International Conference on the Role and Place of Music in the Education of Youth and Adults; Music in education; 1955

Mu& in education

night. Every possible opportunity should be used to make them ap-

preciate the well-being that comes from inner quietude.

RHYTHM

Rhythm, a means of measuring time spatially, a neglected instrument

of education which might become the teacher’s most valuable aid, was,

after all, for a long time, found by primitive peoples to be a sufficient

medium of expression. We should therefore begin by developing the

sense of rhythm in children, using simple, natural means to this end.

Only when the full possibilities of rhythmic expression have been

appreciated by the child, can tone be introduced.

If instruction in the theory of music had not generally been confused

with the teaching of music itself, the fundamental error of attaching

undue importance to measure would have been discovered earlier.

This crutch for the support of those who seem to have little sense of

rhythm simple aggravates the shortcomings of their instinctive equip-

ment, whereas, if we cease to trouble about measure as such, the sense

of rhythm, which can so easily be developed later, can be liberated.

It is not advisable to begin with rhythmic exercises or to teach the

children first of all to beat time,for experience has shown that, because of

the weight and inertia of the limbs, the movements made in beating time

are too big and too slow to give a really accurate reflection of the rhyth-

mic pulsation. When the beat of the rhythm (an infinitesimal quantity) is

distorted and dulled by the movement representing it, the musical rhythm

loses all its vitality and therefore all its artistic and educational value.

Games in which rhythm goes back to its natural beginnings, cries,

syllables, rhythmic calls stimulated by gestures, help to awaken the

sense of rhythm rapidly even in those least well-endowed by nature.

Calls, with their variety of intonation and rhythm, seem to be the

best intermediaries between speaking and singing. In addition, they

have an emotional content which stimulates free expression, and they

have the considerable advantage of condensing a great variety and

intensity of expression into brief phrases.

LISTENING TO MUSIC

Making children appreciate the variety in the quality of sound-timbre
-also develops in them the love of beautiful sounds. For this reason,