The Contributions of Carl Orff to Elementary Music Education

Abstract

* One of the first music educators who attempted make musical training a means of expression rather than an end in itself was Jaques-Dalcroze (18651950), the widely traveled founder of the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze in Geneva, Switzerland. The basis of the Dalcroze method is the coordination of music and bodily movement. Originally designed improve rhythmic sense in the musically gifted child, the Dalcroze method developed include a means of self expression and a general training in musical theory for the child with average musical ability as well. The primary objective of the Dalcroze method, as stated by its originator, is to create by the help of rhythm a rapid and regular current of communication between brain and body and make feeling for rhythm a physical exercise.' The Dalcroze method develops pupils' attention and power of concentration, and eliminates all but the most essential muscular movements, so that a kind of automatic technique is brought into play (the arms beat time, while the lower limbs indicate the note value); the entire physical system is almost unconsciously controlled by the brain in response the dictates of musical rhythm. After this training obtain the pupil's rapid physical reaction changing rhythms, given out by the teacher improvising at the piano, comes a later stage when whole musical compositions are translated into a language of gesture and bodily movement. Bach's fugues, Gluck's Orfeo, and other works have in this way been given plastic expression by the Jaques-Dalcroze schools, and the principles underlying the method

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