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.

The Research Question

The original central research question that I formulated in fall 2013 was:

Is it possible to build a Kodály-based curriculum for Dutch elementary schools, making use of mostly Dutch song material?

During the research my research question has changed. The original question was rather a rethoric one for me personally, because I actually already believed that the Kodály-method could be adapted in The Netherlands. And of course there are many songs in Dutch which could serve as a preparation for musical learning in a comparable way as in Hungary. So actually my focus slightly changed.

In the last two years I was teaching musicianship and solfege in many different situations and with different age groups. I realized more and more that the actual teaching, the lesson preparation and the practical teaching experience was my research. There I could test chosen repertoire for its power for achieving musical learning goals, there I could further develop metholodogical steps. And the outcomes of one experience with a certain age group influenced another experience with another age group. So already my whole teaching practice was one big research. This is why I began to refine the research question:

Is it possible to collect suitable repertoire for Dutch elementary schools and Higher Professional Music Education to give Kodály-inspired musicianship lessons?

Still I was not really satisfied with this way of putting it, but as far as I got with my research up to then, it came most close. When I discovered that actually the repertoire itself is the main focus of my research, I formulated the research question in its final state:

Is it possible to collect repertoire for Kodály-inspired Music lessons in Dutch elementary schools?

If there would not be enough repertoire of sufficient quality on which a Kodály-inspired curriculum could be built, then it would be impossible to adapt the Kodály-method to The Netherlands.

The final research question is actually not covering all the teaching fields I was working for in the last two years. But mainly I was working out lessons for children aged from 6 to 12 years and for conservatoire students from the Prepatory and first year of Higher Professional Music Education. I also worked with Young Talent students aged from 13 to 18 years, and also there I also applied Kodàly methodology. So the research was a very fundamental one and is still going on. For this paper and for the Research Presentation I had to limit the research description to the younger age group from 4 to 12 which is actually the age group attending Dutch elementary schools.

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