Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to Saki Reid, for her commitment, support and her way with words. I would also like to thank Ewan Gibson and Johanes Boer for guiding me through the research process and to Zaynab Martin for proofreading my work. Many thanks also go to Jonatan Alvarado and Sophie Fetocacis for recording the songs. Finally my gratitude goes to my students at Muziekschool Amstelveen, who continue to inspire me to look for new ways of teaching.
Abstract
"The whole method is based on the principle that theory should follow practice, that children should not be taught rules until they have had experience of the facts which have given rise to them.”[1] EmileJaques-Dalcroze
This paper focuses on how many of the baroque “rules” being used today in the field of historically informed performance practice, can be experience from a young age through experience-based learning. As expressed in the quote above by the music educator Dalcroze, experience-based learning comes from the belief that children must first understand music through auditory and kinesthetic methods, before producing musical ideas of their own.
The purpose of this study is to investigate what aspects of the musical language of the baroque era can be experienced from twenty songs found in John Playford’s Apollo’s Banquet. This is a collection of country-dances, broad street ballads, theatre tunes, tunes from Morris dancing, Scottish tunes and French dances, that were published for the amateur violinist in 1670. In this study, these songs were taught to students between the ages of 5 and 10 with activities designed to create awareness of gestures, bar hierarchy, light cadences and other important baroque features, in a fun and approachable way.
Videos and observations of the lessons show that the repertoire was well received and the paper shows that the use of the songs provided an effective initial stage in experiencing baroque music. However the students would need to be exposed to many more examples of these baroque elements before they become consciously or even subconsciously learned. This paper also concludes that other elements of baroque music not included in this study, such as rhetorical devices and improvisation could be investigated, and that exploring folk music repertoire of the seventeenth century will provide our students with a richer experience of the baroque style.
About Author
I am a dedicated violin teacher, currently teaching at Muziekschool Amstelveen in the Netherlands. I have over thirty-five students, a large portion of which are between the ages of five and twelve. As a violinist specialised in historical performance practice I am always looking for news ways to generate interest in baroque music and I feel that more can be done to introduce this to violinists at an early age. I believe there is space for this to be integrated alongside the frequently used beginner violin repertoire. In addition to this I have studied the Dalcroze and Kodály methods and became interested in their philosophy of teaching music with the use of folk songs. This first led me to consider teaching baroque music through the use of folk songs of the baroque era, because they shared many similar melodies, rhythms and harmonic features and many are simple, friendly and suitable for children.
Overview of Apollo’s Banquet for Children
This paper sheds light on pedagogical methods that use experienced-based learning and the ways in which it can bring the musician closer to the basic “rules” associated with baroque music.
The first section, ‘Teaching baroque music’ discusses the frequently used baroque pieces in many method books and the limitations this presents. Playford’s Apollo’s Banquet for treble violin becomes the case study for this paper, as an example of a collection of songs from the seventeenth century songs to be used as learning material for the younger generation. The following section ‘John Playford’ places the publisher in the context of his time and gives information on how it led him to produce Apollo’s Banquet for treble violin.
The section ‘Teaching Apollo’s Banquet: Practical Application’ is divided in three parts. Part one discusses the issues raised when using the manuscript and outlines the criteria used in selecting twenty songs from Apollo’s Banquet. Part two shows the preparing of the material prior to teaching, from finding lyrics or setting new text, to creating activities that are appealing and engaging for the students. The final part gives a description of the teaching process.
The following section intitled ‘Apollo’s Banquet for Children’ is the analyse of twenty songs together with the activities, videos of the songs being taught and/or a recording of the song.
The final section of this paper looks at the results from the teaching these songs with their activities, including a summary of the aspects that successfully taught the baroque elements, as well as and giving suggestions about what could be improved. Several proposals for future research are given.