Psychological Testing in Hungarian Music Education

Abstract

1 HE HUNGARIAN METHOD of music education has been founded on many years of work by Zoltan Kodaly and his disciples. Kodaly realized in the early l920s, at the beginning of his career, that Hungarian music education was rootless and ineffective. Hungarian composers had no acquaintance with their own people's music. At the same time, audiences at concerts listened to the compositions of Kodaly and Bartok without understanding, and often with opposition. Both Kodaly and Bartik thought that the source of renewal was to make general education meet folk traditions. They urged the nation to go to the source, to folk melodies for the musical mother-tongue, and to build works of art on that foundation. Therefore, our method of music education is based on folk song. We are in the fortunate position of having an enormous collection of folk music which has been polished for centuries; it has been systematized and continuously recorded by the folk music department of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. We can go to rich sources for every stage of our music education: we teach most of the musical elements, rhythmic and melodic motive, from folk songs. The knowledge of old and modern classic compositions is closely connected with this process. Our experiences show that twentieth-century Hungarian music inspired by folk songs offers an appropriate basis for accepting modern art. Kodaly suggested that the singing voice should be the instrument for general music education. The human voice, being available to everyone, free, and still the most beautiful instrument, can be the only real foundation of a general and broad musical culture (Visszatekintes, p. 175). Kodaly definitely wanted to make the activities of singing lessons cover equally the emotional, motoric, somatic, and intellectual spheres of personality. He realized that music education should begin in kindergarten or even in nurseries. education can only be successful if started early. Music education has the greatest effect from the age of 3-7 years during the most important period of the child's intellectual and spiritual development, (p. 90) . Besides singing, movement plays an important part in the activities of the human organism. A song is a spontaneous, natural language for a child, and the younger he is, the more movement he requires in addition. Music and exercise closely connected and singing games in the open air have been the greatest joy of children since ancient times, (p. 62).

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