his physical and spiritual powers, improve its taste and develop a deep
affinity for music and musical performance.’
The ‘constructive’ stage of music teaching respects the child‘s mu-
sical development, which conforms to certain laws (the fundamental
laws of biogenetics). The child’s spiritual and intellectual progress
must, at every step, be the first consideration. Until the child is about
10 years old (fifth school year), the development of the sense of rhythm
is what matters most; the sense of harmony develops only during ado-
lescence. In the ‘developing’ stage of music teaching, greater attention
than in the past must be paid to the conclusions of modern child psy-
chology. The most difficult problem the music teacher has to face is
how to make up for stages in the child’s development that have been
neglected or badly handled. A surer way of developing the elementary
capacities of all pupils is to make them familiar with a few notes. Con-
sequently, the use of pentatonic (together with the pre-pentatonic)
scale is the right approach for beginners at all stages.
The methods most commonly used till now in music teaching do not
lend themselves to a complete treatment of the subject. Today, it is
rightly emphasized that methods which aim at building up a musical
whole by stringing together a number of different elements-trying,
for instance, to create melodic form by a systematic sequence of inter-
vals-are in no sense psychological nor even musical, since they do
not proceed from the musical whole and from the fundamental prin-
ciple that playing, practice and instruction follow upon one another
pyramidally. The child absorbs music in its entirety, as an indivisible
union of words, notes and rhythm. In the songs and games of children,
this musical whole finds its proper expression. A real children’s song
also shows us how to teach children music, along the lines of their
own natural development. The child’s ‘conquest of the major mode’
is a lengthy process which the music teacher, in the exercise of his pro-
fession, especially in the choice of songs, must watch over very care-
fully. The melodic minor of late nineteenth-century popular songs is
even less suitable for the child than for the adult. ‘The child should
first become familiar with very old and very simple melodies to cor-
respond to its own world’ (Josef Wenz). The tradition ‘school song’
must finally be replaced by the real folk song. Even at an earlier stage
a bridge must be built between the real folk song and the songs of our
own day. In combination with music designed specially for teaching
purposes (Orff, Bartok), the new song can prepare the way for con-
temporary music, provided that immediateIy after the major tonality,
the elements of the church-mode melodic, the minor tonality, the
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