Collecting Repertoire for Kodály-inspired Music Lessons in Dutch Elementary Schools

Daniel Salbert

Name: Daniel Salbert Main subject: Theory of Music Research coach: László Norbert Nemes Title of research: Collecting Repertoire for a Kodály-inspired Music Curriculum Research question: Is it possible to gather Relevant Repertoire for Dutch Elementary Schools to build a Kodály-inspired Music Curriculum? Abstract Six years ago, I visited a Kodály-course in Manchester, UK. This was the initial experience that changed my whole teaching and also my view on Music Education in general. After several study tours to Hungary I was convinced that it would be possible to develop a Kodály-inspired Music curriculum for Dutch elementary schools. Musical skills should and can be taught to anyone, beginning already in elementary school and not only at conservatoire level. As Kodály puts it: “Let music belong to everyone”. Singing musical repertoire is the fundament of all Kodály-inspired music teaching. So I began collecting relevant repertoire for Kodály-inspired music lessons in Dutch elementary schools: songs, rhymes, singing games, (folk) dances, canons, quodlibets, etc. To answer the research question I have collected many Dutch and International song books for elementary school from past to present and went through them for closer musical analysis. Besides, I researched song material at the Meertens Institute Amsterdam, organized a (folk) dancing workshop for elementary school teachers and went on study tours to Budapest and Glasgow. And of course I took notice of the repertoire that my fellow Kodály-colleagues at the Royal Conservatoire (KC) used. Searching and collecting repertoire became an attitude. But searching repertoire is not a theoretical business. Therefore, in the last two years I was testing repertoire in some of my classes: 1) Jong-KC-junior-students of the Royal Conservatoire at the age of 7-9 years; these children were following a special talent education. 2) ‘Normal’ children of the age of 6-8 years at a local Dutch elementary school. To gather the repertoire I built a database in File Maker Pro. I analysed the repertoire concerning musical parameters that are relevant to build a curriculum for Music education. The advantage of such a database is the fact that it is searchable. So when building a curriculum, repertoire can be grouped and sequenced according to the musical learning goals that are aimed at. Also staff notation, a game description and a demonstration video are provided. In the future I would like to transform this into an online database that could serve as a repertoire source for any Music teacher. After two years of research I can positively answer the research question. The next step would be to sequence the repertoire for the benefit of a step-by-step curriculum for the full eight years of Dutch elementary school education. Then Music at Dutch elementary schools might again become a subject that matters. Biography Daniel Salbert (Nuremberg, Germany 1971), studied Music Teaching (BA 1999), Choral Conducting (BA 2001) and Music Theory (BA 2009) at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague (KC). He conducted different choirs such as children, chamber and oratorio choirs. At the moment he conducts the Young Talent Choirs and the First Year’s Choir of the KC and Concertkoor Rijswijk. He teaches Musicianship and Solfege for the Singing Department of the KC. He also teaches Solfege and Kodály-methodology for the Saturday-course “Music as a Subject” and the Master “Music Education according to the Kodály-concept”. He also teaches Musicianship and Music Theory at the School for Young Talent of the KC.

De Leeuwerikhoeve

During my lessons at De Leeuwerikhoeve I tested different singing games and song repertoire. It was not easy to estimate in advance which song and games would suitable for them because most of them never had any music lesson before. Their only reference is singing along with CD’s or moving along with dancers shown on the ‘digibord’, the interactive digital blackboard. Of course nothing is wrong with eduactional tools like CD’s or a digibord. But the question is if they are used as part of a curriculum of continuous music education or just as a single musical impression or experience. And – much more important – if the use of these stimulate the personal musical development of every single child in the classroom regarding musical skills.

In my first lessons I realized that the musical skills as well as the motor development of the most children were poor. Instead of singing a song it was mostly shouting or speaking, even of songs which they pretended to ‘know’. Also rhythmically most of the children had difficulty to keep a beat by clapping, tapping or walking. I started using a simple rhyme to develop some feeling for beat and rhythm:

1,2, kopje thee. 3,4, glaasje bier. 5,6, kurk op de fles. 7,8, soldaat op wacht. 9,10, ik heb een dief gezien. 10,11, de dief ben je zelf.

They liked this, especially when we had two groups, one that was counting and the other that was answering with the rhyme. After a while I was beating a steady beat on the drum while they were performing the rhyhme. Of course walking, tapping and clapping was involved on a certain moment. I asked individual children to perform the beat on the drum while another child performed the rhyme. After some lessons I was clapping a typical rhythm from the rhyme and they had to answer with the according words, such as:

Musical learning requires inner discipline and attention. The lessons were given after school time at 3pm. The children were tired and also the fact that they were obliged to follow the lesson made it difficult. Some of them were just ‘fed up’ with school and wanted to go home, which I can really understand well. Of course it was possible to draw their attention for some minutes, but to teach them like this for a full hour was actually impossible. At the same time some of the children had serious behaviour problems. There were many quarrels among them with a lot of anger. These issues had a major influence on their discipline. And I also believe that music lessons – also by the school staff – were not seen as a moment to learn and to develop children’s abilities but rather as an hour of superficial fun. If I would have sung along for 60 minutes with a karaoke-program on the digibord it would have come closer to their expectations than working an hour together developing musical skills.

As an example I give two singing games I played with them. The first is “Hallo allemaal”, a welcome song and a clapping game.

In the first four bars (with repeat) the beat is clapped by a clap in your own hands followed by a clap in each others hands with a partner. During the next two bars the rhythm is clapped moving up the hands from low to high. In the next two bars the first movement is repeated.

After some weeks of practice, with a also a conscious difference between speaking and singing voice, the children were singing much softer and with more aural attention to the sound they made. Of course, still a lot of pitch matching, voice development and further aural training would be necessary to provide in-tune-singing. It is actually impossible to reach this goal in the twelve lessons I have given. But I can only praise the children for what they have shown in this short amount of time.

The second example is the song “Ijsbeer”. It has a clear aba-structure which is good for responsorial singing and the physical experience of form:

After having played a circle game to experience beat and form we turned to the rhythm by singing, clapping and walking. At the the end we transformed the rhythms to percussion instruments. For example, two groups with different instruments were playing the a-parts or the b-parts. So at the end we were playing the rhythm in a responsorial way. As I mentioned, the motor skills were poor with some children. They simply could not clap or play the quicker eighth-notes in the tempo they sang the song. So we had to reduce the tempo according to their motor abilities. For me it was stunning to see that many of the children were lacking physical development to play on a drum. I think that this is an example of what Dalcroze was speaking about in the quote above.

Of course in both examples I was accompanying on a keyboard. I varied with that, sometimes a played, sometimes they just sang a cappella and sometimes I was singing along softly in falsetto voice or in the lower octave. As soon as they were getting more stable in pitch I stopped singing to let them sing a cappella again. If the children would be trained like this for several years from the beginning most of them would be able to sing in tune. Interestingly, they were not afraid of singing solo. After we had sung the icebear-song for some weeks it was easy to find a soloist for the b-part playing the role of the icebear. I clearly experienced the need of music education and the inner urge to express themselves musically (with a lot fun, by the way). The biggest problem is that it is not a steady part of the school curriculum and not a part of weekly training for the whole school time. Just giving twelve lessons in the afternoon, outside the school curriculum, is not sufficient.

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