The importance of singing

One of the pillars of the Kodály philosophy is the role of singing in musical education as a whole. The singing voice is a nature’s built-in musical instrument that everyone owns and can make use of without going through the technical difficulties of an instrument. This way musical development can begin for everyone in childhood. According to the Kodály philosophy “through unaccompanied singing and active participation a student can begin to acquire skills essential to all musicians: aural perception, musical memory, inner hearing, true intonation and harmonic hearing. Kodály-trained instrumental teachers regard these skills as pre-requisites for instrumental study at every level. Teachers who spend time preparing musical material through singing find that students play successfully and musically.”⁷ 

Kodály wrote that “our every musical manifestation must be led by an inner conception, hearing and imagination, and this is trained by singing: free singing without any instrument is the true and profound school of musical abilities.”⁸. This is the reason why Kodály believed that a child should not touch an instrument before having received at least one of singing training; when instrumental training is to be introduced, singing should always continued to be practiced and hopefully never come to an end; “free hearing and imagination must continue to be developed and solfege courses must accompany instrumental study.”⁹, as “music is the principal subject, the instrument merely first secondary subject.”¹⁰.

The role of singing is very important: on one side beautiful singing has its own beauty and developing strength but according to the Kodály philosophy it should be used only as a means to strive in the direction of fully efficient musical expression.¹¹

Various music-psychological investigations have been done on the topic; worth of notice is the work Martienssen has done, demonstrating that “apparent hearing can evolve purely on the basis of a vocal cord routine.”¹², but at the same time he warns music teachers that many times the “vocal realisation of the inner conception is […] of no effect at all in realisation on an instrument.”¹³. This statement seems to be contradicting with his first assumption and the line of thoughts of  the Kodály philosophy itself, and for this reason the following disclaimer must be taken in consideration. Singing and playing on an instrument are motorically different, and for this reason it is not only the singing executed for the sake of singing that has an impact on the improvement of the playing, but it is “the vigorous aural activity which takes place in singing.”¹⁴, that with constant practice has an effect on the musical inner hearing abilities of the student on the long term.

Introducing the Kodály Philosophy

Kodály once said that “we should read music in the same way that an educated adult will read a book: in silence but imagining a sound.”¹.

According to Kodály’s own writings and the information provided in the Kodályhub², I will present a summary of the main points of the Kodály philosophy.

Kodály’s ideas of music education are usually defined by the term Kodály method; other terms used are Kodály philosophy, Kodály principle and Kodály concept. The Kodály method, is actually an imprecise term to define Kodály’s ideas, as Kodály himself did not work out a complete detailed methodological process of teaching music, creating a method per se, but he rather formulated principles that were adapted and elaborated by his followers over time. 

Kodály’s educational model was thought to target general schooling, as his main objective was to make music accessible to everyone. Kodály considered music to be part of universal human knowledge; he stated that “music should belong to everyone”, meaning that "music is an indispensable part of universal human knowledge.”³. This is why he formulated the slogan: "Let music belong to everyone!”. For this reason it was only natural that music became an indispensable part of school curriculums, being this way accessible to everyone.  

So, if on one side Kodály meant to educate a large audience, on the other hand he worked with and trained highly gifted music students. In one of the speeches that Kodály gave at the Academy of music in Budapest (1953)⁴, where he was a teacher, he described what the characteristics of a good musician are:

1. A well-trained ear
2. A well-trained intelligence
3. A well-trained heart
4. A well trained hand

Kodály explained that all these four points should develop together and be always in balance. He also stated that relative solmisation and what he called “the science of form” and harmony would be able to cover and teach the first two points; to complete the teaching he demanded that a musical experience as varied as possible should be provided; “without playing chamber music and singing in choirs, nobody can become a good musician.”⁵. 

A very important aspect in which Kodály philosophy is based is the central role of the voice; Kodály considered the voice as the most natural instrument and one everyone has access to; Kodály believed that singing is a way to live the musical experience in a creative way and an effective mean to develop musicianship skills.

Definition of musicianship skills

According to Dr. Rowely, the term musicianship “expresses in a nutshell the aim of all our teaching, namely to produce musicians and not mere machines for turning out sound, however, harmonious.”⁶.

Dr. Rowely highlights and uses many times the words “aliveness or awareness” to describe the skills that make a good musician opposed to a “machine”. The way to develop this awareness is through “doing”, introducing and experiencing sound before signs. 

The importance of relative Solmisation

People who visited Kodály inspired music lessons in Hungary, agree that one of the things that characterises this way of teaching is the “colourfulness […], the different levels of activity, the demonstrations, games, the diversity of movements and the use in all this, like a connecting thread, of relative solmisation.”¹⁵.

Even though relative solmisation is a tool that is strongly implemented in the Kodály method, it is interesting to point out that Kodály started getting acquatinted with solmisation only in the thirties, when he was in the middle of his educational conception and the most essential elements of his philosophy had already evolved. Kodály was first exposed to this technique when he was visiting England; in that period music schools nation-wise were using a movable-do system, invented by Sarah Glover, as part of choral training. 

Regarding the English solmisation system, Kodály stated that: “It is generally experienced that countries and schools using solmisation sing more truly. The reason for that is that when giving a note a relative solmisation name, we are automatically defining and implying its function in the tonality.”¹⁶. 

When approaching this quote I wondered what Kodály meant by singing more truly; according to Dobszáy, solmisation “implants in the pupil the foundations of musical thinking”¹⁷; this can be achieved through systematic practice and the application of fully considered methods. Solmisation functions as a mean giving the technical conditions for what is aimed to be achieved as a final goal: gaining awareness and consciousness regarding music. It is when this active understanding is reached, opposed to a passive exposure to the musical experience, that one can perceive and sing music truly. 

Dobszáy also stresses the importance of always keeping an eye out to the final goal, which is always at the service of music, and not to get lost in the process of practicing solmisation forgetting the final goal of music making. 

“If someone likes and cultivates the means because of the perfection of the means themselves, the pedagogical art completely loses its significance; instead of vigorous effectiveness what sets off in an endless multiplying process, the various means develop and grow rampant for their own sakes…”¹⁸. It is of crucial importance to always be keen on reaching the final goal being of music entering the “heart” of the pupil. 

This means that specific attention should be drawn to the musical material proposed to the students; the melodies taught should be of good quality.

How does relative solmisation work?

The help that solmisation brings in relation to the development of the musical thinking deals with fixing the easy tendency to create associations to individual sounds or to individual intervals and melodic figures; “It provides possibilities for differentiation and denotation, it brings about familiarity with the various sounds, while it mobilises knowledge-areas related to a certain extent to sound perception.”¹⁹. In fact, if a sufficiently strong association exists between the syllable and the sound-experience, then the syllable will evoke the sound experience, and at the same time the sound experience will evoke the syllable. Solmisation makes us free in the sense that we are not slaves to intervals anymore.

To better understand how relative solmisation serves these purposes, we first need to understand what components are perceived by a listener when listening to a sound; according to Dobszáy there are two elements that appear in the perception of a sound:

1. The perception of individual notes, or the acoustic side. 
2. The function of the sound in relation to the other sounds (defined in terms of relation, contrast, dependence, introduction…), or the emotional side.

What makes the use of solmisation a profound method in my opinion, is that the sol-fa syllables assimilate from the musical material both the acoustic and the emotional element of the sound and, in turn, the musical material with its two acoustic and emotional components assimilates the sol-fa syllables. The purposes that relative solmisation serves cannot be covered by the theoretical definition of the sound’s tonal function. When singing in solmisation the way we experience the function of the various sounds is active and is effective because we are making music, and internalising the process. 

It is of the utmost importance that a musical approach is used; it is in fact very common and unfortunate that many students are introduced to music theory before even listening or hearing music. “A sound approach to music will base itself on the naive enjoyment of listening, since principles and generalisations must be derived from observation rather than from dehydrated abstractions.”²⁰. It is in fact this acquaintance with music that will stimulate the curiosity of the pupil.

Risks to take care of when teaching solmisation

According to Dobszáy there are two risks in the practice and teaching of solmisation:

1. Fix the solmisation of separated intervals, taken out of context. It is important to always encourage and look for melodies that stimulate the pupil to experience the whole harmonic picture and give space to explore the relation between sounds.
2. The danger of mechanical application. Musicality and phrasing should be always favoured when singing. 

Sound and Notation

As music educators Gary McPherson and Alf Gabrielsson explain in their book “The science and Psychology of Music Performance”, one of the most disputed issues in music pedagogy deals with how and when to teach notation to instrumental players. On one side, most current teaching introduces notation at a very early stage, to avoid having repercussion in the ability of reading proficiency. On the other hand, the proponents of sound before notion state that “children will have difficulties learning to read notation unless their musical knowledge is sufficiently developed for them to be able to relate the sound of what they can already play with the symbols used to represent them.”²¹. 

McPherson and Gabrielsson argue that there are different principles that can be used to develop skillset or musicianship basics that children need  before they can be introduced to notation and become musically literate. 

The way notation is taught has changed enormously over time; until the mid-nineteenth century musicians were trained to be all-round musicians by “integrating technique with other aspects of general musicianship²²”, through knowledge that was passed aurally from generation to generation. Music was in fact learned by ear, the students were encouraged to improvise, invent their own passages inspired by imitating the teacher’s model. It was with the advent of high speed printing machines in 1818 that people started having access to cheap scores. Technique books were sold and the emphasis shifted “from the development of skills in interpretation, improvisation and composition to music as a reproductive art.”²³. One could argue that this has spiralled until nowadays with musicians all over the world having access to video recordings on the internet. By the end of the 19th century, the focus of the pedagogues started shifting on drill and technical material (scales, rhythms, articulations, finger exercises…). As a consequence, students were taught to read notation in order to develop technical skills from the very first lessons; even today most instrumental books associate fingering with notation instead of fingering with sound. 

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), was one of the first pedagogues who was an advocate of sound before sign. Pestalozzi’s ideas were introduced in North Americas’s school by Joseph H. Naef, who founded an elementary school in 1809 that proposed music lessons as a basic subject; it is interesting to note how this way of thinking is in line with Kodály’s philosophy of music belonging to everyone. In 1830 Naef exposed his “Principles of the Pestalozzian System of Music”, which included seven recommendations for teachers²⁴:

1. Teach sound before symbol.
2. Observe by hearing and imitating.
3. Teach one thing at a time.
4. Master each step before going on to the next ones.
5. Give principles and theory after the practice.
6. Analyze and practice the elements of articulated sound.
7. Use children centered approaches with little assistance from the teacher; let the pupil be curious and deduct.

Many pedagogues yet to come were influenced and inspired by Pestalozzi’s philosophy, including Lowel Mason, Suzuki and Kodály.  

Music educator James Mainwaring researched the process of acquisition of ear playing skills; his studies led him to the conclusion that in teaching practice too much attention is drawn to technical skills and mechanised memorisation of music from a printed score. He believed that “learning an instrument should proceed from sound to symbol, not from symbol to sound, based on his belief that the development of music literacy should involve processes similar to learning to speak and then read a language."²⁵.

His concept of musicianship gravitated around the ability to think in sound;  Thinking in sound involves an ability to inwardly hear and comprehend notation separately from the act of performance. 

The figure below shows the difference between seeing notation and being able to think in sound, so being able to hear the notation inwardly (symbol to sound to action) in opposition to seeing the notation and react automatically to it (symbol to action to sound). 

Another sound before sign advocate is research professor Sloboda, who thought that before learning to read notation, musical sensitivity should be developed because “without some musical knowledge a beginner has no expectancies which can be used in reading."²⁶. 

What is to be avoided is to create links between symbol and instrumental fingerings, otherwise players become robots “to whom notation only indicates what fingers to put down rather than what sounds are desired.”²⁷. 

These principles are in line with Kodály philosophy: "playing a music instrument is more than the technical aspects of learning the instrument; it involves learning how to translate an aural image of a piece into acoustic sound. Learning the technique required for playing an instrument is only one part of the process necessary for translating notation into sound. A child’s aural image of the piece of music will dictate how to perform the piece of music."²⁸. 

CHAPTER II - THE KODÁLY PHILOSOPHY

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