Evaluation Of The Dalcroze Rhythmic Approach In First Steps

Of Music Education
Pablo Puentes1 and Pere Godall1, 2
1
Department of Music, Plastic and Dance Expression. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Edifici G6
08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès), Barcelona, Spain.
2
Department of Music, Plastic and Dance Expression. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Edifici G6
08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès), Barcelona, Spain.

Final research project,

MA in Musicology, Musical Education
and Ancient Music Performance,
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Dalcroze method is beneficial before the intellectual work

ABSTRACT
Here we have performed This paper constitutes an
exploratory work to determine about the effectiveness of
Dalcroze rhythmic approach duringin the first steps of
music education. Some Wedata collected data in terms of
audition accurateness, performance and comprehension of
music. Our results highlight provide interesting clues
about the importance of an introductory period (from
around 4 to 7 years) in which all the musical concepts are
worked in an instinctive way, as we do with our mother
language, before starting a formal music education
typically gathered in the laws of each country (Loras,
2008).
A participant observation methodology was
carried out for this research. We wanted to focus on the
quantitative part but certain qualitative instruments were
generated in order to discuss the compiled data. During the
three sessions designed, we worked with two different
groups of students between 7 and 8 years old in their
respective classes applying the same concepts with two
different perspectives, one in each respective group. On
one hand we had an approach based on the traditional
music education method; on the other hand we develop
implemented a Dalcroze approach focused on the sound
and the movement.
The aim of thise study is to analyze and quantify
the results obtained within each group to decipher reach
out some conclusions about whetherif the learning process
from the sound to the symbol in a dalcrozian perspective
improves the results in audition, performance accuracy and
musical understanding. Other goals like to analyze if
adapting the musical learning to the verbal learning could
improve the results in music education, when and how to
introduce the solfeggio to obtain optimal development, and
to evaluate if the movement in classes following the
in music.
Keywords: Dalcroze, Embodiment, Music
Education, Eurhythmics, Language And Music.
1. Introduction.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, mThe music educationFormatted: Superscript
programs haves been mainly focused mainly on teaching
performance, composition and music theory in their Formatted: Superscript
programs during XIX and XX centuries (Loras, 2008).
During this period, some voices alerted about the risk of an
over- theoretical vision of music education. Émile Jaques-
Dalcroze (1865-1990) was one of these pedagogues, when
whohe
realized that his students were not able to execute rhythms
and intervals, albeit they did know them theoretically
(Dalcroze, 1905). Shin’ichi Suzuki (1898–1998) and Edgar
Willems (1890–1978) are the other main figures that also
criticized the musical system and defended that “…In
learning his mother tongue, the child begins to read only
after he is able to speak” (Suzuki, 1995, p. 6).
2. The Dalcroze Perspective.
Dalcroze can be considered a representative of the New
School movement in music education. He created
Eurhythmics, a system founded in three core ideas:
Rhythmic, Solfeggio and Improvisation.
What is novel in his method is that music students
must experience the sensation of every musical parameter
before learning how to represent it symbolically, and to try
to experience it is using the highest possible embodiment
possible. As Dalcroze explains (1921, p.4): “ Not only,
then, should the ear and voice of the child receive adequate
training, but, in addition, every part of his body which
contributes to rhythmic movement…”
The revolution here becomes from adapting the
musical learning in a similar andto the natural fashionway
as that people learn their language: by listening, imitating,
memorizing, creating and finally reading and writing. The
pedagogy is a reaction against a traditional model: “A
predominance of the intellect over the nervous
functioning.” (Dalcroze, 1921).
2.1 The Importance Of Movement
MThe movement is the equivalent in dance to sound in
music; to stand then, is the musical rest.
Music is sound articulated in time. Every sound has a
beginning and a final, the same than as a movement. Both
are therefore related through the concepts of time, space
and energy: the arc movement of a violinist, the breathing
of a trumpeter or the attack of a note that a pianist makes in
a phrase… all these examples contain calculations in terms
of time, space and energy.
The Dalcroze perspective proposes to learn all the
musical concepts through movement because “the best
musical instrument is the whole human body which is more
capable than other of interpreting the sounds in all their
grades” (Dalcroze, 1921).
2.2 Process: From Instinctive To Intellectual
“… The nature has given to humans this extraordinary
capacity of imitation, it has wanted that men learn to speak
before knowing the grammar, learn to think before
knowing the logic; learn to sing before knowing the music;
in conclusion, we learn everything before even suspect that
there are rules to learn it” ” (Heymsi de Gainza, 2000).
Dalcroze and Suzuki complained about the precocity of
reading music in musical education. Instead of this, they
proposed a natural process properly resumed in Elisabeth
Vandespar, Manual Jaques-Dalcroze (Fig. 1)
THINKING PROCESS
Transmission through
SIGNALS SYMBOLS
sound writing
gesture(movement)
touch
Physical activity Mental activity
Movement and Silence
sound
Reception through
SENSES SYMBOLS
audition reading
observation
sensation
Fig 1. Communicative thinking process (Vandespar, 1990).
In the Dalcroze education children experiment a
musical sensitization before starting with solfeggio and
formal training. In the early music
education this one “ should be entirely based on hearing,
or, at any rate, on the perception of musical phenomena” Formatted: Normal
(Dalcroze, 1921). The learning process must start with the
sound, the musical material, before any intellectual work
(Fig. 2). Formatted: Font: Bold
INSTINTIVE INTELECTUAL
Fig 2. Flow of Dalcroze learning process.
3. Methodological Frame
We carried out an observational participative interaction
with these two classes where the researcher acted as
teacher at the same time. The motivation of this choice
relies on the knowledge the teacher had about the
functioning of both groups and the differences in the music
programs.
Following the line of Sandín (2003) and Elliott
(1991) our finality was to improve the educational practice
through the action research, so instead of generating new
knowledge what this research pretends is to improveing the
teaching-learning practice.
The two groups chosen for the study are
summarized in Table 1fig 4 and explained below:
i) “Escola Salesians Sant Joan Bosco”. In this music
school, the students start the music program at the age of 6,
and from the beginning they attend to Music Theory
lessons based in the book “Lenguaje Musical 2, Formatted: Font: Bold, English (United States)
Pentagrama ” Ed. Boileu. (Fig. 3).. We defined this model
Formatted: Font: Bold
as traditional education.
Fig 3. Learning workfFllow of lessons belonging to the book used
in traditional lessons: theory, tuning (solfeggio lessons), coral
repertoire, rhythm, dictate and audition.
ii) The second academy is “Escola de Musica Fusió”. This
music school considers the Musical Awakening Phase as a
previous stage that kids children must take between the
ages of 4 and 7 years, when and afterwards they jump-off
to the next step, the Music Theory. We defined this model
as dalcrozian due to the pedagogy used by the school in
this phase, based in Dalcroze pedagogy.
The study has been modeled using 4 instruments:
i) initial test, ii) three 45 minutes lessons per group to apply
a musical concept, which was recorded in video, iii) field
notebook, iv) questionnaire to a sample of teachers.
3.1 Hypothesis And Objectives Of The Study
The hypothesis of this research is that “the Rhythmic
Method created by Dalcroze applied in a initial phase of
music education improves the results in audition,
performance and awareness of music in students”.
Therefore, the main questiongoal that we aimedtry
to answer here is whetherif we can determine the some
benefits ofr Musical Awakening Phase prior to a more
Years in
Born in music
Students/Parameter
education
2003 2004 0 1
E.S. Sant Joan Bosco 6 2
E.M. Fusió 5 1 2 2
TOTAL 11 1 4
theoretical
Table 1Fig 4. Profile of students.
study of music. BesidesIn addition, we want to
widen our work established 4 secondary objectives:
i) EEvaluate if the results in audition, rhythmic
precision and musical dictation can be improved working
the ear before introducing students into reading and
writing.
ii) AAnalyze if a process that goes from the most
instinctive to the most rational can be more effective due to
the similarity with the mother language learning process.
iii) EEvaluate if the song, the movement or other
proceedings are the most effective for rhythmic learning.
iv) OObserve the benefit of teaching music
through movement when we treat concepts like form,
phrase, melody or rhythm.
3.2 Indicators And Typology
The design of indicators has followed what is known as
theoretical sample (Flick, 1998). The main characteristic
within this design is that not all the indicators are defined
before applying the research. In contrast, this design is also
complemented during the process whileen the researcher
observes the relevant data for the study. Following
According to Flick (1998), when no more data generated is
important for our goals we reach what is known as
theoretical saturation..
1
EPO: Educación Primaria Obligatoria (Obligatory
Primary Education)
We have the hypothesis taking into account the
widen principle, which criticizes the danger of the
hypothesis enunciation before entering in the field (Flick,
1998). This impliesdoesn’t mind to not to formulate this
hypothesis but to try to gathering the largestr amount of
data possible to select relevant indicators through
theoretical saturation, which are relevant for our study.
The typology of indicators is classified according
towith the goals exposed in the methodological framework.
These indicators are compiled in three types: musical-
instinctive, logical-operational and movement related.
i) Musical-instinctive: referred to the musical
parameters, which can be transmitted without codeify.
Examples of this group are include the rhythm audition and
Musical Knew the rhythm
Grade
awakening before before
2 2ºEPO 3ºEPO1 Yes No
4 6 0 4 2
5 2 0 5
6 5 6 2 4 7
its discrimination; intonation of a song, or the spontaneous
improvisation.n… Thereby we look for parameters that
justify the musical quality without taking into account the
reading and writing process.
ii) Logical-operational: those, which do take into
account the reading and writing process manifested in a
correct relation between the sound and the symbol. Some
examples of this group are include the dictatione or the
melodic and rhythmic reading.
iii) Movement- related: we wanted to remark
some important innovations coming from Dalcroze
pedagogy to analyze if teaching music through movement
can be
beneficial. We focus here on indicators such as movement
quality, phrase or gesture when representing a sound.
The indicators are filled before and after the
fieldwork phase (pre-test and post-test in fig. 6). Thus, we
can obtain the progress of each group. The values vary
between 0 and 5 being a 0 none and a 5 perfect.
4. Implementation.
4.1 Pre-Test
We dedicated devoted part of the first lesson to discover
determine what was the previous knowledge of outhet
students regarding the concepts that we wouldill be worked
in theis unit (Fig. 4).
PRE-TEST
1. ¿Have you seen this group of notes?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No

Fig4. 1st question Pre-test
4.2 Video Analysis
Through the observation of the video taped sessions,After
watching the sessions in video twice we were ready to
completed the frame we had designed for measuring our
indicators (Table 2).
Summarizing From our analysis, wwe can observe
a better starting point in musical-instinctive indicators in
the Dalcroze group (overall 21 points) than compared to
the Music Theory group (overall 14 points), based on the
pre-test results. However. ,However the Music Theory
group had better results in individual indicators such as
intonation and, introductory reading and spontaneous Fig6.
Indicators, typology and quantification
improvisation.
Overall, In conclusion, lookingbased on at the
instinctive indicators we find thatcan infer a there is a
better level of the Dalcroze group both in pre-test and post-
test, although butt in contrast, the progression is
significantly higher in the Musical Theory group.
Secondly, based onIn reference theo logical-operational
indicators, the Music Theory group shows a better starting
level, especially in melodic reading (4 points).
Importantly,However, and this is a meaningful point, even
although the reading and writing of this group is
significantly better, theyy showed a bad very low level in
dictate. This suggests that tmight mean
the codification between sound and symbol still has some
problems. In generalThus,, the Dalcroze group shows a
worse lower starting point and final level with less slightly
decreased progression (9) than compared to the Music
Theory group (10) when we introduce reading music.
The last group of indicators is is the movement
related indicators. Those These results don’t admit any
comparisons across the two groups givendue to that the
Music Theory group was not familiarized with not used to
do this kind of exercises, making it difficult to compare
the two groups. However some of th Nevertheless, our
results show admit that thebeen marked. For example,
Dalcroze group shows better rhythmic and polyrhythmic
coordination when taping. Indeed, tThe Music Theory
group shows in general a lack in accentuation and phrase
understanding, which are have significantly higherthe best
values in the Dalcroze group.
Overall,In conclusion, we find that on one
hand,based on the results in the instinctive parameters,
results are work better in the Dalcroze group, especially in
the rhythm recognition in a song and rhythmic. In
contrast,On the other hand the logical-operational
processes are more established in the Traditional group,
especially the melodic reading. It’s important to remind
that the Dalcroze students are one year younger than the
Traditional group. We’ll value the results in the next point
“Conclusions”
4.3. Field Notebook And Surveys To Music
Teachers
The most important fact reflected in the field notebook is
referred to the second lesson: [Music Theory group]
“…The student didn’t remind remember neither the rhythm
nor the symbol to write it but they did with the drawing we
used (cat-mouse-mouse)”, [Dalcroze] “…when I sing the
song they remind remember it and even they start walking Formatted: Font: Bold
through the ways we draw walking in the space in the last
session” (4 phrases). In more general terms, from our
notebook we can deduce that the song became the most
important tool we can use to teach a new rhythm due to its
meaningfulness and the easiness for our memory to remind
remember it.
5. Conclusions
Each conclusion is directly linked to one of the goals
previously described. They are based in our four
instruments and three groups of indicators.
i) Evaluate if the results in audition, rhythmic precision
and musical dictation can be improved working the ear
before introducing students in reading and writing.
The Dalcroze students had better absolute grades
at the beginning and at the end of the research. Even
though there was a bigger progress in the Musices. This is
what we collected. Theory students, the level of Dalcroze
students at the end of the process shows an outstanding
accuracy in this field.
It is also remarkable the importance that the song
has in this point, achieving better reaction in memory than
games or exercises.
Therefore, we can assert that a hard work on ear
training before introducing writing symbols contributes to
improve the results in audition and rhythmic precision,
mainly especially if we present introduce the concepts with
the help of a song.
ii) Analyze if a methodology that goes from the most
instinctive to the most rational can be more effective
due to the similarity with mother language learning
process.
In verbal language we start imitating, copying,
memorizing and making up sentences around the age of
two 2 before we are ready to read and to write
comprehensively around the age of six 6 or seven7.
The music language study started in traditional
pedagogy around this age sometimes even showing to
students the graph before the sound.
Accordingly, when we cCompareing both
methodologies studied here we can assert that imitation,
performance and rhythmic discrimination works better in
the Dalcroze group (4,5 and 5 points) than in the Music
theory group (3,4 and 3). Hence, it is important to open a
reflection discussion about the suitableness of emulating
the natural language learning for music education in order
to achieve similar proficiencyget a similar domain in both.

iii) Evaluate if the song, the movement or other
proceedings are the most effective for rhythmic
learning.
The field notebook and the video with both groups refer us
to the same point: there is not a really meaningful learning
in the learning process until we introduce the song. It
constitutes a powerful tool due to its effect in the
instinctive layer of our brain and in our memory, which
helps to control all the elements in a language.
iv) Observe the benefit of teaching music through
movement when we treat concepts like form, phrase,
melody or rhythm.
The movement seems to be important in terms of
phrasing and rhythmic discrimination. Encouraging
students to do the same rhythm through in different ways
manners such as producing a like sound, stepping or using
instrument improvisation, we help the students to
understand the nature of this sound more completely. There
are some other parameters like such as gesture and
accentuation, which seem to behave a correlatedion with
accuracy in musical performance. Further work would be
but required to statistically confirm this correlation.we
cannot conclude this point until further researches.
5.1 Final Conclusion
The hypothesis of this paper establishedestablished that
“the Rhythmic Method created by Dalcroze applied in a
initial phase of music education improves the results in
audition, performance and awareness of music in
students”.
Although the available data we dispose may not
be certainly conclusive due to the time and sample size
limitations, thise research proves that aspects like such as
audition and rhythmic recognition are better with a
pedagogy that works exhaustively the ear before the graph.
These students didn’t know the symbol but they did
recognize better when they listened to it than students who
were guided through traditional music learning.
Table 2. Indicators, typology and quantification. Scores vary from
0 (none) to 5 (perfect).
Looking at the results and supported by the specialist
surveys we can conclude that a Musical Awakening Phase
is convenient in a pre-operational stadium (before 7 years).
Learning music in an instinctive and sensorial way should
occur when children acquire their own mother language.
They acquire more ear abilities and an accurate
performance when they only focus on copying sounds and
they don’t loose attention reading. In thThis way, students
are able to domain be proficient in the use of the elements
of musical language elements before they transcribe and
codify them, which is a posterior step in the human
language learning.
On the other hand, tThise study also shows
specific some favorable points aspects ofto traditional
education learning systems, such as increasedlike melody
intonation, melodic reading and sign-symbol
correspondence compared to the Dalcroze group. We must
not forget that the reading and writing process is still a very
important point in music education, which helps to
stabilize our knowledge in a symbolic process (see Fig.1).
It is also remarkable that Dalcroze pedagogy offers very
good results in rhythmic processes but it has some shortage
in intonation and other concepts that need to be
complemented.
Thus, we can conclude that a correct contents
sequencinorder in theg music contents is dramatically
important to improve the musical learning of students.
AlEven though methods like such as Dalcroze or Suzuki
may have still weaklower points scores on some of the
individual results (see Table 2), our on their results they
showedhighlight us the importance of accommodatinge the
music learning process to the natural language learning
process. When The moment in time to introduce music the
reading and writing process in music education is a
teacher’s decision, however, the childrenbut it seems very
important that the kid must domain be sufficiently
proficient in the musical parameters through audition,
performance and understanding before introducing
themhim or her into the reading and writing process of the
musica language like music.
Moreover, the results of our study are in
accordance with those foundIn the same way, during this
process we confirmedby what Edgar Willems in his works,
where we described how the song is the most powerful tool
we have to teach students a musical concept (Gómez,
2010). All the games, improvisations and , exercises, etc.
have the ultimate function of working a certain musical
aspect but it is the song what brings out the most noticeable
music learning.
6. Discusion And Study Limitations
The main limitation of the study was the few number of
available video taped sessionstime we disposed, given that
t. he whole studyIt was implemented in only 3 sessiasons,
when from my point of vi. ew we In order to obtain results
with stronger statistical significance,would need at least 4
or 5 sessions would be requiredeasons to extract more solid
conclusions.
The second limitation important difficulty iswas
about the design of indicators. We finally gather the
parameters in three groups: musical instinctive, logical-
operational and movement related indicators. This
distinction aims to seek the effect of being in contact with
the reading and writing process before knowing the own
sound or not.
However, the aim ofFinally we would like to
explain that due to these reasons, this research is pretended
to be an explorative work. Our intention was to design a
methodology to establish methods capable of quantifying
and analyzinge how theo sequence of contents impacts inn
music education and in the learning process. In this regard,
we have provided a framework for future research works in
this field.
We have focused on Dalcroze pedagogy because
it is one of the most revolutionary that is nowadays
implemented in some music schoolsonary ones, where . It
shows the music learning is importance of treateding music
as a natural process. putting the stress on process like
imitation, improvisation and embodiment, which could be
determinant for the musician education.
Thise research provideshas some clues insights
about the importance of introducing read music only when
the musical elements are totally acquired by the child,
which will potentially lead to for a better accuracy in
audition and performance. and it constitutes the base for
further research in this field.
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