however, parallels can be drawn between this recommendation of Gordon and the writings of Dobszay Laszló, in After Kodály, writing about not getting caught up in the ‘mechanics’ of music-making, in these previously mentioned atomistic skills and drills, and participating in a much more meaningful process of music-making.

So what does all of this have to do with us in the 21st century?

Kodály was talking about inner hearing from the early part of the 20th century. Gordon coined the phrase ‘audiation’ in the 1970s.

What about our schools, our classrooms, our students more than thirty years on? What is it about them that makes them different from those thirty or fifty or seventy years ago?

I teach in an affluent, inner-city Grammar School in Brisbane with an enrolment of 1200 girls and I am astounded at the difference between the learners I am faced with in the classroom and those I faced when I began teaching. These students are acutely aware of their surroundings, over-stimulated and quite literally ‘plugged in’ to technology. In comparison to the hyper-speed of electricity (186,000 miles per second) with which all of these students are used to dealing, my music classes operate only at a speed of sound (1080 feet per second). Make no mistake - I treasure and value this in my teaching. I am aware, however, that for many of these students this is the most genuine opportunity for personal expression in their incredibly busy and over-stimulated lives! These students live in a world of the information superhighway, where anything they want can be downloaded, file shared, burnt onto disc, emailed, and worn on an iPod around their necks. Certainly any piece of information they desire can simply be “Googled” and at their fingertips in seconds.

Psychologists Robert Kraut and Vicki Lundmark in their 1998 study reported that greater use of the Internet was associated with small, but nevertheless statistically significant, declines in social involvement as measured by communication within the family and with increased occurrences of loneliness and depression. The very skills taught by television are reinforced by educational software. Sit, watch and be entertained. More than anything else, computers teach children that the world is a pre-programmed place, a virtual universe where solving a problem means clicking on the right icon.

Researchers such as Brown (1999) suggest that we should be thinking of the computer as a musical instrument and recognising its ability to be a medium of human expression, therefore situating it in an artistic (rather than scientific) context. He goes on to recommend that the computer should be treated as a “musical partner”, that students should be able to study computer music as a principal study.

Certainly many of us have observed music programmes where the teaching involves minimal input from, and interaction with, the teacher, and where students are quite literally ‘plugged in’ to their computers and electronic keyboards? We all bemoan the advent of technology which is removing the ‘human element’ from the lives of our students. This is not to say that all technology is bad - if I were to be removed from my email program for an extended period of time I have no doubt that I would experience serious withdrawal symptoms - but it must be used sensitively, appropriately, and not as a replacement for genuine human interaction.

We are living in a world which is largely dominated by fear and paranoia due to world events of recent years, and in Australia we struggle with an unstoppable stream of American youth culture pervading our television screens, radio waves and young adult literature. Not that this is a bad thing necessarily, but a far cry from a ‘mother-tongue’ in terms of an authentic and ‘true’ experience of adolescence for an Australian teenager.

Strongly connected to this, I believe, is a syndrome which I observe happening every day in the students I teach. Jessie O’Neill, a psychotherapist, has coined the term ‘Affluenza’ which, simply defined, is a dysfunctional relationship with money/wealth, or the pursuit of it. Globally it is a back up in the flow of money resulting in a polarization of the classes and a loss of economic and emotional balance.

We can see the symptoms of affluenza throughout our culture: in those around us who have wealth; in those who are pursuing wealth; and in varying degrees within ourselves.

The collective addictions, character flaws, psychological wounds, neuroses, and behavioural disorders caused or exacerbated by the presence of, or desire for money/wealth.

In individuals, it takes the form of a dysfunctional or unhealthy relationship with money, regardless of one's socio-economic level. It manifests as behaviours resulting from a preoccupation with --or imbalance around-- the money in our lives.

The psychological dysfunctions of affluenza within the family are generational, and frequently passed from parent to child. Kodály himself spoke about this, in a society vastly different from ours today, suggesting that this is an issue that is not new by any means:

Money does not produce ideas…. The most valuable things cannot be bought with money.

László Eösze, Zoltán Kodály: His Life in Pictures (Budapest: Corvina Press, 1971), p.21

And Schumann, even earlier:

“Art is not a mean of gathering riches. Be an even better artist, the rest will come by itself.”

Schumann in Selected Writings p 192

Leong (2003) describes the students we are teaching as “prosumers” - literally producing consumers who proactively draw together available information, technologies and services to produce customised “products” for their own purposes. Music prosumers range from those who download and share MIDI, MP3, MPEG and QuickTime files through the internet, to those who manipulate these and create their own music, video and movie clips and distribute their own and/or others’ music. Listening to music is not confined to a particular time and space and face-to-face communication between performers has ceased to be the only available kind of musical experience today. The challenge for us is the sort of learning experiences, face-to-face or otherwise, which we provide or create for our students.

Our students are living in a re-mix culture, where their whole lives seem to be a series of ‘sound bytes’, to be manipulated, deconstructed and reconstructed to become their own. There is a definite sense of ‘instant gratification’ with the students that I teach, yet they appear to thrive on the stimulation of the aural-based experiences provided in the classroom. This is not by any means instant gratification - it is hard work, challenging and deliberate and the students are the ones who have to persist and work consistently to improve their skills and develop their ability to think in sound. These are the same students who then sit at lunchtime with one ear plugged into an iPod listening to music whilst conducting conversations with their peers. Perhaps they are more skilled at thinking in sound than we realise - just in a different way! We must consciously and consistently question what we as educators do to make their learning experiences truly authentic and meaningful.

Put simply, what we teach children are skills and experiences which they cannot get from a computer programme, no matter how sophisticated and complex, but via a mode which is becoming rarer and rarer in educational settings. The whole-brain activity involved in an aural-based teaching approach and the active development of audiation skills cannot be duplicated or replaced by a computer. The connections built between students and teachers, and the relationship which students develop with their own learning is something to be guarded and protected.

Audiation in this digital age is still a vital component of the development of musicianship in students. Kodály’s initial notion of inner hearing came out of a particular educational, social and cultural context and was developed by Gordon in another particular educational, social and cultural context. It is imperative that we, as educators in the 21st century, continue to strive to develop audiation in our students, to constantly improve our own ability to think in sound, and to share a love of music with all we teach.

References

After Kodály : Reflections on Music Education. László Dobszay (Kecskemét: Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music, 1992).

Aural Awareness - Principles and Practice, George Pratt (New York: Oxford University Press 1998)

Aural skills acquisition - the development of listening, reading and performing skills in college-level FAmusicians, Gary Karpinski (New York: Oxford University Press 2000)

Hold Fast to Dreams, Denise Bacon (Massachusetts: Kodály Center of America 1993)

Keeping Mozart in Mind, Gordon Shaw (California: Academic Press 2000)

Kodály's Principles in Practice - An Approach to Music Education through the Kodály Method, Ersébet Szonyi (Boosey and Hawkes, 1973)

Learning sequences and music learning ,G. Beal (The Quarterly, 2:93, 1991).

Lessons from the Past: Music Theory Pedagogy and the Future, Gary S. Karpinski (Music Theory Online - The Online Journal of the Society for Music Theory 6:3 August 2000)

Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Education, David Elliott (New York: Oxford University Press 1995)

The Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology of Music, John Sloboda (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1985)

Musicianship in the 21st century : issues, trends & possibilities / edited by Sam Leong ; foreword by Gary McPherson. (The Rocks, N.S.W. : Australian Music Centre, 2003)

A Philosophy of Music Education, Bennett Reimer (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall 2003)

The Psychology of Music Teaching, Edwin Gordon (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall 1971)

Strategies for Teaching Aural Recognition, Dr Brad Hansen (Portland State University - College Music Society Pacific Northwest Chapter Conference February 2005)

Zoltán Kodály: His Life in Pictures, László Eösze (Budapest: Corvina Press, 1971)

Ildikó Herboly Kocsár

Is the “Hundred Year Plan” still timely in the 21st century?

Zoltan Kodály wrote his article called “the 100 Year Plan” in a music teachers’ periodical in 1947.

Ever since its first appearance many different references have been made in many

places questioning its strange title. What purpose did Kodály have in mind when he wrote these thoughts nearly 60 years ago?

The first words of his article are:

“The aim: Hungarian musical culture.

The means: making the reading and writing of music general, through the schools. At the same time the awakening of a Hungarian musical approach in the training of both artist and audience. The raising of Hungarian public taste in music and a continual progress towards what is better and more Hungarian.

To make the masterpieces of world literature public property, to convey them to people of every kind of rank. The total of all these will yield the Hungarian musical culture which is glimmering before us in the distant future.”

After this opening Kodály writes a short review of what had happened in the 50 years before.

In the second half of the review he sets out the tasks; the changing of general attitudes and the importance of the use of the pentatonic scale as a focal point.

In the final paragraph he makes a reference to 1868 when Statute XXXVIII (38) was brought into force whereby singing lessons were made compulsory by law in every school curriculum.

The closing paragraph of the article:

“ We cannot prophesy, but if the principle of expert tuition comes to be realised in practice by 1968, that is to say a hundred years after the birth of the primary education act, it may well be hoped that by the time we reach the year 2000 every child that has attended the primary school will be able to read music fluently. Not a tremendous achievement. This, however, will rightly bear the name Hungarian musical culture.”

It is evident to all of us that the thoughts Kodály put to paper in 1947 in connection to music education is relevant not only to Hungarians.

We have to admit and accept that the plan anticipated for the next 100 years has not yet been realised.

Sadly, in 2005 not every 14-year-old Hungarian child can read music fluently although Kodály had done all that was possible to achieve this goal.

It has been proved that his concept and philosophy is a fine music-teaching tool.

The effectiveness of Kodály’s philosophy has been backed by scientifically proven facts and results.

The past fifty years have also proved that the “concept” can be realised not only in Hungary but also anywhere in the world from Australia to Japan to the United States of America.

What is the problem?

Why was this aim not possible to fulfil?

Was this only a dream?

László Dobszay was looking for the answers to the same questions in 1990 in his article entitled “the Actuality of the 100 Year Plan”.

László Dobszay is a professor and musicoligist at the Music Academy in Budapest, a practising musician and the founder of the Schola Hungarica vocal ensemble.

As a solfege teacher he wrote in the 1960’s a series of solfege (exercise) books that are still the finest today. They are called “the World of Sound” and follow Kodály’s pedagogical philosophy to the smallest detail.

I would like to quote a few thoughts from these writings of 15 years ago.

„ …Kodály found the way to teaching through his own experiences of value alone, through being affected by the intellectual values found in folksongs, the masterpieces and music in general, (what ’deserves to be called music’), and the love deriving from it. Love is just diffusivum sui (something that strives after its own diffusion) and only this quality can inspire any genuine teacher and teaching.”

…Kodály represents an age old European tradition in this respect, which may be one of the reasons why his message seemed to be so new. The meaning of ’humanism’ is, however, very clear in this tradition. It signifies something other than charity work, sympathy or nobility of thinking. It stands for an attitude that asserts the rights and demands of humanity. Humanity includes all those values that make man human, raise him above the level of other living creatures and safeguard the integrity of the spirit and the coordination of the spiritual and physical life. This humanity is centred around four values: truth, goddness, beauty and holyness. They embrace a cultivated mind, the properly oriented and disciplined will, the well-ordered emotional sphere and the reverential openness of man towards a being higher than himself.”

„…the role Kodály entrusted to music cannot be exclusively justified by its refreshing qualities and communal character, nor with the value of musical heritage alone. No genuine spiritual life can be conceived without music or, as Isodorus’ book, this encyclopeadia of the Middle Ages, stated: Without music no discipline can be perfect. Without music man remains uncouth and unrefined.. In contrast, music makes him more generous, polite, joyful, amiable, more apt to create loving relationships, or as the medieval pupil learnt: ’reddit hominem liberalem, curialem, laetum, jocundum et amabilem’. No one would deny that this holds true for good music representing spiritual values. To reverse this statement: bad music destroys man’s spiritual integrity, renderes his inner being friable and disrupt the structure of humanity. This pedagogical hierarchy has an effect on music education as well. Though the infiltration of dilettantism wounds the very heart of music teaching, the final objective is not the transmission of the knowledge of the musical profession. It is the integration of the intellectual force of music, or more precisely, as Kodály put it, of the masterworks, into the human spirit.”

„the Kodályian educational model could not score outstanding results in its days of glory because it remained isolated within school, culture and society alike. To be more precise, a certain presentiment of belonging came to be expressed by a spontaneous respect of many and for other the Kodályian achivement could have been a model and an inspiration in their own field. But the conscious recognition and the thorough intellectuel and practical elaboration that could have raised the Kodályian inspiration to a cultural movement were missing.”

„ …the state takes eo ipso a stand in matters of culture and the values represented by it whenever it functions normally. A national curriculum or examination system makes sense only if there exist a standard which is the expression of values considered to be positive. The contribution granted by the state for the maintenence costs of a museun is an expression of the appreciation of Rembrandt’s paintings, for example. The issue at stake that must be continually clarified, both in principle and in everyday affairs, is to what extent and in which area it is fair that the state should support cultural-humanistic values.”

We have to admit that the past 15 years has not brought about any changes either.

With the speeding up of economic and technical advancements at the forefront, culture is continually forced to be the last to be considered.

Social recognition and the aim for a higher quality of life are all measured by purely materialistic means. Education is like a servant of culture and less and less significance in countries with a wealthy society.

A new set of values has developed at the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st. Instant result have become the units of measure so that long term investment and nurturing of the arts has become unprofitable and superfluous. In the view of the people who have control over these matters, music education is becoming dispensable.

These people (who themselves as children, have clearly missed out on the magical effect of music) do not recognise the effect of music education towards the development of healthy, even-tempered, well-balanced harmonious human beings.

This tendency is unfortunately a world phenomenon. We can draw some interesting comparisons between peoples general daily timetable of 100 years ago and today. In the old days most people worked all day and for most people that was physical work.

With technical advances modern workplaces have allowed people a lot more free time. To fill this leisure time, a new continually expanding industry developed: called the “entertainment industry”.

The feeling of well-being and of achievement resulting from successful work satisfaction was replaced by a “live it up” attitude. This new lifestyle has received a continues to receive a great deal of support from different forms such as media attention, films, TV programmes, video games etc. Unfortunately much of these are full of aggression and negative forces. The bulk of our teenagers are daily consumers of this new “culture”.

The “so called” music that accompanies these films, TV programmes and video games is typically very brassy, full of weak harmonies and unimaginative melody and all played at a thumping volume with overpowering drum beat and bass lines.

It is almost impossible to find public places, shops, shopping centres and even transport that are not contaminated by this form of music.

What can schools do to counterbalance this?

Can they do anything at all?

One of my favourite professors at the Music Academy, Lajos Bárdos, told us as students to observe people after a concert and how they never quarrel at the cloakroom, at the bus stop or in the street.

We now have to redefine the term used 40 years ago “after a concert” to after “serious music concert”. In the old days we only called these events “concerts” (Today all events where instruments appear are called concerts).

In a single sentence of Professor Bárdos an entire philosophy of upbringing had been summed up: “people who have been brought up in a suitable musical doctrine do not violate the rules of harmonious social living”.

Let us compare a 45 minute long music lesson of 30 – 40 years ago with one of today’s 45-minute lessons. The experience gained during a music lesson then, made a much longer impression, remembered longer by the student, had other strong positive effects and had a lasting impression till the following lesson.

The experience, or adventure, of a music lesson of today, - leaving aside the school building – immediately seems substandard by comparison.

The youth of today are part of a “mob culture” and equipped with state of the art equipment and listening to the most modern products of music.

These “innocent”, not yet matured, easily lead consumers are the largest commercial marketplaces. They not only want to fulfil the trendy musical ’culture of the day’ but they mimic the example of their peers with their dressing, behaviour and even their speaking.

The music teachers are providing a low quality service when they try to compete with this thankless challenge. Lets just think about what tools are available for the teachers to counter these modern trends so that they can seduce the teenage students with a Mozart melody.

In many cases they can only rely on their influence as a teacher as the family background provides little or no support.

The numbers of students who bring from their families the love of high quality and important music are minimal. The minority for whom the enjoyment of reading a good novel is more important than the watching of some inferior TV programme, and those who have the need for culture, or a cultural life.

We have to admit that the task of the music teachers’ appears to get increasingly difficult in everyday life.

It is not the Kodály concept that has got tired; it is not the Kodály method that has become drained.

On the contrary! This is the very thing that could be the cure for this dying society whose soul is becoming extinct.

The number of music and singing lessons should be doubled, not reduced in the schools. We know that the correctly applied Kodály principles reap higher achievement results in other subjects too and that we could have a healthier society.

Intensive occupation with good music most certainly provides an antidote against inferior and cheap imitation music. It provides protection against the pollution of decent taste and the morally corrupting musical terror surrounding everyone today.

The experience and joy of music making together, singing together, safeguards against the infection of indifference. It develops attentiveness in young children towards each other, the responsibility to look out for each other and the perception and feeling of solidarity.

Kodály had formulated the importance of this more than 75 years ago: “Is there aything more demonstrative of social solidarity than a choir? Many people unite to do something that cannot be done by a single person alone however talented he or she may be.”

The world is in constant momentum. Huge distances are easily reached, faraway destinations can be reached within hours. With the lifting of border controls people have become mobile. Millions of people travel daily covering vast distances. Having reached their goal, many of these people return to their original starting point, while others look for a new home and embark on a search in the world for a new home. These people settle in new countries and try to assimilate to their new surroundings.

We often see that assimilation is not so easy. The vast number of people find it very difficult to combat their feeling of loss of belonging, the trauma of replanting their roots and this becomes the basis of much conflict. Should they give up their ancestral traditions, should they adopt the customs and behavioural habits of their newly found hosts or should they stick strictly to their own heritage and foundation and traditions going back many thousands of years? These questions have become very prominent in the past few decades but unfortunately we are still unable to give a reassuring answer to them.

The results of the arrival of the previously mentioned technical wizardry, the discovery of scientific wonder-machines has a bewildering affect on the average person. It becomes progressively more difficult to handle the increasing new knowledge and technical information available daily and ones loss of identity and insecurity becomes increasingly prominent. Many people turn to psychologists, psychoanalysts to find the answers to the loss of their identity.

We can confidently say that this is the sign of our time in the so-called well off and comfortable society.

Can these spiritual problems be prevented; can any type of school education give any help towards this?

The answer is certain: the school cannot do this alone; preparing our children to handle and deal with the difficulties of the future can only be achieved by parental co-ordination and family involvement.

A good family background gives stability and well-balanced behaviour, it helps to answer questions of morality and to find ones’ way in the labyrinth and hierarchy of values (not prices). The family is the smallest and the strongest cell in the body of a nation. This is where a child learns and learns to live the meaning of belonging, the meaning of paying attention to each other, and the responsibility of looking out for each other. This is where they breathe in the traditions and customs of their past. If they arrive at the school bringing these foundations with them, then it is much easier for the teacher to continue to broaden this culture.

The music teachers’ place is a special one in the 21st century.

It is our experience these days -and in this I am sure we all agree-, that we receive less support in our work to achieve our goals than we used to.

I often wonder whether if those people who inflict pain and grief upon their

fellow human beings have ever experienced or heard the music of Bach or

Mozart? Could or would it have influenced their personalities if they had been

touched by Gabriel Faure’s song of After the Dream, or the closing scene of

Puccini’s“ La Boheme”?

We all know that the best method of teaching, the best thought out syllabus and the best teaching books are useless in the absence of a good teacher.

Only those music teachers who have been blessed with musical talent and are well prepared for their lessons, are able to inspire children’s interest. Only those teachers, whose personality reflects rays of sunshine are able to induce the musical emotions and open the children’s souls, to embrace music. Only those teachers with these attributes and untiring enthusiasm are able to carry Kodály’s concepts into practice.

The ‘common denominator’ between those people, who have discovered the magic of music, is the individual magic that each one of them contributes to this magic and the radiating energy that passes between each one of these magical people.

The responsibility of the music teachers-training establishments is a great one: selecting, educating, and preparing the teachers for the future for this thankless but at the same time wonderful task.

As Kodály wrote 50 years ago:

A man who has talent is required to cultivate it to the highest degree, so as to be of the greatest possible use to his fellow-creatures. Every human being is worth as much as he can turn to the advantage of mankind and to the service of his country. Real art is one of the most powerful forces for the uplifting of mankind and he who renders it accessible to as many people as possibile is a benefactor of mankind.

Musical Education -The Power to Change the World One Child at a Time

Special Invited Lecture: Yonsei University &

Seoul National University of Education

by Jerry L. Jaccard Ed.D

School of Music Brigham Young University Provo, Utah, USA

Introduction:

For better or for worse, we musician-teachers live in a market-driven world. Sometimes we feel that our voices are very small, that no one is listening when we try to bring more beauty and peace to the earth. Our overly materialistic world sometimes makes us feel like what we do is not worth much because there is much confusion about what something costs instead of what constitutes true value. Worst of all, market managers consider our children and youth—civilization's most valuable treasure—as targets to be manipulated to buy the "latest" toys, clothes, candy, and "music." These marketers hope that by starting early enough, children will grow up as consumers who must always possess the newest and the most popular products. They want our young ones to grow up thinking that something outside of them has more value than who they actually are on the inside.

But we musicians know something different; we know that every child is a born musician, that one of the most natural human activities is to make music—to sing, to dance, to make and play instruments. If we were to take away all of the electronic devices, the electric appliances, the fashionable clothes, the cars and computers and airplanes, people would still make music, because music is essential to human life. Music is one of the unchangeable characteristics that define us as being human. Albert Einstein, the great physicist who was also a musician said: “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music" (in Viereck 1929, npn). When Zoltán Kodály, a musician who was also a scientist, was elected as the President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences he said:

Not only is there a close relation between the various sciences . . . it is also true that science and art cannot do without one another. The more of the artist there is in the scientist the more fitted is he for his calling, and vice versa. Lacking intuition and imagination, the work of a scientist will at best be pedestrian; without a sense of inner order, of constructive logic, the artist will remain on the periphery of art (in Eösze 1962, 47).

This tells us that we must help people understand that being musical is not an either-or state of being, but that one may be a musician and a scientist, or a scientist and a musician, or a businesswoman and a musician, or a musician and a computer engineer—the list could go on and on.

Science itself has come around to validate Einstein and Kodály's claims. Many cognitive scientists are recognizing the special role that music can play in the intellectual development of all children. They are telling us that because music itself is highly relational, its special role in our thought processes is to help us recognize the possible relationships between all of our knowledge. In other words, the musical way of knowing helps us make sense out of and interconnect everything we know and experience. Studies are showing that children who have proper singing-based musicianship classes in their elementary school years develop more flexible and creative thought processes that carry over to all other subjects (Barkóczi and Pleh, 1978 and 1982; Weber, Spychiger and Patry, 1993). The picture is emerging that music is a great spiritual and intellectual factor in the development of past and present civilizations. We can no longer afford to ignore the power of music to nurture and shape the minds and souls of the rising generation in each of our countries.

One of the weaknesses of our politically charged market economy is that it is shallow and shortsighted; it would rather "sell something" than to think deeply about the lasting importance of true values. This has a great deal to do with music teaching. In its eagerness to "sell something," music and education publishers have tried to convince music educators to think in terms of "methods" about how to teach music. I have always enjoyed Frank Smith's explanation of educational methods as "the systematic deprivation of experience" and that "people who do not trust children to learn—or teachers to teach—will always expect a method to do the job" (1992, 441). Ildiko Herboly-Kocsár, one of the great Hungarian pedagogues has said: "This is not a cookbook! You should know the music; you should know the students; that's all you need to know" (1993, 12). So, I am not here to tell you about some kind of mythical "Kodály Method," but to ask you to consider how Zoltán Kodály was thinking about music—how he believed that music is something that every member of society can experience and learn in order to improve the human condition in every nation. And Kodály was not the only great thinker to believe these things.

If Professor Kodály were standing before you right now, what would he say to you? Would he say: “I am come to convince you to teach like the Hungarians?” or “I am come to tell you about Hungarian folksongs?” or “You should drop everything you are doing and become experts in the ‘Kodály Method’?" I don't believe so. Instead, I think he would he say, “Korea has a wonderful language and culture that is rich in folklore, folksong, folk dance and folk life. You have an ancient classical music as well. Therefore you have all you need to develop your own unique and beautiful national musical culture. You will find your true musical language and values within your own traditional music." Then he would most likely ask: “What is the relationship between ancient Korean music and modern Korean composition and how can you bring them closer together?” And, “How can you best use your national musical language to help your people become more Korean, better Koreans, and to create a continuous Korean musical culture from the most ancient to the most modern?” Next, he would ask "What are your plans to transform school music teaching in Korea, to make fine music education available to everyone?" Lastly, I believe Kodály would tell you that by answering these questions with corresponding actions, Korea will have a great musical gift to share with the world, a gift even greater than the one you already offer.

A Basis for a National Musical Culture:

You probably already know that Zoltán Kodály and his college classmate, Béla Bartók, re-discovered the ancient treasure of Hungarian folksong. You may not know that they learned from Debussy, Ravel, and other composers how the characteristically Hungarian folksong rhythms and tonalities could and should be used in composed music. From the rich fund of ancient Hungarian scale systems, they invented the axis system of key relationships which applies to tonal as well as atonal music. So, by using the axis system, Bartók became the more tonally adventurous composer, but always identifiable through his music as Bartók and as a Hungarian. Kodály became more tonally conservative, but also always identifiable through his music as Kodály and as a Hungarian.

Such individuality is one of the great principles underlying Kodály's way of thinking about music teaching: the principle of cultivating individual expression and creativity within a unifying framework. The Kodály phenomenon in music education is not prescriptive; rather, it celebrates the individual teacher's ability to be a good musician and a good pedagogue who can bring out the best in every one of his-her students. Kodály himself practiced this principle as evidenced by this remark from Mátyás Seiber, one of his own composition students:

I don't believe there is another man living today, who teaches the rules of the old counterpoint so thoroughly, and so constructively, as [Kodály] does...In the way he handles his students he is unique...In his own words, he allows them 'to grow from their own roots'. He makes no attempt to interfere in their development, but allows their personality to unfold in accordance with their individual bent (Eösze, 1962, 68).

The year before he died, Kodály the composer had something to say about folksong that is particularly important for Korea, because according to this statement, every country has many unknown composers whose music is waiting to be discovered and brought into the schools and into the musical life of the people:

I honor the anonymous composers having lived hundreds perhaps thousands of years ago, whose work brought us the still living Hungarian folksong, because every song must naturally be sung once for the first time, and whoever did that was a composer—even if not in today’s sense, but fully unconsciously. So, I regard these old songs as my mother, and the masters of the world—who naturally I also studied—as my teachers for improvement and excellence. For me, the main thing has always been to make the sound of my people audible. Therefore I always had to endeavor to research the ancient songs and melodies and attempt to continue to work in the spirit of the old tradition, that is, to carry it forward. And I would already be satisfied if I would not be counted as an unworthy successor to those ancient composers who lived hundreds and thousands of years ago (Kodály, 1966, 91).

But why is folk music so important to musical composition, performance and education? There are many good technical and theoretical answers to this question, but to me, the most important answer is that folksong belongs to the people—it has always belonged to the people—and because the people "own" folk music, they will always recognize their own voice in the work of composers, performers and educators who use folk music as the basis of high art music. Many other great European composers before and after Bartók and Kodály recognized this principle. Bartók's definition of folksong is particularly helpful in understanding why people take ownership of authentic folksong. For him, folk music is "the sum total of all the tunes in use in a human community, the spontaneous expression of its musical instinct over a given area . . . tunes sung by many people over a long period" (Bartók in Manga, 1969, 11). Kodály explained how folk music is a significant body of literature because it:

"should not be thought of as one uniform, homogeneous whole. Profound differences are to be found according to age, social and material condition, religion, cultural level, region and [gender]. Village society is a unity only when viewed from a distance. There are differences resulting from occupations...and from property and religion among people of identical occupation. This is shown in the songs they know" (Kodály in Manga, 1969, 12).

The main point is that the indigenous music of a village, of a province, of a nation is a vast body of literature with particular forms, performance styles, tonalities, scale types and meaningful texts and contexts that belong to that national culture. One of Bartók's and Kodály's greatest discoveries is how authentic folksong is the microcosm from which the macrocosm of composed music evolved. In Western European music large-scale composed forms such as the aria, fugue, sonata, symphony and concerto all developed out of folksong. For example, Kodály collected a folksong known as Fly, Peacock, Fly which turned out to be over one thousand years old. It has a very interesting shifting phrase structure with answers at the fifth. Kodály arranged it as a short two-part choral piece for school children to serve as a bridge between the simple original folksong—the microcosm, and polyphonic texture with answers at the fifth as in a Bach fugue—the macrocosm. He then used the same ancient melody to compose his Peacock Variations, one of the great orchestral works of the twentieth century. This is only one of many examples of how, in Kodály music education, school age children can easily grow into understanding and performing masterworks by starting with the simple folksong prototypes from which high art music is derived. I am sure that you can see how this illuminates a path that Korean musicologists, composers, music teachers, conductors and performers can travel together as a community of music makers.

The Four Dimensions of Change in School Music

While Bartók and Kodály were working on analyzing and classifying tens of thousands of folk melodies, Kodály began to recognize their educational value. As a composer, he also began to realize that unless comprehensive musical education was made available for every member of society from the youngest to the oldest, and unless a large percentage of the population was engaged in amateur music making, there would soon be no audiences for the next generation of composers and their masterworks (Kodály, 1966, 49). He also realized, as noted above, that musicality is an essential aspect of being human. These realizations compelled Kodály to devote the rest of his life to reforming music education in his own country and to advocating for the same reforms in other countries.

So what did Kodály really do if he did not create a “method”? In a word, his entire aim and effort was to optimize the conditions for the musical education of an entire society, in other words, to change the system. He rose to this challenge with the support of an international network of first-rank composers, conductors, linguists, musicologists, theorists and pedagogues who also aimed to change the system. Let us recognize, too, that Hungary is not some cultural outpost—it has long been a fertile seedbed of educational innovations. Centuries before Zoltán Kodály was born, Hungarian educators had already produced Orbis Pictus, the world’s first illustrated children’s textbook—one of the most widely translated and published books ever printed; had developed the first preschool system on the European continent; and had laid the foundation for Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. All of these and more influences Kodály’s own education and professional development.

Kodály was a brilliant change agent on the national and international levels. Consider his manifesto for systemic and systematic change:

If the child is not filled at least once by the life-giving stream of music during the most susceptible period—between his sixth and sixteenth years—it will hardly be of any use to him later on. Often a single experience will open the young soul to music for a whole lifetime. This experience cannot be left to chance, it is the duty of the school to provide it . . . I do not mean that the school can offer this in its present framework, but I consider it self-evident that the framework will undergo substantial transformation . . . (Bónis, 1964, 120)

This manifesto clearly states six universal truths: 1) music expresses the life in Life;

2) young people are susceptible to the influence of music; 3) there is an optimal window for musical education; 4) truly musical education is the providing of musical experiences; 5) schools have a duty to provide substantial and meaningful musical experiences; and

6) the basic structure and content of schooling must change to properly accommodate music.

A Basis for Improving Music Education

All educators know what a difficult thing it is to actually change the system. American teachers even have a saying about it: “It is easier to move a graveyard than it is to change the curriculum.” So then we have to wonder how Zoltán Kodály was able to bring about such huge changes in his country and how we, too, can become such effective change agents. We can answer this when we understand the four kinds of changes Kodály and his successors have been addressing: 1) the quantity, or number of students served and the variety of means employed to serve them; 2) the quality of instructional materials and musical experiences for school music; 3) the scheduling of musical instruction to become an equal subject within the total school curriculum; and 4) the teaching, meaning teacher-education, teachers and teaching. Making these changes takes time and patience, but progress can be made quickly once the effort begins. Can every Hungarian citizen sing in tune, read music, and participate as an amateur music maker yet? No. Is the struggle to change the system still ongoing? Yes. Have the aims of Kodály’s famous Hundred Year Plan been fulfilled? Not yet. Nevertheless, great progress is made in the simple act of pursuing a lofty goal—the journey is worth as much as the destination. The sooner we get started, the closer we get to the desired results.

1. Change the Quantity

Increasing the quantity, or number of students served, is expressed in Kodály’s banner statement of “Music for Everyone.” Kodály instinctively knew that music is a universal human capacity rather than a talent-dependent gift:

Outstanding talents will always be rare, and the future of a musical culture cannot be based on them. People of good average abilities must also be adequately educated, for in the near future we must lead millions to music, and to this end we shall need hundreds if not thousands of good musicians and teachers (in Bónis, 1964, 33).

To accomplish this, he envisioned how home, school and society could work together to provide sufficient musical development for all children in order to equip them for lifelong musical participation. Kodály championed the development of all kinds of musicians, whether children or adults, amateurs or professionals, performers or listeners, producers or collectors, composers or conductors.

In order to reach as many students as possible, Kodály also realized that the Hungarian school system would have to become more flexible in its structure and more interconnected at all levels. Kodály and his many associates developed a multi-tiered music education system that functioned well for several decades:

Tier 1:   Preschool-Kindergarten music curriculum prepares for and flows into

Tier 2a: Normal Primary School [grades 1–8] twice-weekly music curriculum

OR

Tier 2b: Singing Primary School [grades 1–8] everyday music curriculum

Tier 3:   Tiers 1, 2a and 2b are served by community after-school music schools               for private instrumental study and ensembles, accelerated sol-fa   instruction and college-bound preparatory music study.

Tier 4:   Regional Music Conservatories [specialized “Music High Schools”]

Tier 5: College-University Music Conservatories

Tier 6: Franz Liszt National Academy of Music [top-echelon professional

musicians, composers, musicologists, pedagogues, conductors, etc]

This multi-level system allows for great sensitivity to individual student abilities, needs and interests. A gifted 5- or 6-year old may already study an instrument at a high artistic level but an adolescent rank beginner may also be accommodated. There are many children’s choirs, youth choirs, small and large instrumental ensembles, and professional broadcast ensembles. All of these opportunities are cooperative extensions of the public school music education system.

2. Change the Quality

As for improving the quality, one of Kodály’s strategies for changing the system was to increase the musicality and musicianship of those who teach music. Kodály himself was a teacher; he taught folksong and composition at the Liszt Academy, even returning after retirement to teach solfège mainly because he wanted the experience (Szönyi, 2007, npn). His teaching was driven by his desire to prepare composers and teachers who could approach the highest peaks of music: "We have to assimilate all that is best in the musical heritage of Western Europe. I am doing my best to help my students to master the polyphonic style . . . Indeed, in this, I go further than anyone has ever done in this country, or even than is customary abroad” (Kodály in Eösze, 1962, 67). In so doing, he purposely invited young, promising music education majors into these classes:

[M]y teaching has not just been concerned with composers, because many of my students have gone through composition classes even though they did not at all want to or know how to compose. They just wanted to become good musicians so as to be able to work later as pedagogues and conductors. Good pedagogues were a rare commodity and without their efforts we might never have been able to attain today’s level of music education. So I also had to train up a like number of pedagogues. They teach everywhere today (Kodály, 1966, p. 47).

In this way, Kodály supplied Hungary with a new generation of highly qualified music teachers who joined him in changing the system.

Kodály also addressed issues of quality by unselfishly devoting a large part of his compositional output to school music. This amounted to 14 major stylistic collections running into hundreds of individual pieces of music, 17 treble-voice choral works, and 53 advanced choral works. The developmental and stylistic range of this body of composition is breathtaking—from the simplest two-note melodies up to complex polyphony, from simple Medieval organum up through Impressionism, and then right straight through to the new Axis system of composition he and Bartók created out of folksong, with its tonal-atonal ambiguities. For decades, Kodály literally gave away his choral compositions for schools through Magyar Korus, a music education publishing house and magazine edited by some of his former students. His example stimulated hundreds of musicologists, composers and teachers to produce arguably the finest musical curricula in the world. As Ildiko Herboly-Kocsár has observed, "[t]he reason children read music so fluently in Hungary is because they have such good tools in their hands. These tools always present only the best music” (1993, npn).

3. Change the Schedule

One of the most difficult of the “substantial changes” Kodály addressed was to increase the frequency and regularity of music lessons in the school curriculum. This is also one of our greatest current challenges anywhere in the world. The required changes are multi-dimensional: the number of exposures per week for every classroom in every grade, the number of minutes per exposure, and the number of musical participation opportunities outside of the school day but still attached to it. And this is where the resistance from school administrators comes in: They become concerned about making changes to the already over-programmed school schedule, the objections of the classroom teachers and the cost of educating and hiring qualified music specialists. Kodály was strongly against financial objections:

That the economic crisis is the cause of everything? . . . Penury may hamper development but wealth does not always promote it either . . . However, the most valuable things cannot be bought with money. The greatest trouble is not the emptiness of the purse but the emptiness of the soul. And of this we have got more than our share (In Bónis, 1964, 126).

It may not be wise to quote those exact words to a school administrator, but the real message here is about the attitudinal root cause that needs changing: educational decisions are all too often made by those who have never been properly immersed in “the life-giving stream of music.” Somehow we must break that cycle; to do so is perhaps the greatest challenge of our time and the most important reason for us here today to persevere. As tomorrow’s decision-makers, today’s children should not have to be convinced of the intrinsic value of a substantial musical education—they should have already experienced it!

Professor Kodály knew that changes in music scheduling bring about the restoration of music to its rightful place in the general curriculum as the rigorous subject matter it has been since ancient times. Systematically well-taught and well-learned singing-based musical instruction is the principal subject, easily connected to instrumental study on an elective basis according to individual motivation and financial opportunity (Kodály in Eösze, 1962, 195). As a singing instrumentalist himself, Kodály understood how there must first be music inside a person in order for it to be expressed through an instrument. That is why we call them instruments; they are an additional tool for expressing and extending what already exists. And yes, it is unfortunately true that one can learn instrumental technique without first having music inside—it happens all the time. All of us know how to use a saw, but that does not make us carpenters! The very nature of music itself requires profound changes in the scheduling of school music.

4. Change the Teacher and the Teaching

Three centuries before Kodály, Jan Amos Comenius had established the first truly child-centered school and a teacher-training college in Sárospatak, Hungary. That is where the first illustrated children’s textbook originated (Brambora in Földes and Mészáros, 1973, 16) and its modern musical descendents are widely used in Hungarian music education. Jean Piaget traced his own line of thinking about children’s cognitive development straight back to Comenius (1998, 204). Less than a century before Kodály’s birth, Prince Nicholas Esterházy and Countess Teresa Brunswick spread Pestalozzi’s ideas throughout Hungary and its schools (Besson and Waridel, 1995, 12–13). Using her own fortune, Brunswick established almost a hundred Angel Gardens, or preschools, in impoverished areas throughout Hungary and later in Austria and Germany. They included sheltered workshops for adults, teacher-education and staff development for adolescents, and the first use of Hungarian-language children’s songs instead of German school songs (Szönyi in Besson, 1985, 40). Continuing along in this same path as his predecessors, Kodály made sweeping improvements in Hungarian music teaching, the same kinds of improvements many of us are now trying to initiate in our own countries:

1. Recognize that every child is a born musician and that genuine musical activity     is an essential way of being, knowing, thinking and doing.

2. Educate teachers as lifelong learners and skillful teachers who deeply     understand child development, music learning processes and music literature.

3. Continually improve and refine teaching techniques and teaching materials.

4. Provide a centralized curriculum that encourages teachers to develop their     own methodologies.

5. Allow methodology to be the domain of principle-driven teachers who teach     using their own musicianship, intuition and creativity with sensitivity to the     insightfulness and spontaneity of their students.

7. Provide regular peer-observation and sharing opportunities for teachers.

8. Build school music systems from the bottom up rather than from the top     down.

If I may talk personally for a few minutes, I would like to share with you what we are doing in my city of Provo, Utah. Fifteen years ago, there were no music specialists in the thirteen elementary schools of our town. There were instrumental and choir teachers in the junior high and high schools, but only a small, often select number of students could take their classes. We began a summer Kodály certification program at the university for musicians who wanted to learn how to teach better. After much work at the university to develop a new kind of music teacher, and much volunteer work to show the principals what young children can achieve in music, we now have a full-time music specialist in all thirteen elementary schools. We have several children's choirs and bands in the schools, and every year we have children's choir, orchestra, and band festivals where our music specialists take turns as the festival conductors. In this way, our teachers continue to grow and gain large ensemble conducting experience. Over the past ten years, dozens of our children have auditioned and been accepted into the National Children's Choir. We have begun an after-school music school for the school district, in which young students can have one private violin or cello lesson, one group lesson, and one musicianship lesson every week. We will shortly include wind instruments in the same teaching scheme. The junior high and high school music teachers are noticing the improved quality and quantity of incoming students who sing, hear, read and play better. One of our former elementary students has just received the highest university scholarship award at her high school and plans to enter the university to study elementary music teaching. Another student is close behind her. So now we are replacing ourselves with the younger generation and have the assurance that our hard work and sacrifice was worth the effort and that what we have begun will continue for many more years. Some of our music specialists are now teaching at a neighboring university, which further extends our reach into other cities and school districts. All of this happened because of just one music teacher who, like Kodály, had a vision to change the system and who shared that vision with others. By working together here in Korea, you can accomplish anything you can envision.

Here in Seoul, you have a gifted music teacher with a great sense of vision. Several years ago, Cho Hong-ky brought his music school choir to sing in an international choir festival at our university. The level of their musicianship, the beauty of their singing, and their shining spirit was the highlight of the festival. In his choir, Mr. Cho brings children, youth, and adults together in a community of music makers. I believe he has correctly understood the true nature of Kodály's vision. I hope you will all work together with him to change the system. Think of the great ability each of you has individually and how much more powerful it will be when combined with everyone else's to work toward a common goal. Because of you, I am excited for the future of music education in Korea—change is in the air!

Conclusion

Our world is changing rapidly and change always gives us opportunities for new beginnings. In America, in The Philippines, in Mexico, in Korea, and in many other countries, we have colleagues who intend to change their educational systems to make lifelong musical education available to every child. Someday, those children will be the next generation of parents, teachers, administrators, business people, scientists and national leaders. Based on their childhood musical experiences, they will determine whether or not there will be music teachers, music lessons and school music in the future. And as we have experienced in our town, some will become new music teachers who will have lived the vision and be able to take it further.

Sometimes we feel that we alone cannot make a difference. But great changes often happen gradually and quietly. Each of us has the capacity to change the future of the world one child at a time, one school at a time, one village at a time. And those we teach then become able to help us continue to make positive changes; in effect, we multiply our influence through our students. But we must get started soon because there are too many people in our world who want to do bad things to other people and especially to do great harm to our innocent children. However, I also believe that there are far more good people than bad. The worst thing for the future of our planet is for good people like us to do nothing. How hard will it be to make music a great force for good to strengthen, uplift, inspire and protect our precious little ones? Now is a good time to begin; no one else will do it for us.

REFERENCES

Barkóczi, I., and Pleh, Cs. (1978). Psychological effects of Kodály's conception of music education. Kecskemét, Hungary: Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music.

Barkóczi, I., & Pleh, Cs. (1982). Music makes a difference. Kecskemét, Hungary: Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music.

Bónis, F., ed. (1964). The selected writings of Zoltán Kodály. New York: Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.

Cornaz-Besson, J. and Waridel, F. (1995). Les visiteurs célèbres au chateau d’Yverdon [Famous visitors to the Castle of Yverdon]. Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland: Centre de Documentation et de Recherche Pestalozzi.

Eösze, L. (1962). Zoltán Kodály—His life and work. Boston: Crescendo Publishing Company.

Földes, É. and Mészáros, I., eds. (1973). Comenius and Hungary: Essays. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.

Herboly-Kocsár, I. Solfège and solfège pedagogy. Lecture notes transcribed by Jerry L. Jaccard. Pre-conference coursework. 1993 National/International Conference of the Organization of American Kodály Educators and the International Kodály Society, August 1993, West Hartford, Connecticut.

Kodály, Z. (1966). Mein Weg zur Musik—Fünf Gespräche mit Lutz Besch (My path to music—Five conversations with Lutz Besch). English translation by Jerry L. Jaccard [2002], publication pending. Zürich, Switzerland: Peter Schifferli Verlags AG «Die Arche».

Manga, J. (1969). Hungarian folk song and folk instruments. Translated by Gyula Gulyas. Budapest: Corvina Press.

Piaget, J. (1998). De la pédagogie (About pedagogy). Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob.

Smith, F. (February 1992). "Learning to read: The never-ending debate." In Phi Delta Kappan, 432-441.

Szönyi, E. in Jacqueline Cornaz-Besson, Pestalozzi, L’Enfant et la Musique, Cahier Numéro 3 des Quatrièmes Rencontres Pestalozzi, 10–11 mai 1985, Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland : Centre de Recherches et de Documentation Pestalozzi.

Viereck, G.S. 1929. What life means to Einstein: An interview by George Sylvester Viereck. Saturday Evening Post.

Weber, E.W., Spychiger, M., and Patry, J.-L. (1993). Musik macht Schule—Biografie und Ergebnisse eines Schulversuchs mit erweitertem Musikunterricht (Music makes schools—Biography and results of a school experiment about extended music education). Essen, Germany: Blauen Eule.

13.Campursari Music:

The Content and Modal System Application

Bambang Sunarto

Indonesia

Abstract

Behind the complex body of the music is modal system. It is a combination of related musical elements organized into a complex whole musicality. The music of campursari is factually adaptive music that bringing two modal systems. That two-combination system makes this music have a typical character. It means, the music of campursari has some different aspects that are practically adjusted for use in one exceptional music arrangement.

Keywords: Laras, scale, mode, pathêt.

Campursari is a hybrid music combining the popular and the ethnics, especially that of Javanese gamêlan orchestra. In the last decade, this music has gained a vast development, but in fact there is only a little attention paid by the researcher to investigate the artistic phenomenon. There has been a research to analyze the campursari music (Setyono, 2003), but the focus is on its anthropological aspect, leaving behind the artistic points. The works on the campursari are still rarely found. Supanggah (2000) did not go down into the artistics of campursari, rather than proposing a view of criticism on it. He argued that campursari is a manifestation of new music containing a kind of pseudo-modernism, because its creation does not have a stronghold on the understanding of the mixed music genres ((2000: 5-19). Waridi (2001) just goes in the same line with the view.

Seeing the fact described above, it is very urgent to have a look closer on the artistic aspect of the campursari music, especially on the modal system it applies, i.e. a concept related to the note, laras or scale, which will practically determine the melody pattern and/or treatment (garap) of the music genre.

This article is to prove that behind the distinctiveness of campursari music, while it is often criticized negatively, there contains a mode system worthy to study. Each music culture has its own notion for the concept. Western music culture has mode, i.e. the sequence of notes constituting laras or scale composition with a certain interval, based on the basic note or a particular tonic.. By the existence of some sequence of notes, there is a theoretical and practical framework on which the song, the arrangement, and its musical composition are created. Encyclopedia Britannica proposes a complete description about mode:

“any of several ways of ordering the notes of a scale according to the intervals they form with the tonic, thus providing a theoretical framework for the melody. A mode is the vocabulary of a melody; it specifies which notes can be used and indicates which have special importance. Of these, there are two principal notes: the final, on which the melody ends, and the dominant, which is the secondary centre”.

The term modal is the derivational terms of mode. In Western music tradition, it can be implicitly understood that modal system is a system to lead the composer and/or the musician to create such a musical proposition with some classification according to the possible variation of the characters in the available tonic sequence, especially the sequence of tones making up laras or scale with a certain interval based on the main note or a particular tonic. In the construction of laras or the scale, contains a principle can be used to recognize and indicate the pattern and the melodic lead, according to the rhythm and the denotation of the notes arranged.

PATHêT AND MODE

Sadie (1980: XII: 377-449) argues that in Indonesian music culture, especially karawitan (the Javanese orchestra) in Central Java, Eastern Java, Sunda, and Bali, the concept pathêt can be referred as mode in the Western music concept. Both have a different denotative meaning, actually. They are in common dealing with the melodic feature and/or treatment (garap) or scale, but have each emphasis on the different meaning. Implicitly, pathêt deals with the system determining ‘the pitch’ or the role of each note arranged in a melodic phrase. However, pathêt also cover the psycological-phylosophical aspect, as it is depicted in Sêkar Asmaradana of the section Titi Asri, implicitly defining the concept of pathêt as follows:

Bubukané sangking angin

Tumanduk anèng èngêtan

Angên-angên kang karaos

Lêbda lalangên pradongga

Alim larasing swara

Wus supêkêt narbukèng nrus

Pa-pathêt panthênging cipta

Dadya tatalining urip

Uripé ponang pradongga

Ngumpul rasa surasané

Sangking pamanthênging driya

Pinanthêng ngêmbat-êmbat

Dumadya bat kang dumunung

Anèng têtêlênging laras

Têtêlênge kang piningit

Mula ingaran patêtan

Pinantêng pantênging batos

Sabarang ingkang jinangka

Lamun nora patêtan

Katêmah gêndhinge kuwur

Lêbar sumawur ngalênthar (Hardosukarta, 1978: 40-41).

In the beginning, it is a breeze

Coming through and memorized

The feelings realize

To show the perfect hands of pengrawit feast

The tenderly beautiful voice

Has condensely led and opened the gate

For the pathêt creative power

It comes, then.

[pathêt as] the living binder [i.e.]

the lives of pêngrawits (musicians)

[who] Gather all the meanings

from the strain of the heart

Which strained [but] softened

To become the tender concealed

In the core of beauty

The hidden core, then

Pathêtan we call

Stretched in the heart strain

All we dream

Without pathêtan

In the future, its gêndhing will lost its form

Scattered wide apart).

Here, the content of Sêkar Asmaradana is a moral teaching, piwulang, delivered metaphorically. It is not just practical-aesthetics. The notions like papathêt, pathêtan and gêndhing in the song, sêkar, does indicate to the musical references, but in the deep, it goes under the wisdom sphere oriented to the intrinsic spiritual values. Yet, the song of Sêkar Asmaradana still has an actual meaning discussing denotatively the practical aesthetics matters.

Hastanto, in elaborating the concept of pathêt in the karawitan music of Central Java, also quotes a part of the song of Sêkar Asmaradana in the section of Titi Asri. Below is the part adopted by Hastanto,

Mula ingaran patêtan

Pinantêng pantênging batos

Sabarang ingkang jinangka

Lamun nota (sic!) patêtan

Katêmah gêndhingé kuwur (Hastanto, 1985: 68)

(Hence referred as pathêtan

Stretched in the heart strain

All we dream

Without pathêtan

In the future, its gêndhing will lost its form)

From that part of song (tembang), Hastanto tries to find out the practical-aesthetic content, by extracting the meaning within. Based his analysis on the text, he, then, formulates:

“Some information may be extracted from the above statement: pathêt is a system (perhaps a system which governs the weight of each note in a melodic phrase) which is established in the musicians’ (and listeners’) minds, so mentally they already have image of the weight of notes within the system. All of these restrict the musicians in their way of playing” (1985: 68-69)

The meaning of pathêt seems to be so abstract, but we still can grab its essence. To understand the pathêt in its practical-aesthetic connotation, it needs a tool to analyze the musical elements which can be perceived through our sense, especially those closely related to melody, like balungan and gatra. Such an analysis has been done by an American ethnomusicologist, Judith Becker.

To make it clear, below is her explanation about the pathêt related to the melody.

“Pathêt recognition was based upon three interlocking factors: (1) melodic pattern, formula or contour, (2) the pitch level of that pattern, and (3) the position of the pattern within the formal structure of the piece” (1980: 81).

First factor, as she mentions, is the pattern, formula or the contour of the melody, which is, in the musical culture of karawitan, called as céngkok. The second factor is also related to the pattern, formula, and the contour of the melody in the first, just as the last factor. Thus, the central point of pathêt is céngkok in its melodic context and construct.

The concept of pathêt and mode denotatively is a manifestation of modal system determining the role or the function and the relation between the notes established by the sequence of them (read: laras or scale) as its base. Thus, pathêt and mode are two different things, but actually the same. Both are common or parallel, but they are discursively different.

In one hand, mode is the concept associated with the note arrangement in laras or scale created with a certain basic note to lay a theoretical framework to compose a melody. In another, pathêt is related to céngkok or melody which is essentially the determinant of laras or scale realized in the relation between and among the notes. Both are in common for their relation with the note arrangement. Without any note composition, both are cease to exist. The difference is in its denotation meaning. The pathêt is about the relation, the position, and the content of céngkok which certainly can not be separated from the notes in a certain scale, while mode is about the relation and the position of the notes.

THE APPLICATION OF PATHêT AND MODE

In the music of campursari, a modal system used is the mix between mode and pathêt, depending on the original resource of the song. If it expresses a popular song or the folklore of non-karawitan (traditional Javanese music), in which the notes system is picked from the western music, mode will be more dominant in its musical arrangement. In another, as the karawaitan music is the central, the pathêt system will give more colors in its music.

Based on the elaboration, campursari music, in a time, applies a musical paradigm with a mode basis, in another; it presents a pathêt-based musical composition. It means some can only be discussed through mode perspective; others are more appropriately discussed in pathêt perspective. Below are examples of the notation for the musical composition with a pathêt base and those with mode base. Those are Gêndhing Kêtawang Ngimpi, Laras Sléndro, Pathêt Sanga, of which the musical discourses are totally pathêt-based.

Ngimpi; Kêtawang, Laras Sléndro, Pathêt Sanga (Barang Miring)

Syair dan Lagu: Ki Mujoko Joko Raharjo

Bãwã Sêkar “Pangkur”

1 2 3 5 5 5 56 4.5

Ngum – bã - rã ing a – wang - a - wang

5 5 5.6 4.5 1 1.y t 5 5 5.3 2.12.1

A –ngê –la - ngut bê – ba - san tanpã tê - pi

! ! !.@ 7.! @ # # @.!@.!

Nê-ra-bas ing mé-gã mên-dhung

4 4 4 4.3 4.5 5 6.!.@!6.5

Mi- bêr ngi- de-ri ja - gat

3 2.1 1 1 4 4 4 4.5 3 2.1 5.3 2.12.1

Ngu-lan-dã-rã nglêm-bã-rã ngung-gah-i gu-nung

y 1 2 2 2 2 2.3 1.2

Kê-tung-kul ngum-bar ga-gas-an

1 1 1.5 5 3 2.1 5.3 2.12.1

Sa - tê -mah gi - nã - wã ngim - pi

Notasi Balungan:

Lagu/Gérongan

[. . 2 1 6 5 3> n5 . . 5 p1 6 5 3 g2

. . 2 1 6 5 3 n5 . . 5 p1 2 1 2 g1

. . ! 6 5 6 5 n3 . . 1 p5 1 5 2 g1

. . 2 1 6 5 3 n5 . . 5 p1 2 5 2 g1 ] f

Umpak/Interlude

. . 2 1 6 5 3 n5 . . 5 p1 2 5 2 g1 ]

Notasi Gérongan:

_. . . ._ j.! @ j.7 ! _ . j.@ j!6 5_ j.4 j43 j.4 5 _

sri-pat sri-pit lèmbèhané mêrak kê - simpir

_. . . ._j.4 5 j56 1 _ j.3 2 j.k155_ j.2 2 j13 2 _

gandhês lu-wês wi-ra - ga – né ang-lam-lam-i

_. . . ._ j.! @ j.7 ! _ . j.@ j!6 5_ j.4 j43 j.4 5 _

sè-dhêt singsêt bêsus a-nga - di bu – sã - nã

_. . . ._ j.4 5 j.6 1 _ j.32 j.k15 5_ j.3 j2k.1 j.u 1_

dasar a-yu mak-sih kê-nyã tan ku – ci -wã

_. . . ._ 6 6 j!7 6 _ j.! 7 j.6 6_ j.6 6 j.k43 3 _

tak ca – kêt-i a-duh mèsêm sêpêt madu

_. . . ._ ! ! j.6 5 _ j.1 1 j15 5_ j.3 j2k.1 j.u 1_

o-ra srãntã tak gandhèng ma-lah gu - mu-yu

_. . . ._ j.! @ j.7 ! _ . j.@ j!6 5_ j.4 j43 j.4 5 _

ka-ton bungah kênyã kang pin – dhã hap-sa-ri

_. . . ._ j.4 5 j.6 1 _j.3 2 j.k15 5_j.3 j2k.1 j.u1_f.

ku-ci-wa-né kabèh ma - u amung ngimpi

Below is the song composed in a mode base, its title is “Cinta Tak Terpisahkan”, composed by Dikin. It is well-known in the vocabulary of campursari music.

CINTA TAK TERPISAHKAN

Dikin

It is a popular song for which its composing orientation is impossible to use an approach of karawitan music, so it is just in vain to see through the pathêt views. It must inevitably present this musical composition in a mode perspective.

NOTE ARRANGEMENT

Both mode and pathêt cannot be separated from the laras or scale applied. To know the musical genre of campursari music, it needs to see the denotation of the notes taken. If a piece of music is mode-based, it certainly has a root in the notes used in the structural composition of western music. If it is found a pathêt-based composition, the music has a relation with the root of notes applied in that of karawitan music. The point worthy to consider here is how the musicians manage to make it possible for them to play flexibly the songs with each different-aesthetic base.

In western music, there are two kinds of larasan or main scale, diatonic and pentatonic. Diatonic is divided into major and minor. In practice, related to the range scale of the both, there are many scales, basing on major or minor. To understand this, the western music tradition applies a keynote system determining the basic tone or tonics. Scale in the major C key, for example, will be opened with C tone, making a complete sequence of notes below.

Based on the above rule, there will be seven types of scale, for all seven notes, i.e. C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, can serve as the basic note. For example the G note

G

In the G key above, the mark (#) is put in the first line. It tells us that to create an F note of the line, the note should be increased to half-note above the original. The G here functions to be the first note of the scale. It, then, results in a complete scale with G, always started in G note. Thus, the complete sequence or the formation of each note can be illustrated as follows.

There is another scale with a keynote or a basic note of major D, like below.

D

This will result in an arrangement of note pattern, as follows.

Or

There is another diatonic scale with mark (#), i.e. the scale keyed in A, or having a basic note of A, as follows.

A

In the major key A, three mark (#) are put on three different positions: on the first line, on the space between the first and the second line, and on the space between the second and the third line, respectively indicating F, C, and G. This indicates that to make the notes of F, C, and G on the line and two spaces, the note should be higher to a half-note than their normal. A note here functions to be the first tone or the basic of the scale keyed in A. The result will be a complete composition as follows.

In addition to the diatonic scale with mark (#) to indicate some notes need to increase, three diatonic scales applies mark (b) as a symbol to show that some notes should be lowered. Below is the basic note of F major with a mal put on.

F

In the F major above, mark (b) is laid on the third line, showing B note. To make a B note in the line, it should be lowered a half-note. It should be noted that F is the first note of the scale. The complete construction of notes played in F key is below.

Another diatonic scale with mark (b) is the scale in a basic note or key B major.

B

In the key B major above, two mark (b) are put on the third line, showing B note and on the space between first and the second line, indicating E note. This represents the notes B in the line and E in the space should be lowered to a half-note. The complete result will be like this.

At last, the scale applying mark (b) is the notes having E major as its key, or its basic note.

E

In the key of E major above, three marks (b) are laid in different position, in the line and spaces, representing the note A, B, and E. This tells us that to get the three notes; we should lower them to a half-note. The result is like as follows.

All are the major scale in larasan with diatonic system. There is another scale in this larasan. i.e. minor scale. In the same arrangement, this scale also has seven patterns of note arrangements, each of which is based on a certain key note. To make it more obvious, below is the detail. First is the minor scale with the key note of A.

A

The sequence of notes with A basic note will be as follows.

In another, a minor scale can be completed with mark (#), i.e. the minor scale with a keynote of E.

E

The construction of notes with E as its basic note will be like this.

Next, there is a minor scale with double mark (#), i.e. scale with key note B.

B

And its complete sequence is shown below.

Another minor is with three marks (#), i.e. a minor scale based on F note.

F

The sequence of notes in the key will be as follows.

Below is a scale with a mal mark (b), meaning it should be lowered to a half-note. It is a scale based on D note.

D

And its note arrangement applied in the score will be like below.

Another minor scale having two marks (b), is scale based on G note.

G

And the following construction is the pattern of its note arrangement.

At last, a minor scale with C note as its basic note.

C

It has the following notes-sequence.

Actually, larasan or all scale described above is not a complete theoretical version of scale in the diatonic system of western music. There is still more scales with a basic note completed with more than three marks (#) or (b), all of which have not been included in the explanation. A scale even can have more than seven marks (#) or (b). It means range (Jw: têba or ambah-ambahan) of the notes that is possibly arranged into scaling in the diatonic system is, technically, much more various.

Thus, the musical concept that can form a linear structure of music composition, in which each single notation will be followed by another to result in typical melodic construction. In its final, the arrangements of single tones will create a series of musical notes making up a typical unit that can be recognized as a musical expression, called melody. Surely, melody is a sequence of organized musical notes, constructed from pitch and duration.

Campursari music applies the theoretic construction previously explained as its approach, reference and theoretical framework. But, it also uses karawitan approach which has a different method to make up its musical construction. Then, how the different methods can be integrated? There is no other way than by melaras (read: stemming) the percussion instruments, covering saron, dêmung and saron pênêrus permanently by applying one of the scales in the western music tradition as its reference.

From its early start, the music creators have considered much on the ambitous of vocal competence among the singers of their band. This ambitious, then, becomes the reference to choose the scale in stemming. Based on the fact, they decide to stem the percussion instruments on the scale of D minor, which then results in the following notes.

In the western music perspective, the minor scale has fulfilled to play the major scale, if the F note or do (1) is the key note, or basic note. It means all western music instruments must be played on the F major tone as its key note, accompanied with the percussion instruments permanently stemmed on the scale of minor D. Both scales have in common on all their tones. The only difference is its starting notes; the scale of minor D opens in D or La (6), and the scale F major begins in the F tone or do as its key note.

In its relation with the modal system of karawitan, all the minor scale instantly can be functioned to make up laras slélndro and pélog, both of which are the standards system of karawitan music. To make it clear, below is its tone arrangement.

Based on the elaboration above, it is clear that in campursari music, the composer attempts to play the music tools in a flexible way. This is to make it possible to create the songs based on mode and pathêt with the western musical instruments. The co-play between the instruments having each different cultural base starts with a laras modification, especially the instruments of saron, dêmung and saron pênêrus. Such a modification is necessary to accommodate the performance of the songs applying the diatonic scale, with a mode perspective as its theoretical frame in the music play.

This modification also functions to make a way in playing gêndhing which applies the scale of sléndro or pélog. And it enables a gendhing-based campursari music to keep its hold on the treatment (garap) perspective, formulated into an artistic convention in the play of karawitan music.

CONCLUSION

Based on the musical facts and the data displayed in the previous section, it is just true to say that the music of campursari is the hybrid music having mixed character. Factually, the content and the application of modal system in the campursari music are the mix between the articulate scaling system of non-karawitan expression and the scaling system which is suitable for the karawitan music expression. In one hand, the arrangement system of the notes applies a certain scale, and it is determined by the selected key note. In another hand, although it uses the same laras or scale, it is not based on or does not account the basic tone.

The formation of notes is constructed according to its basic note, but it does not consider the basic note. The arrangement of note which considers the tonics is oriented to a harmony system. The arrangement that does not account the basic note tends to deal with the typical features of melody, treatment (garap), or the scale. Following this difference, it can be understood that the musical denotation of campursari contains the pathêt system and the mode system. Both are the manifestation of modal system organizing the role or the function and the relation between the notes determined by the sequence of notes (read: laras or scale) as its base. Mode system indicates the existence of theoretical framework for the melody. Thus, campursari music is a music which considers the mode system, i.e. the melodic vocabulary for which the notes taken are determined and shows that it has a significant meaning, i.e. final note or dominant note which is secondary, but functions as the central. However, the notes arrangement producing the distinctive color of melody, treatment (garap), or scale indicates a musical pattern which does not account the harmony or accord system, but its melodic system. Such a system is called a pathêt system.

REFERENCES

Becker, J. 1980. Traditonal Music in Modern Java: Gamelan in a Changing Society. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii.

Becker, J.M.O. 1972. “Traditional Music in Modern Java”. Disertasi Ph. D., Michigan: University of Michigan.

Hardosukarta, S. 1978. Titi Asri. Treanslated and Sumarised by A. Hendrato. Jakarta: Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan - Proyek Penerbitan Buku Bacaan dan Sastra Indonesia dan Daerah.

Hastanto, S. 1985. The Concept of Pathêt in Central Javanese Gamelan Music. Disertasi Ph.D., Durham: University of Durham.

Hastanto, S. 2006. “Pathêt: Harta Budaya Tradisi Jawa Yang Terlantar”. Inauguration Oration for Professor Appointment of Ethnomusicology on ISI Surakarta, 25 November.

Humardani, S.D. 1981. “Masalah-masalah Dasar Pengembangan Seni Tradisi” presented in the Art Seminar held in Surakarta in 1972, which was, then, published in limited edition by The Development Project of IKI-ASKI Surakarta.

Sadie, S. Ed. 1980. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 20 Vol. London: Macmillan Publisher Limited.

Setyono, B. (2003), “Campursari: Nyanyian Hibrida dari Jawa Postkolonial”, on Identitas dan Postkolonialitas di Indonesia. Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius.

Supanggah, R. (2000), “Campur Sari: Sebuah Refleksi”. Paper presented on International Culture Seminar. Held by Pusat Kebudayaan Perancis. Jakarta, 4 – 7 Mei.

Waridi. 2001. “Gendhing Jawa Dalam Pertunjukan Musik Campursari”, Oration on the Dies Natalis XXXVII of STSI Surakarta.

SPEECH IN CONFERENCE :

“Preservation and development of folk song in the current society

(Through the case of Love Duets of Bac Ninh)”

14. BINH DINH POPULAR CLASSICAL DRAMA

- A PHENOMENON OF POPULAR TRADITIONAL CULTURE IN ADAPTION IN THE CURRENT LIFE AND CULTURE

VAN MINH HUONG(학교이름)

Abstract

CLASSICAL DRAMA AND BINH DINH CLASSICAL DRAMA.

The people in Tay Son Martial Arts Region are usually proud that Binh Dinh is the cradle of arts for classical drama. A lot of matters that have still missed out, even it has still argued around the history and origin of classical drama. Classical drama has been considered by some researchers that it had the trace from Dinh dynasty, to be formed in Tran dynasty. A lot of researchers have followed the trace of classical drama by the way of historical data, through the detail in the historical events, surmise or explanation by a lot of different suppositions.

Classical drama is the style of arts generalized from the performance, literature, poem, declamation, origination, singing, music, painting, dancing, martial arts… This is a traditional form of the stage for long term, in combination and summary from the purities of the forms in popular living operation with the professional factors of the source of Palace arts that has made for classical drama the original characteristics. The factors in symbol, conditioning, style, spiritual description, idea description…, to be performed by the actors and actress by a series of signal system for the model, color, sound, costume, musical instrument… in order to lead the watchers into the story, together with the actor and actress to enter into the role for performance, and the occurrences around the play.

The Binh Dinh classical drama has been connected with the name of Mandarin Dao Duy Tu (1572 – 1634) after leaving Thanh Hoa to come into South Vietnam for establishment of his work. To the dynasty of Quang Trung King, classical drama in this region began to develop strongly in the end of 19th century, the stage for classical drama has been available in every where overall the nation and as same as the style of the other arts. In Nguyen dynasty, all purities of this arts were concentrated to the capital. In the period of Minh Mang King, Tu Duc King, classical drama was perfected and entered into the operation toward the professional direction, orthodoxy, to take an important role for the living operation and life of the King and mandarins in the palace. The source of ancient classical drama and Academic classical drama to have the opportunity to enhance higher and higher for even the form and quality of arts. The Revision Council was established, a lot of valid plays were produced in this period, in which it can not be unmentionable the great labor and role of famous man Dao Tan, the child of Binh Dinh region.

At present in Binh Dinh, besides Dao Tan classical drama theater, where concentrates the professional actors and actresses for classical drama, Binh Dinh has still had Binh Dinh Culture and Arts School. These two firms have contributed the great work in training the performers for classical drama. However we can not be unworried when the team of performers of Dao Tan classical drama theater at present is being lacked severely. Majority of the senator performers are at the old age while the successors haven’t satisfied the necessary requirements. We have also seen the equivalent manner in Binh Dinh Culture and Arts School where training officially to supply the class of the young performers for the classical drama stage. The training here is also meeting the difficulty, in which many years ago the school should come the far region for finding out the skilled students for training.

Looking into the operation for performance of classical drama during last period, we have recognized in a fixed level, the professional arts team with the luxurious stages, the performance is in the frame following the specification, to lack the activeness of some performers to make the audients to leave far the professional classical drama to come to the unprofessional classical drama teams, groups bearing deeply the popular factors because there the watchers find out simplicity, sincerity and nature in the style for performance, it can say that popular classical drama satisfies the demand for searching, responds the requirement for relaxation, entertainment wake-up the pride about the traditional culture of the country, to make a relaxation psychology to make the watchers easily to integrate their manners following to the emotion of the performers and the performance of the story. Thus in the frame of this article, we would like to mention only to the section of popular classical drama in the place where it was born

The popular classical drama which we mentioned hereby commonly shows the groups, teams, club or the classical drama group formed with the spontaneous characteristics, with independent operation, unprofessionally or semi-professionally. Through the terms for variety festival organized in Binh Dinh and some other localities, we have felt the strong vitality of the flow of popular classical drama. It can say that the rise-up of popular classical drama for a long term from 85, 86 to now that is an interesting phenomenon, that needs to be paid attention by the researchers for culture and arts.

Picture 1 and 2: The actors andactresses of Anh Duong classical drama

club are making up before performance

National Stage Festival for traditional classical drama in 2003 as well as the festivals before as well as through searching really, it shows the common tendency of the unprofessional classical drama groups in majority of localities recently that they are very favorite to stage the ancient plays. For staging again the ancient plays has contributed the part for recovery, preservation of the specific traditional cultural values, to discover and survive the cores of the moral standards of human life, to congratulate the humanity, to congratulate the nobility of minds of the magnanimous men, to instruct the human to the inner trend, calmness, silent mind to think again by themselves. The popular classical drama seems to remind the old memories, to help the enjoyers to find out the pleasure, balance in the noisy atmosphere, in the unlimited worries of the striving life that is brought back by the current society.

To take an observation for the development of the cultural life last time, we can see that the rise-up of the popular classical drama is the result attached to the phenomenon to rise up the popular festivals in the rural areas and the regions outside Binh Dinh province. This is an indispensable consequence. Music and festival are two cultural factors in parallel, in the festival it has always had the music to transfer the forms of festival. To find in the history for the development of music even in orient or occident we have also seen that music is a part that can not be lacked in the festival. It is very the reason that the ancient Chinese thinkers have always combined constantly two concepts of Festival – Music. Upon the development of popular festival, music has the chance for development of the role for control of festival in the forms. Under the look of religious belief, music is still considered as the invisible, spiritual threat, to combine and transfer the desires, the dreams of human to come to the Supreme Being. For that the research of the phenomenon of festival it should usually combine with the research of the musical function in the forms of festival.

Annually in lunar April, in Binh Dinh there is the custom for An singing to worship Whale. The form of An singing has been continued remaining respectfully following to the tradition of the fishery villages along the sea in center of Vietnam. The worships most change a little, therefore partially it helps to preserve the respective melody of each locality. Each period for worship the people usually organize to sing the tales, plays of classical drama while performing the worship to stipulate the respect of the people in the sea region to Whale and they want to donate what is most spiritual. Besides An singing, we also see the custom as Hat Dinh, Hat Mieu in the forms for worship to Tutelary Spirit of the village, worship for good drop, congratulation for the children passing the examination. Frequently for each environment for arts there is also the respective environment for performance, that the tendency of arts in each age has the change due to the change of the environment for performance. The arts was born and developed for satisfaction of the demand of human. Those demands change following to the living case and the development of the society. Thus, Binh Dinh popular classical drama from the centuries ago there are the different points in comparison nowadays. The environment changes it pulls the change of the internal factors of even the personality of the arts for Binh Dinh popular tuyong.

To observe the cultural operations around the stage for Binh Ding popular classical drama, the watchers are easy to think of the image of the peaceful life, simply in labor and entertainment in our nation for many decades ago. The performers and audients of the classical drama groups are the sincere farmers, during the year they are around in the field “for working hard from the early morning to the evening”, but in the night upon hearing the sound of Chau drum they “hurriedly run to”. The popular nature has still been stipulated during the preparation, performance and the atmosphere of the night for performance, the old aged people prepare their feeling for enjoyment, the youths with their curiousness to look at the “peasant actors and actresses” for making up, the music sound “onomatopoeia” originating from the speaker to attract the ladies and gentlemen to come group by group. The existence of the “ancient soul” in the “present body” in this region to make a specific impression that is very hard to forget for the passengers. When stopping in Binh Luong communal house, Luong Binh hamlet, Phuoc Thang village, Tuy Phuoc District, Binh Dinh province to make some meters of film for arts about the kinf of Binh Ding popular classical drama performed by Anh Duong classical drama group for the play of Tam Ha Nam Duong, the film makers and researchers has the opportunity to feel the interesting abruptness.

It can see that the vitality of Binh Dinh popular classical drama stipulates not only through the operation with the temporary nature as the variety festivals, the phases for propagation bearing the nature for instruction of the authorities. Here, the role of the public bearing the activeness. Originating from the actual demands of the life. The classical drama of the “peasant” is connecting with the actual living operations, closely in the life, to satisfy the spiritual demand of very the people. Classical drama has firmly stood up after many years to be forgotten due to the war and governed by a lot of other social factors.

To assess highly the value bearing the spiritual meaning of the people to the flow of Binh Dinh classical drama. The government and the authorities for management of the local culture and arts have had more attention to make the condition and have the real policies for preservation and existence of classical drama in the life. It has had the mobilization, propagation and popularization widely on the public media for arts of classical drama. Annually to organize the competition “Festival of the unprofessional classical drama clubs in Binh Dinh” the teams, groups who get the prizes are invested for participation in the national competition, to hold the programs for introduction of classical drama arts in the schools. Besides that some high schools in Binh Dinh have taught in test the extracts for students to participate the examination in the arts variety festivals between the schools.

The Binh Dinh popular classical drama has contributed into the preservation and formation of the common appearance of the classical drama stage of the nation. The popular classical drama has kept the factors that have been absent or remained very a little in the professional classical drama stage. Most of the actors and actresses of popular classical drama to come the stage originated from the love to classical drama. Being the region where before has existed a lot of the families with famous actors and actresses for classical drama, the members of the groups, clubs mostly originating from the descent with the employment of Vietnamese opera. A lot of the s that the unprofessional performers perform better than the performers in the professional team. This is the key forces, the governmental organizations, foundations for culture and arts who have function for research, preservation need to have the actual solution to attract, promote the traditional popular classical drama in development. It needs to collect the symbolic cases to make the conditions for material, spiritual aspect to help for the unprofessional actors and actresses to have the condition for practice, to pay attention into the transfer of the profession to the next generation.

Besides that it needs to have the support from the agencies for information, propagation. Concretely it had better to research the short, concise, interesting programs for explanation and description of the originally specific characteristics in classical drama arts through the famous extracts by public media, especially in local television station. The form for propagation has just been stipulated to contribute the important part in propagation, supply of knowledge for the inheriting generation, to help them to have the basic knowledge in the feeling of arts, from that they themselves are conscious about the necessity for preservation and respect the quintessence of classical drama.

LOVE DUETS OF BAC NINH

Temporarily farewell with Binh Ding classical drama, we come with Love Duets of Bac Ninh, the travel is so short but it remains for the writer an impression that is very hard to forget. The day to come the village the sky was so nice, very a little cloud, the atmosphere was very pure and it was more sunshiny, the yellow sunshine was more sparkle than every day, every thing around seemed fresher and nicer in the eye of the new comers.

Picture 3: Singing love duets in the temple of Lady King Picture 4: Temple of Lady King in Lang Diem village

The noisy atmosphere of the people in Lang Diem village to prepare for the ceremony for welcoming Lady King – Founder of Love duets:

Our survey and research team came to visit Lang Diem village in an afternoon before the day of main festival. When the sunshine in the afternoon was going to set off, the people in the village and the other villages around group by group to come for participation of festival.

In order to prepare the festival, in the days before the love duets host (village for organization of the festival) to nominate the member to invite the love duets friends to participate. After the religious part (temple worship) it is the part for the life (entertainment for singing). The singing styles “Ca su tai dinh”, “Hat canh”, “Male and female singing communication at home”, “Farewell”… it has still remained but it has changed about the form and space for performance suitable with the current life. The Love Duets nowadays is “performed in the stage”, to combine with the electronic music bands, to serve for a big quantity of tourists to come for the festival.

However, the attraction and seduction of the people who love the fervid nature of Love Duets is not the plan for the stage, performance bearing the pompous, imposing nature. The people who love the Love Duets look for the medium, warm space. We were introduced to the families of the prestige Love Duets in the village for enjoyment, to feel the closeness with Love Duets. The voice and the eye of the Love Duets singer is closer, it is more sensible, the words for talking by the sweet rhythms seem to fly higher, the singing way and the way for settlement of the break, the very specific voice of Love Duets with full factors of echo, peal, taste, rebound.

To enjoy Love Duets at the temple is more interesting. The listener feels a space very closely, to concentrate all members to come for participation, we see hereby with the bright eyes of the old aged women, men sitting for singing on the mattress that through the singing voice, it seems that they find out a period of the youth as the roost, a time with the warm love. The popular nature is also stipulated clearly when the singer and listener sit together in same mattress, together to enjoy the singing voice of the singer and of themselves, together interesting and sharing. The clearest sensibility remaining for the visitor is the eye that is very pure, bright, polite and warm with the sentiment of human of the members of Love Duets. How to be more interesting when the old aged men and old aged women with their toothless mouths to sing, smile together; how to be more charming sometimes the old aged woman hit her elbow to remind the old aged man when he sings in mistake… in the other mattress, the old aged women are preparing a betel quid to invite the guests… This warm and happy space has always followed, attached the visitors forever when they leave the festival of Love Duets in Lang Diem village.

The hospitable and polite tradition to be inherited and expanded today in the life. To welcome us together with the local leaders and comrades in the local cultural center, we also saw there was an actor of Love Duets originating from the family with the tradition of Love Duets for long term together welcoming. The host both sings and explains about the singing voice, rhythm of Love Duets. The style for welcome of guests as the people in Lang Diem village is unique only. The tradition of Love Duets seems to enter deeply into the mind of the people over here. The families with many generations for performance of Love Duets, to promote the generation of their children and grandchildren to protect Love Duets and educate them to perform, to remain the romantic beauty through the rhythms, through the style for communication, the treatment of the people in Quan Ho region, the Love Duets club of the villages, hamlets have been paid the attention especially by the local authorities and the people participate enthusiastically, to contribute for preservation and propagation of Love Duets.

We have just summarized the basic characters about Binh Dinh popular classical drama and what are recognized in the Quan Ho countryside in order that on that foundation to extract for us the feelings, in order to find out a way, a look in research of the arts of traditional theatre generally and the arts for classical drama, Love Duets separately.

The first thing that we want to mention hereby is the strong vitality of the popular traditional arts. That vitality is fed by the environment of familiar performance even on the fatherland with their own charming, fervid characters. This vitality is still multiplied when the contents of the story and the singing voice to stipulate highly the sportsmanship and straightness, to sacrifice for the big righteousness, the love of the couple… that everyone wants to find out from themselves. We also want to stipulate for explanation of a matter that is not less the importance concerning the preservation of the popular traditional arts, that is the relation between the professional and popular nature. At present in the field for performance of arts there is the manner for “divorce” between the professional nature and populace and for the result that the professional teams lack the vitality. The strong rise-up of popular classical drama teams in Binh Dinh showing that even in the popular arts it has contained the professional nature and it should be constructed on the foundation of popular arts. For that, we can raise up the pride and the responsibility for self-recording and remaining the purities of arts of the local people to the region originating that specific traditional music.

Classical drama and Love Duets are the styles of arts connecting to the festival, religious belief and contribute to make abundance for the operations of popular festival. For Binh Dinh popular classical drama is the traditional festivals connecting to the daily life of the coastal people. Especially for the An worship in the custom for worship of Whale. Respectively the cultural operation of Love Duets connecting to the worship of Mother, with the forms bearing deeply the prosperous nature. Thus, for existence and organization of the festival strictly, with orientation is to contribute for preservation and development of popular traditional arts.

From the achievements of protection and development of Binh Dinh popular classical drama and Love Duets of Bac Ninh that we have seen, we have considered that the authorities for management of culture, the local training foundations need to have the reasonable solutions in the works for preservation, record and development of the styles of popular traditional music, to certify this is the importantly political mission in the cultural battle. In order to do well this it needs to equip for them the necessary knowledge, the basic skills about the styles of popular music specifically in our locality to protect the value of the pure culture of the peoples.

The researchers of culture and arts take a very important role. They are the persons for summary, verification, positioning of the concretely cultural phenomenon to fix the model for operation, to draw out the directions for concrete action for the work in rehabilitation, record, preservation and expansion of the values for popular traditional culture of the peoples. From the summary, orientation of the research, the foundation for training, planning, the actors and actress for performance will find out the way for transfer reasonably and actually, to satisfy the basic demands of the work for preservation, development correctly the direction and keeping the purities of the popular arts.

All our feelings and efforts for research also forward to the aim of Protection, preservation and development of popular traditional arts in the present life. The popular traditional culture is the crystallization and connection of a constant series of the popular cultural phenomenon from long ago to now. These cultural phenomenon usually has the nature for mobilization and development. The multiform will be the indispensable matter that we can find out in the trends for development of popular arts. Thus, finding out a lot of solutions, a lot of directions in the work for protection and preservation of the values traditional culture to have the very important meaning. Following us it can stipulate 3 directions in parallel as follows:

T protect the cultural traditions following the direction of recognition, to understand and supply the knowledge about the phenomenon (Preservation work).

To protect for enjoyment (Performance, teaching following the direction of specialization).

To protect for living and integration with the current environment (the space is changed pulling the phenomenon for change of culture to be appropriate with the new environment).

REFERENCES

Vu Ngoc Lien, Dao tan classical drama (book I), Nghia Binh Department of Culture and Information 1987.

Vestige Preservation Center of Hue ancient capital. Preservation and expansion of the value of classical drama in Hue Palace – Summary book for seminar, Hue 2000.

Many writers – Binh Dinh High School for Culture and Arts, Curriculum for training performers of the Intermediate performer for classical drama arts, 1995

Nguyen Si Chuc, Festival for unprofessional classical drama stage – The vitality of classical drama. Stage Magazine No. 9, year 2003, page 21, 22.

Van Minh Huong, Gagaku and Nha Nhac, Thanh Nien Publishing house 2003.

Nguyen Loc; Vo Van Tuong, Vietnamese classical drama arts. Cultural publishing house, 1994.

Bac Ninh Cultural Love Duets Center, Some matters about the Love Duets culture 2000.

15. The Regeneration of Traditional Music in a Chinese Rural Village

IGUCHI Junko

(Osaka College of Music)

Abstract

The loess plateau (or Yellow River Valley), the place of the cultural origin of mainland China, might be seen as a backward district. But during the last two decades, the 'economic reform' and the mordernisation had an effect on this area, in particular　Yangjiagou village which is located in northern Shaanxi province. Here, people live in cavelike dwellings (yaodong) dug into the mountainside.  They cultivate the mountain (loess hills) and grow mainly potato and millets.   There are many kinds of music and sound in this village, and the 'sonic environment' of this village is an extraordinary one because of this specific landscape.   The most traditional and popular music is 'chuidayue' (literally 'blowing-hitting music' with shawm and various percussion), which plays an important role in wedding and funeral rituals. While funeral ritual was preserved very rigidly, wedding was changed drastically since 1980's because of economic and social changes.     

In the beginning of spring 2004, some Japanese researchers organised a wedding ceremony which was planed to revive the lost wedding tradition, including the carrying of bride in a sedan chair, clothing, food, music and so on.   It seems that this project was very welcomed in the village, and the villagers acknowledged the value of their lost traditions.  Yet, the subsequent wedding of a villager took place in a modern style, in which the bride rode in the car and they hired a Western brass band which played popular music.

I think the traditional 'chuidayue' will disappear from the wedding and even from the funeral in the near future.   In fact, during a funeral in 2004, for the first time a villager used the CD of Western classical music such as the Mozart's 'Requiem'.

In this reconstructed wedding ceremony, the foreign researchers showed their own notion of aesthetic value to the villagers.   But there exists a gap between researchers and the local people, since the aesthetic value of the villagers is changing under Westernization and globalization.