i’vfethods ami aids in mmic educationis sometimes taught by ill-trained instructors. That, however, is only
its most material aspect, just as rhythm is only one of the most primi-
tive elements in music and for that very reason the one which goes
down deepest to the roots of our vitality.
I do not believe that Dalcroze would ever have invented a method
of this kind if he had lived somewhere where people are closer to
nature and their rhythmic perceptions are less blunted than in Geneva.
This city, where he had to teach sol-fa, is an intellectual centre where
people in general have little spontaneity. It was this very lack of
abandonment that induced Dalcroze to fetch his disconcerted pupils
up on the platform and make them march, jump and caper arm in arm.
The first and principal lesson he was giving them was a lesson in sponta-
neity, compelling them to translate into everyday movements the
musical rhythms which they were painfully spelling out from crotchets
and quavers.
That is where any discussion of eurhythmics always leads. It is the
distinguishing feature of the system and makes it, in my opinion, a
unique method of calling all our main faculties into play simultaneously.
First and foremost comes concentration. The pupil must let nothing
of what he hears escape him and must register it at once. Next the mind
must be used: the pupil must understand and analyse what he has
heard. Then comes sensibility: the pupil must feel the music and
surrender to its rhythm. Finally there is movement. The body is set in
motion and the degree to which the movements are adapted to the
music shows the degree of attention, understanding and musical sensi-
bility possessed by the child.
However all these activities of mind and body are anything but
consecutive : they are simultaneous. The interpretation of music by the
gestures of the whole body gives the child the pleasure of finding, as
he goes along, the satisfying movement and provides a natural and
immediate outlet for intellectual and emotional tension.
In this simultaneous and constant correlation between mental activity
and bodily movement lies the explanation of the relaxation and pleasure
which a good eurhythmics lesson never fails to give.
It need hardly be said that the effect of this training, the harmony it
creates between mental and bodily activities will be particularly re-
warding in the case of young children, in whom these activities are not
yet dissociated or kept in watertight compartments as a result of spe-
cialist training,
There are a few, though not very many children, who listen to music
in a contemplative mood, but most of them, particularly girls, feel an