Mu~ic in educationToday there is a change of opinion concerning the child‘s relation to
music. Now we know through experience and facts gained from gene-
ral and educational psychology that there must have been some response
in the child itself, since we had been able to teach it music. Now we
base music education on the child‘s own musical powers, and the
word teach is changing into develop and edzlcate. The child at the age of 7
must be considered highly qualified in music in relation to his general
level of development.
First: most children have a positive attitude to music and, through
songs sung to them and with them, a very valuable and important emo-
tional contact with music is established. To keep this emotional con-
tact alive during school-time is the most important task of music
education.
Second: we know that most children have, even at 7, a real intellec-
tual grasp on some elements of music; they have the power to think
in musical terms. For instance every child able to learn and retain
songs has the power of giving back the rhythmic pattern of a song, to
express it in bodily movement, even without singing, just ‘thinking’
the song.
If you ask a class to play the rhythm of a song they know on their
rhythm instruments or to beat the rhythm lightly with their hands on
the tables, first when singing the song and then without singing it,
you will find how easily they do so. And look at their eyes-how they
concentrate! You can see what a concrete grasp they have. The rhyth-
mic pattern is there inside them as a reality. Of course the child does
not know exactly what it is doing, when beating the rhythm like that;
but it is very easy to make this unconscious reaction conscious by
giving the rhythmic pattern of the song in notation on the blackboard.
Thus the children learn the pattern of a particular song. What we
have to do is to broaden their experiences of songs built on those
simple rhythmic elements and, by and by, to introduce songs where
new rhythmic elements can be explored.
Most teachers in Sweden use the French terminology in order to
help the children to read rhythm, other teachers just count the rhythm,
and still others put the melody rhythms in relation to the text rhythm.
Many children have the same intellectual grasp of the melodic line.
They can show with their hands how a tune goes up and down. Here
is a power founded on their inner hearing. Other children can easily
understand it, if you explain to them the relation between a melody
and the graphic reproduction of the melody. With others again this
ability must be developed later.