I once asked a young piano student to play each white key on the piano beginning with the lowest one, while naming them aloud. With great concentration, she did just that: “Sally… Kendra… Jason….”
This is the kind of profound education my students have given me. Beyond my lesson in essential communication, this child touched on the matter of “note naming.” After all, why not name one pitch Sally and another one Jason?
The world has known a wide range of alphabets and images used to symbolize concepts, places, things, and sounds, with an array of origins. For the twelve tones of western music, a variety of names – letters, numbers, and syllables – serve as common languages for communication.
A Means to an End, or a Goal in Themselves?
Like counting rhythms or “sounding out” words when first learning to read, note-naming is a tool toward literacy. The goal, of course, is musical fluency without the aid. We don’t converse with each other by spelling each word letter by letter!
Even so, exercises in note-naming have taken on a peculiar life of their own in some circles. Imagine a course in English Literature or Expository Writing that took the same approach. Students would practice reading aloud pages of random letters, like a word-search game without words, as quickly as possible. How would this advance their insight into great works or their own creative skills?
Similarly, imagine a series of whole notes on a staff. They are not intended to make any musical sense. They represent note names to be recited as rapidly as humanly possible. Is this a study of music, or a game of tongue-twisting?
In much of music education, it is a all too easy to focus so much on the product (the ‘show’) that the process gets left behind. After all, there is only so much time in a music educator’s day, and the time has a way of shrinking. Successful performances are what sustain many music programs.
In Dalcroze education, it’s easy for things to go the other way. Exercises themselves draw interest for their novelty, become the stock in trade, and attract people to ‘training.’ In my view, it’s important that we don’t confuse the purpose of a process with the goal it is intended to serve. That is why we should be careful not to confuse the purpose of symbolic notation of music with musicianship itself.
Music Literacy and Musicianship
Human language is unique. Yes, other species have ways of communicating; and yes, you can train a chimp to ask for a banana – but it would really rather not. It’s only in human nature that verbal communication, written representation, and understanding are linked the ways they are.
Words not only enable us to communicate thoughts to each other, but they also allow us to think more clearly. Written symbols provide a way to wrap complex content into packages we can manipulate, juxtapose, recombine, etc. This is quite evident in math and science, where a few letters and numbers can represent enormously complex meaning.
To be clear, I am a strong advocate of music literacy for the same reasons. In fact, I introduce children to music notation far earlier than standard music education considers possible. I began that way simply because I didn’t know any “better.” It has worked, because each visual symbol follows and symbolizes active experiences in their lessons with me.
Why Literacy Matters
We know that experience is the basis of learning. Students don’t simply swallow information; they construct knowledge. If children never have the opportunity to connect their music experience to symbols, they will be at a disadvantage by the time they reach high school – and their teachers will be, too.
I’ve advocated for music literacy for many years, as evidenced in this policy essay that won a Young Writers Award (yes, it was a long time ago!). As I argued, students who haven’t learned to read couldn’t study great literature in high school unless their teacher read every word to them. This is the predicament of many high school choral directors. Conveying each pitch by rote takes time away from the experience of music and the development of musicianship.
Reading is a vehicle for accessing a world of ideas and information recorded in written language. The same is true for reading music. Pitches and time values have been labeled and notated in various systems for centuries in order to document and communicate, literally helping people to sing from the same page.
Why Note Names Matter Less
I may have caused a stir recently when I said that MusiKinesis® is open to solfège systems other than fixed-doh. Them’s fightin’ words in the Dalcroze world!That doesn’t mean that I teach moveable doh, or that I never use Jaques-Dalcroze’s solfège techniques. There are other ways to name the notes.
The U.S. is increasingly a polyglot nation. In a single class, we might have students who learned to label notes with English letter names, fixed doh, moveable doh, or numbers. (In fact, we might have children from countries around the world with whom we don’t yet share a common language.)
In the case of young children, all note names are likely to be new. I have experimented over the years and devised a solfège/sight-singing method for children (on my list of “things I must publish someday”).
With early learners, I prefer fixed doh for reasons I will explain next time, even though I realize moveable doh is the common solfège system here. (Check back for Part II where I will explain that.)
Andragogy and Purpose
Once someone has made their way to music literacy and advanced musicianship through any one language, it’s a challenge to translate to another in adulthood. It might be worthwhile to pursue the second language, it might not be useful, or it might change. This brings me to andragogy.
The difference between pedagogy and andragogy is that pedagogy is the teaching of children, and andragogy is the teaching of adults. The term was coined in early 19th-century German but has become better known following the work of Malcolm Knowles. It concerns how adults learn as well as why.
Generally, even more than pedagogy, andragogy and its related theories require:
- Self-direction in a cooperative environment with respect as an equal partner, rather than the teacher in authority.
- A curriculum that is flexible rather than rigid, respects learners’ prior experience, and engages them in two-way dialogue rather than insistent impositions.
- Intrinsic motivation, applicability to life and work, growth in meaningful skills, knowledge, and self-confidence, rather than striving toward teacher’s external approval, judgments, or grades.
Especially in short summer courses, this is the way I’m inclined to teach adults.
Stay tuned for Part II.
Leave A Comment