I met Terry Boyarsky at the 2018 AOSA Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. It had been a long time since taking a workshop involving the Dalcroze approach so I had signed up to attend her session. I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing movement, singing and playfulness. And immediately afterward asked if she would share information about Dalcroze on the podcast!
Terry's Bio
Terry Boyarsky received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Experimental Psychology at Reed College in Portland, Oregon and her Bachelor of Arts degree in Eurythmics at the Cleveland Institute of Music in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her Masters degree in Ethnomusicology from Kent State University in Ohio. Terry has also completed two levels of Orff training. She was a faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Music for eleven years. She has presented numerous workshops about the Dalcroze approach at National Conferences throughout the United States, as well as many MTA and Orff chapters around the country and has been artist-in-residence for the Ohio Arts council for such organizations as Kennedy Heights Art Center, Hershey Montessori School, Southern Ohio Museum, Creative Aging Ohio, and Hocking County Children's Chorus. Terry is one of a select 16 Ohio artists to receive the Kennedy Center training in Arts Integration.
Terry had written articles about the Dalcroze approach for Teaching Artist Journal, Seminars in Neurology, The Orff Echo, the Dalcroze journal and a chapter for "Drama in the Classroom." She has been guest faculty at many institutions, including University of Hawaii, Oberlin Conservatory, Bard College-Conservatory, Kennesaw State University in Georgia, Kasetsat University in Bangkok, Thailand, and Los Hippocampitos in Caracas, Venezuela. Terry teaches a course in Modern Language and Music Departments at Case Western Reserve University called "Russian Song."
You can find more information on Terry's Website: terryboyarsky.blog
In this podcast episode, she shares about her musical experiences, about the Dalcroze approach and details of a Dalcroze session that she has led with educators.
Notes from the Episode
Mixed Meter Pieces:
Bulgarian Dance (Meter of 11/16 = 2+2+3+2+2)
Isle of the Dead by Rachmaninoff (Meter of 5/4)
Chichester Psalms by Bernstein (Meter of 7 = 2+2+3)
Seven Days by Sting (Meter of 5/4)
Canon:
Volga Boatmen (in 2/4)
Composer:
John Hodian - created a wonderful group called "The Naghash Ensemble of Armenia." Click here for their trailer.
Websites:
Dalcroze Society of America
Russian Duo
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE EPISODE (Part I)
Jessica: Terry, thank you so much for talking with us.
Terry: I'm very excited to do this.
Jessica: Can you share what your experience with music growing up as a child and a young adult was like?
Terry: Well, my father played clarinet in the Vermont symphony before he became a surgeon. And he loved music. And he used to take me to my piano lessons on Sunday mornings at 7:00. And we would listen to WXQ on the way, which was the classical music station in New York. And he would drop me off, go to his research lab, and forget about me. So I'd have my piano lesson and then I'd be sitting through other piano lessons until he finally remembered to pick me up. And because he loved music so much we would go to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and he would buy the piano reduction score and I would try and play it. And sing all those arias. I think that was a start for my sight reading abilities because it was way too advanced for me.
And then another deep influence - we spent two summers on an island in Maine where my father was part of a collective of international research scientists who didn't necessarily speak the same languages. So what do you do if you're with a group of people and you don't speak the same language? You sing and dance together! So that's what we did. We did all these amazing folk dances. I can still remember them.
And then there was my mother who had three active young children and was very inventive. So occasionally she would put on the record player and give us pots and pans so we could march around the house with our own rhythm band. She claims that she started me on Dalcroze eurythmics. She was very determined to educate us culturally and so of course, you're supposed to give your kids piano lessons. So she did notice that I was more interested in my brother's piano lessons than he was. So she took the hint.
And she taught me to read music at age four even though she couldn't read music, but then she found good teachers for me. you know, the piano was my main instrument, but I loved the oboe and I became very serious about it and I played throughout college. I was always much more interested in making music with other people. I, I didn't like playing alone. And so there was this succession of choruses and chamber music and orchestras. I played glockenspiel in the marching band and of course, I was the collaborative pianist for instrumentalists, vocalists. Just whatever, whoever I could find to play with me.
Jessica: And how did you learn about the Dalcroze approach?
Terry: Well, I went to Reed College where at that time it was one of the only colleges requiring a thesis to graduate. And for my thesis I studied music preference in preschool children. And then after college my first job was teaching kindergarten. And there was a piano in the classroom so I tried many different things with the children thinking there must be a better way to do this. So as usual I did research. I went to my local library and found a book. I think it was Heather Gell's Music, Movement and the Young Child. And I began to try every idea, game and exercise in that book. And later when I moved to Minnesota, I found a real Dalcroze teacher who had a class for adults and I studied with her. And then when I was considering moving to Cleveland, I just discovered that there was a degree program at the Cleveland Institute of Music. So that's where I found myself. And after I graduated there, I also attended the Dalcroze School of Music of New York City for a very intense summer.
Jessica: And was that all summer long or was it just a few weeks of the summer?
Terry: I think it was eight weeks and since I was already trained, the afternoon class was with Hilda Schuster, but she said I could also attend the morning sessions for beginners with the other woman Hilda Geroff so I did like twice as much. You know, like two programs at the same time.
Jessica: That's a lot of learning!
Terry: Yeah, it was great.
Jessica: For anyone who may not be familiar with Dalcroze, can you share who Emile Jacques Dalcroze was and how and why he developed this approach.
Terry: Okay. Emile Jacques-Dalcroze, which was sort of a made up name, lived from 1865-1950. He was a professor of harmony at the Geneva Conservatory and he was absorbed in questions about how man can fulfill his individual potential. And live a balanced life. So music for him was the best way to reconcile mind, body, spirit, and emotion. I'm going to read a quote from his book. He wrote:
"For it is in music that tones, timbres, and rhythms, nuances, pauses, accents, tempi and all the physical and dynamic phenomenon of the world of sound find themselves brought into conjunction. Arranged, superimposed, measured and shaped by the power of creative thought" - Kodaly
So while he was teaching, he noticed that although his students were able to complete written harmony and theory assignments, they couldn't hear or appreciate or perform them. To him, their deficiency pointed to a common denominator: lack of rhythm which meant lack of relationship between the ear, emotions, and body. For the rest of his life, even after he was excused from the conservatory for having his students move around the classroom barefoot, he experimented with how to teach musicality. He composed, created events and spectacles, and wrote extensively about his experience. Gradually his methods were arranged into three inter-related parts:
1 - eurythmics (meaning good rhythm) uses movement to study movement
2 - solfege is the study of pitch relationships and especially whole step and half steps
3 - And improvisation which is the synthesis of good rhythm and tonal relationships
His work had an enormous impact on musicians, composers, dancers, choreographers, actors. And left a legacy of ideas and practical examples. And for his whole life he was experimenting. He never codified his system. He just kept moving forward and trying new things. So today Dalcroze teachers are trained in movement, harmony, solfege, piano improvisation and pedagogy.
When I studied at the Dalcroze school in New York, every day we had three classes. One in each: eurythmics, solfege, and improvisation. And as I said, I did the morning session course and the afternoons, which was a different course. And it was so incredible. All of the materials from, let's say the eurythmics session was first. And let's say a song would be introduced. So that song or material would then be used in the solfege class and then the third class - improvisation - would use the same material. But it was never boring because the same simple melody was explored in movement, turned around into lots of different incarnations of solfege, and then played around with in improvisation class.
Jessica: You were able to take that one melody and use it in multiple ways and see it develop throughout the day.
Terry: Yeah - it was like a seed and then it would germinate and you never knew which way it was going to go. Especially because the teachers were so full of surprises. And so creative. And there improvisations on the piano were gorgeous.
Jessica: I know you have several articles on your website about the eurythmics, and solfege and improvisation. And I'll link that on my website as well so that people who are interested and want to know more about it can see - um - what that might look like.
Terry: That, that would be great. There's some more theoretical articles and there's some practical articles. And I'll put a quick plug in for the article on quick reaction exercises which was published in the Orff Echo.
Jessica: Oh great! That would be wonderful. Now that we know a little bit about Dalcroze himself, what would a Dalcroze-inspired teacher do in his or her classroom when leading students to learn using movement and music, compared to what other traditional approaches might look like?
Terry: Well, you know, it's important to understand that for every musical gesture, there's a corresponding movement. And for every movement, there's a corresponding sound. We're searching for musicality in each aural movement and each physical movement. So when I invite a class to respond by moving to something they hear, I'm also looking at the quality of their movement and their attention. For example, if I'm working on steady beat, which is always something you work on...
Jessica: Yes.
Terry: ...the quality of movement to a march would be quite different from moving to a bourree or an andante. Or a gigue. I often remind students and including adult students - you might have heard me say it at Orff workshop at the conference - that when I'm asking them to match the music by stepping, it doesn't mean to use the floor as a drum. First of all, it's hard on the body. Second of all, we have drums and they are for other reasons. Third of all, just being metronomically accurate is not our musical aim. As music moves forward in time, we want to indicate this by moving forward through space. Our contact with the ground is just the starting point. So Dalcroze asked students to remove their shoes so that they could be more sensitive and responsive and he compared it to playing the piano with gloves on. I like to remember tha tmusic is more than just beats and notes. For example, phrasing is so important. Inflection, stress. The structure of a musical composition allows all the details to fall into place and as an ethnomusicologist and performing classical pianist, I'm always searching for those tiny distinctions that make a performance stylistically accurate and convincing.
Jessica: Dalcroze himself was a pianist and I know that he found the piano to be a great tool for flexibility in improvising and especially when trying to have two separate melodies going at the same time. The piano was a great tool. And for some teachers this might be a challenge for them because they're not strong pianists or they don't play at all. So what are some other options available for teachers to improvise and help lead students during a lesson?
Terry: That is a great question. And back to Dalcroze. He was a phenomenal pianist and improviser and composer. So he wrote a lot of lieder and he wrote lots of lieder for Dalcroze lessons. Characteristic pieces. And again, we're back to style. So I mean, I just can not even begin to compare myself to Dalcroze in terms of that kind of musicality and improvisation. But now the opposite world, at times when I was in Venezuela teaching, I had no piano and just a drum. And of course my voice. So I thought, you know, there are all these contrasting elements to play with - there's high/low, loud/soft, staccato/legato, slow/fast, crescendo/decrescendo. Many musical exercises can be created intelligently with these musical concepts. So if you want two voices, make two lines. Or use two different body parts. Divide the class into two different groups. Or use different parts of the room like north and south. Or use different body facings. So I always ask students to help me also. To maybe half the class can sing and the other half can sing. Then we exchange. Or half the class can provide a body percussion crescendo and the other half is showing it in movement. All kinds of clever ways to get everyone involved in the issue at hand. Musical rhythmic issue at hand.
Jessica: Piano is a wonderful tool, but there are other ways.
Terry: Yeah, I mean I do love my piano. For many years teaching 3-7 year olds, I would get laryngitis once a year. And because I had such a good relationship with the kids and the kids had such good listening skills, I would say to them 'I can't talk to you today. My piano is the one who's going to talk to you.' And then I would proceed to teach the class with absolutely no verbal instruction - just gesture and music. And it was a great game. They loved it because they understood what the piano was telling them to do.
Jessica: What a neat thing! It really is true. I tend to think we talk too much as teachers anyway. So...what a great thing...
Terry: It's hard!
Jessica: Yes it is! To use the music. Is there a sequential order to the musical concepts taught? And what are some of the basic rhythmic elements that are explored through Dalcroze?
Terry: Yeah, this is always a really interesting question. So we, as Dalcroze advocates or Dalcrozian, we don't have a curriculum as such. It depends on who is in my class. What their experience is. I have three year olds or middle schoolers or I've taught lots of adults Dalcroze. I've taught at the Conservatory. It... I, I am really interested in training the capacity to listen. Whatever level, whatever age, whatever your experience. It's interesting. Bob Abramson, this great, great Dalcroze teacher from Juillard, has a bunch of books and one of his books is called Rhythm Games for Perception and Cognition. It always struck me. And if you look at the book, it's very cut and dry. Do this... blah, blah, blah. But perception and cognition is what he's looking. And I, personally, want to build kinesthetic awareness, which includes the other children around me. I want to create an attention that's receptive and I want to invite a relaxed obedient expressive body. So yeah, there's sequence and certain things you have to start at the beginning, but the classes are so organic. You might just say that you hop on the Dalcroze merry-go-round and start swirling in the mix of music and forming movement. Or you might say - I think a better analogy is - it's a spiral. And each time you revisit a concept or experience, it goes deeper.
Jessica: So it really does depend on who's in your classroom and what they need or what they're also giving back in that room.
Terry: Right. In that moment. So when I'm improvising, I'm watching every student. It's a very difficult way in a way. So I have an eye on myself, on my lesson plan, on my sequence, but then I have to see - how are they taking it? How are they responding to it? And I have to always be adjusting. So - uh - I have this question asked about assessment. So I would like to say that Dalcroze teachers assess at every moment and adjust at every moment depending on what we see.
Jessica: Because you're, you're constantly feeding off of one another.
Terry: Yes.
Jessica: And you're taking what the students are giving and them responding to them.
Terry: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: There are a lot of different rhythmic elements that are explored. Through movement. What are some of the more advanced rhythmic elements that are explored?
Terry: You've got me in my passion!
Jessica: Yes? Oh good!
Terry: I love teaching unequal beats, mixed meter, and unusual phrase lengths. And like the kinds of meter you find in Bulgarian Dance like 11/16, 2+2+3+2+2. These are - it's so quick that the Bulgarians call those beats: longs and shorts.
Jessica: Okay.
Terry: So like: (series of longs and shorts). That's eleven.
Jessica: Okay.
Terry: And the footwork is really quick.
Jessica: That would be fun.
Terry: And if you look at Hungarian folk songs and dances, there are a lot of three measure phrases. I've done entire workshops on unequal beats including Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead which is in 5/4 and Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms with is 2 + 2 + 3. And Sting! Sting loves unequal beats. Just take a listen to Seven Days in 5/4.
Jessica: Okay. I love pieces in 5/4. I know the Dave Brubeck Take Five piece, kind of that classic jazz. And there's one that I came across a couple weeks ago that I've been notating because I can't find the score for it anywhere, but I want to do a mixture and kind of a different composition piece with it with my students and it's by a band called Skye. It's called Dance of the Little Fairies and it's also in 5/4. And it has this really beautiful, simple melody. And I'm hoping to have my recorder students play the melody, the barred students play the bass part, and then create a drum pattern underneath it to form kind of a variation on that piece. But that's kind of another one if you haven't heard of that one. It's just kind of a neat little melody. And there's also a version, and I don't know how authentic the dance is, but there's a group of men performing with what look like swords and they do this sword dance in lines with the piece, but it's separate than the one that the band performs. So it's just a neat piece. So yeah, unequal beats and mixed meter would be a lot of fun to explore for advanced rhythmic elements. Are there other ones that you enjoy?
Terry: I love teaching syncopation. And we Dalcrozians define syncopation as avoidance of the beat. I find it's very easily misunderstood, even when I sing in my chorus with very, very good choir director. It's so clear when you express it in movement. Syncopation is, more theoretically you might say, a juxtaposition between the known and the unknown. But when you actually work it out, it's a relationship between weight and balance. Or energy and direction. And I like cross-rhythms. They're great fun to explore. And another device that Sting is really skilled at, he's just incredible! He'll do cross rhythms in unequal beats and it's so beautiful. So, you know, all rhythmic issues are about time, space, and energy and when you explore them in the laboratory of the Dalcroze class, always connecting movement with sound, then these things become deeply imbedded in the essential musical creature that I want to be or am, but is waiting to be expressed.
And, let's see other things. I like playing with different modes. Dalcroze Eurythmics uses fixed 'do' so middle C is always 'do.' So at the Dalcroze School of Music with Hilda Schuster, we studied all the keys by singing from 'do' to 'do'' or from C to C'. And just changing the accidentals as you go up and down. Let me sing you an example. (singing up and down the scale). We know we're in 'do' major. Or if we change an accidental, we can go (singing up and down scale). Which brings us to the key of 'so' because that accidental is F# - G. Or we could go (singing up and down scale). And the key is 'Ab.' For example. And we had to do it lickety-split, up and down. So it does sound like the church modes, but the way of thinking about it is quite different. And also when you do Dalcroze solfege, there's always got to be a rhythmic element to it. You don't read it - oh that's a 'do' - oh that's a 'mi' - that's a 're' - that's a 'mi.' It has to be some kind of rhythmic structure to keep your brain working.
So when I was in New York I rode my bicycle across New York City to get to class. While I was pedaling I would do my solfege exercises so I could stay in rhythm.
Jessica: Oh. Yeah.
Terry: Really changed my brain!
Jessica: Did you pedal faster if you sang it faster then?
Terry: No I mean I tried to be steady but yeah, there were all kinds of rhythmic issues and solfege issues you can try out by pedaling or walking.
Jessica: I know in high school my choir director had us learn in fixed do. It was in Michigan and so I had already done moveable do before then and then all through high school used Fixed Do. And then in college went back to moveable do and so my brain got used to hearing it multiple ways, but I actually found the fixed do really helpful. Although I will say that it was a little different than Dalcroze because if we were in the key of G, then we were in the key of 'sol.' And we would sing from 'sol' to 'sol.' Is that the same thing as the solfege for Dalcroze or is that a different type of fixed do then?
Terry: Well, middle C 'do' was, I don't even know how to describe it. We would go to class and before we would say anything, she would say, "Sing Do." and the other thing is that any time there was a car horn or any kind of screech, she would ask us, "What pitch is that?" So she really felt like you could teach perfect pitch that way and yeah, I got closer and closer.
Jessica: I was going to say, after doing it so much, I would think you'd get if not very relative pitch.
Terry: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. And then what about, cause we're talking about modes and how you always do something with a rhythmic element in it, what about complementary rhythms? How does that work?
Terry: Well, in Dalcroze, complementary rhythms is very, very specific. It's not a rhythm that complements another rhythm like aesthetically. I like to think of it in terms of positive and negative space. You have a melody and wherever there is no attack, there is space. You can fill it in with a specific note value. So let's see - you've got - let's see. (sings Viva la Musica) So your steady beat is this. So that inbetween you have the attacks of the note, you've got spaces for eighth notes. (sings Viva la Musica with clapping) If you clapped both the melody and you clapped the complementary rhythm in eighth notes, this is what you would get: (clapping). I just did that phrase.
Jessica: Okay. Then it's all eighth notes then.
Terry: Yeah. So you're, or you can do it, you can get more complicated. You can do sixteenth notes or half note or whatever the music is going for or whatever your exercise calls for. Let's say you are expressing the complementary rhythm in pitches so the first person or the first group goes "Vi-va-vi-va-la-mu-si-ca" and the second group would go (pattern is sung and clapped).
Jessica: Okay - filling in.
Terry: The exact positive and negative.
Jessica: Okay.
Terry: You have to work with it for a while to get it, but it's very interesting work.
Jessica: That would be fun. I would imagine students would enjoy doing that and hearing where the complementary negative space is to fill in those pitches and...
Terry: And one way that I like to do it is - let's say the person whose singing the melody is stepping it forward. (singing) And they have a partner in ballroom position holding shoulders and so the other person is the complement and they're stepping backwards so (singing). So that's the kind of thing you get into with movement. It's so cool!
Jessica: Fun! Yeah. Oh that's great. And can you also share with us about canons?
Terry: I love canons! I mean, I think canons are rich and delightful and educational and challenging and stimulating and amazing. And I'm not just talking about singing rounds which I also do. The canon in the Dalcroze class has a very specific purpose, form, and meaning. For example, it can be interrupted or continuous. Like I can play on the piano (singing) and you have to echo (singing). Or I can just play a whole melody and you have to follow me a measure later either by singing or stepping or by clapping or by using your brain and thinking it. So the classic form is where you follow the piano improvisation one measure later.
Jessica: We did that in your session. I remember that. We moved.
Terry: While performing Dalcroze's large conducting beats and I'm pretty sure I asked your class to do that.
Jessica: You did. Yeah.
Terry: Yeah so using very full, arm length conducting beats so that you can get the architecture of the meter. I'm so glad you got to experience that.
Jessica: Yeah. I enjoyed it a lot. It really made your brain work! And sometimes I could feel my feet not doing what it was that I had heard and then I'd have to get back on and then I get better at it the more we did it.
Terry: Right. And so when I taught at the Cleveland School of Music, everyone there has to take two years of eurythmics. Every class had a canon. Every class, three times a week, all year round for two years. So everyone had this sort of challenging exercise which also was integrated. The more you do it, the more it integrates all the parts of your musical self. And another way, like in the Dalcroze school, she would have us sing a melody and then step the same melody one measure after myself singing it.
Jessica: So you're doing a canon with yourself?
Terry: Yes. Or with your right and left hand.
Jessica: Oh wow.
Terry: Yeah. And actually sometimes she asked us to do three parts. There are lots of parts of the body that can be independent. Sing, step, and clap.
Jessica: That's. Wow. So speaking of the experience that I had with you at the AOSA Conference in Cincinnati - you did a workshop called Dalcroze Eurythmics with Russian Overtones and that was where I met you and was very excited to experience it. Can you kind of walk us through what an experience, or maybe using that workshop as an example, what an experience with Dalcroze would look and feel like?
Terry: Okay now remember those people in that class were adult music teachers so I was teaching to them: the adult musicians, but I was also teaching to them as music teachers wanting them to have such a great experience that they would want to figure out how to bring it back to their students so some of the things I did with you adults, I wouldn't do with children. It was too advanced.
So the first thing we did what's called follows. We learned two Russian proverbs by speaking the text and stepping each rhythm all supported by my piano playing so I could push the class slower or faster, thereby, you are following the piano. Then I asked you to step the one proverb that I wasn't playing. So now you have a situation. You soon discover that one rhythm is crusic and the other rhythm is anacrusic. So in this little exercise, the music taught you to be more independent than just "following the piano" and also it is very evident now that I have to know where the downbeat is. If I'm going to go against what I hear on the piano and it's crusic, then I have to know to start a little bit before the downbeat.
35m 52s
Terry's Bio
Terry Boyarsky received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Experimental Psychology at Reed College in Portland, Oregon and her Bachelor of Arts degree in Eurythmics at the Cleveland Institute of Music in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her Masters degree in Ethnomusicology from Kent State University in Ohio. Terry has also completed two levels of Orff training. She was a faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Music for eleven years. She has presented numerous workshops about the Dalcroze approach at National Conferences throughout the United States, as well as many MTA and Orff chapters around the country and has been artist-in-residence for the Ohio Arts council for such organizations as Kennedy Heights Art Center, Hershey Montessori School, Southern Ohio Museum, Creative Aging Ohio, and Hocking County Children's Chorus. Terry is one of a select 16 Ohio artists to receive the Kennedy Center training in Arts Integration.Terry had written articles about the Dalcroze approach for Teaching Artist Journal, Seminars in Neurology, The Orff Echo, the Dalcroze journal and a chapter for "Drama in the Classroom." She has been guest faculty at many institutions, including University of Hawaii, Oberlin Conservatory, Bard College-Conservatory, Kennesaw State University in Georgia, Kasetsat University in Bangkok, Thailand, and Los Hippocampitos in Caracas, Venezuela. Terry teaches a course in Modern Language and Music Departments at Case Western Reserve University called "Russian Song."
You can find more information on Terry's Website: terryboyarsky.blog
In this podcast episode, she shares about her musical experiences, about the Dalcroze approach and details of a Dalcroze session that she has led with educators.
Notes from the Episode
Mixed Meter Pieces:
Bulgarian Dance (Meter of 11/16 = 2+2+3+2+2)
Isle of the Dead by Rachmaninoff (Meter of 5/4)
Chichester Psalms by Bernstein (Meter of 7 = 2+2+3)
Seven Days by Sting (Meter of 5/4)
Canon:
Volga Boatmen (in 2/4)
Composer:
John Hodian - created a wonderful group called "The Naghash Ensemble of Armenia." Click here for their trailer.
Websites:
Dalcroze Society of America
Russian Duo
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE EPISODE (Part I)
Jessica: Terry, thank you so much for talking with us.
Terry: I'm very excited to do this.
Jessica: Can you share what your experience with music growing up as a child and a young adult was like?
Terry: Well, my father played clarinet in the Vermont symphony before he became a surgeon. And he loved music. And he used to take me to my piano lessons on Sunday mornings at 7:00. And we would listen to WXQ on the way, which was the classical music station in New York. And he would drop me off, go to his research lab, and forget about me. So I'd have my piano lesson and then I'd be sitting through other piano lessons until he finally remembered to pick me up. And because he loved music so much we would go to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City and he would buy the piano reduction score and I would try and play it. And sing all those arias. I think that was a start for my sight reading abilities because it was way too advanced for me.
And then another deep influence - we spent two summers on an island in Maine where my father was part of a collective of international research scientists who didn't necessarily speak the same languages. So what do you do if you're with a group of people and you don't speak the same language? You sing and dance together! So that's what we did. We did all these amazing folk dances. I can still remember them.
And then there was my mother who had three active young children and was very inventive. So occasionally she would put on the record player and give us pots and pans so we could march around the house with our own rhythm band. She claims that she started me on Dalcroze eurythmics. She was very determined to educate us culturally and so of course, you're supposed to give your kids piano lessons. So she did notice that I was more interested in my brother's piano lessons than he was. So she took the hint.
And she taught me to read music at age four even though she couldn't read music, but then she found good teachers for me. you know, the piano was my main instrument, but I loved the oboe and I became very serious about it and I played throughout college. I was always much more interested in making music with other people. I, I didn't like playing alone. And so there was this succession of choruses and chamber music and orchestras. I played glockenspiel in the marching band and of course, I was the collaborative pianist for instrumentalists, vocalists. Just whatever, whoever I could find to play with me.
Jessica: And how did you learn about the Dalcroze approach?
Terry: Well, I went to Reed College where at that time it was one of the only colleges requiring a thesis to graduate. And for my thesis I studied music preference in preschool children. And then after college my first job was teaching kindergarten. And there was a piano in the classroom so I tried many different things with the children thinking there must be a better way to do this. So as usual I did research. I went to my local library and found a book. I think it was Heather Gell's Music, Movement and the Young Child. And I began to try every idea, game and exercise in that book. And later when I moved to Minnesota, I found a real Dalcroze teacher who had a class for adults and I studied with her. And then when I was considering moving to Cleveland, I just discovered that there was a degree program at the Cleveland Institute of Music. So that's where I found myself. And after I graduated there, I also attended the Dalcroze School of Music of New York City for a very intense summer.
Jessica: And was that all summer long or was it just a few weeks of the summer?
Terry: I think it was eight weeks and since I was already trained, the afternoon class was with Hilda Schuster, but she said I could also attend the morning sessions for beginners with the other woman Hilda Geroff so I did like twice as much. You know, like two programs at the same time.
Jessica: That's a lot of learning!
Terry: Yeah, it was great.
Jessica: For anyone who may not be familiar with Dalcroze, can you share who Emile Jacques Dalcroze was and how and why he developed this approach.
Terry: Okay. Emile Jacques-Dalcroze, which was sort of a made up name, lived from 1865-1950. He was a professor of harmony at the Geneva Conservatory and he was absorbed in questions about how man can fulfill his individual potential. And live a balanced life. So music for him was the best way to reconcile mind, body, spirit, and emotion. I'm going to read a quote from his book. He wrote:
"For it is in music that tones, timbres, and rhythms, nuances, pauses, accents, tempi and all the physical and dynamic phenomenon of the world of sound find themselves brought into conjunction. Arranged, superimposed, measured and shaped by the power of creative thought" - Kodaly
So while he was teaching, he noticed that although his students were able to complete written harmony and theory assignments, they couldn't hear or appreciate or perform them. To him, their deficiency pointed to a common denominator: lack of rhythm which meant lack of relationship between the ear, emotions, and body. For the rest of his life, even after he was excused from the conservatory for having his students move around the classroom barefoot, he experimented with how to teach musicality. He composed, created events and spectacles, and wrote extensively about his experience. Gradually his methods were arranged into three inter-related parts:
1 - eurythmics (meaning good rhythm) uses movement to study movement
2 - solfege is the study of pitch relationships and especially whole step and half steps
3 - And improvisation which is the synthesis of good rhythm and tonal relationships
His work had an enormous impact on musicians, composers, dancers, choreographers, actors. And left a legacy of ideas and practical examples. And for his whole life he was experimenting. He never codified his system. He just kept moving forward and trying new things. So today Dalcroze teachers are trained in movement, harmony, solfege, piano improvisation and pedagogy.
When I studied at the Dalcroze school in New York, every day we had three classes. One in each: eurythmics, solfege, and improvisation. And as I said, I did the morning session course and the afternoons, which was a different course. And it was so incredible. All of the materials from, let's say the eurythmics session was first. And let's say a song would be introduced. So that song or material would then be used in the solfege class and then the third class - improvisation - would use the same material. But it was never boring because the same simple melody was explored in movement, turned around into lots of different incarnations of solfege, and then played around with in improvisation class.
Jessica: You were able to take that one melody and use it in multiple ways and see it develop throughout the day.
Terry: Yeah - it was like a seed and then it would germinate and you never knew which way it was going to go. Especially because the teachers were so full of surprises. And so creative. And there improvisations on the piano were gorgeous.
Jessica: I know you have several articles on your website about the eurythmics, and solfege and improvisation. And I'll link that on my website as well so that people who are interested and want to know more about it can see - um - what that might look like.
Terry: That, that would be great. There's some more theoretical articles and there's some practical articles. And I'll put a quick plug in for the article on quick reaction exercises which was published in the Orff Echo.
Jessica: Oh great! That would be wonderful. Now that we know a little bit about Dalcroze himself, what would a Dalcroze-inspired teacher do in his or her classroom when leading students to learn using movement and music, compared to what other traditional approaches might look like?
Terry: Well, you know, it's important to understand that for every musical gesture, there's a corresponding movement. And for every movement, there's a corresponding sound. We're searching for musicality in each aural movement and each physical movement. So when I invite a class to respond by moving to something they hear, I'm also looking at the quality of their movement and their attention. For example, if I'm working on steady beat, which is always something you work on...
Jessica: Yes.
Terry: ...the quality of movement to a march would be quite different from moving to a bourree or an andante. Or a gigue. I often remind students and including adult students - you might have heard me say it at Orff workshop at the conference - that when I'm asking them to match the music by stepping, it doesn't mean to use the floor as a drum. First of all, it's hard on the body. Second of all, we have drums and they are for other reasons. Third of all, just being metronomically accurate is not our musical aim. As music moves forward in time, we want to indicate this by moving forward through space. Our contact with the ground is just the starting point. So Dalcroze asked students to remove their shoes so that they could be more sensitive and responsive and he compared it to playing the piano with gloves on. I like to remember tha tmusic is more than just beats and notes. For example, phrasing is so important. Inflection, stress. The structure of a musical composition allows all the details to fall into place and as an ethnomusicologist and performing classical pianist, I'm always searching for those tiny distinctions that make a performance stylistically accurate and convincing.
Jessica: Dalcroze himself was a pianist and I know that he found the piano to be a great tool for flexibility in improvising and especially when trying to have two separate melodies going at the same time. The piano was a great tool. And for some teachers this might be a challenge for them because they're not strong pianists or they don't play at all. So what are some other options available for teachers to improvise and help lead students during a lesson?
Terry: That is a great question. And back to Dalcroze. He was a phenomenal pianist and improviser and composer. So he wrote a lot of lieder and he wrote lots of lieder for Dalcroze lessons. Characteristic pieces. And again, we're back to style. So I mean, I just can not even begin to compare myself to Dalcroze in terms of that kind of musicality and improvisation. But now the opposite world, at times when I was in Venezuela teaching, I had no piano and just a drum. And of course my voice. So I thought, you know, there are all these contrasting elements to play with - there's high/low, loud/soft, staccato/legato, slow/fast, crescendo/decrescendo. Many musical exercises can be created intelligently with these musical concepts. So if you want two voices, make two lines. Or use two different body parts. Divide the class into two different groups. Or use different parts of the room like north and south. Or use different body facings. So I always ask students to help me also. To maybe half the class can sing and the other half can sing. Then we exchange. Or half the class can provide a body percussion crescendo and the other half is showing it in movement. All kinds of clever ways to get everyone involved in the issue at hand. Musical rhythmic issue at hand.
Jessica: Piano is a wonderful tool, but there are other ways.
Terry: Yeah, I mean I do love my piano. For many years teaching 3-7 year olds, I would get laryngitis once a year. And because I had such a good relationship with the kids and the kids had such good listening skills, I would say to them 'I can't talk to you today. My piano is the one who's going to talk to you.' And then I would proceed to teach the class with absolutely no verbal instruction - just gesture and music. And it was a great game. They loved it because they understood what the piano was telling them to do.
Jessica: What a neat thing! It really is true. I tend to think we talk too much as teachers anyway. So...what a great thing...
Terry: It's hard!
Jessica: Yes it is! To use the music. Is there a sequential order to the musical concepts taught? And what are some of the basic rhythmic elements that are explored through Dalcroze?
Terry: Yeah, this is always a really interesting question. So we, as Dalcroze advocates or Dalcrozian, we don't have a curriculum as such. It depends on who is in my class. What their experience is. I have three year olds or middle schoolers or I've taught lots of adults Dalcroze. I've taught at the Conservatory. It... I, I am really interested in training the capacity to listen. Whatever level, whatever age, whatever your experience. It's interesting. Bob Abramson, this great, great Dalcroze teacher from Juillard, has a bunch of books and one of his books is called Rhythm Games for Perception and Cognition. It always struck me. And if you look at the book, it's very cut and dry. Do this... blah, blah, blah. But perception and cognition is what he's looking. And I, personally, want to build kinesthetic awareness, which includes the other children around me. I want to create an attention that's receptive and I want to invite a relaxed obedient expressive body. So yeah, there's sequence and certain things you have to start at the beginning, but the classes are so organic. You might just say that you hop on the Dalcroze merry-go-round and start swirling in the mix of music and forming movement. Or you might say - I think a better analogy is - it's a spiral. And each time you revisit a concept or experience, it goes deeper.
Jessica: So it really does depend on who's in your classroom and what they need or what they're also giving back in that room.
Terry: Right. In that moment. So when I'm improvising, I'm watching every student. It's a very difficult way in a way. So I have an eye on myself, on my lesson plan, on my sequence, but then I have to see - how are they taking it? How are they responding to it? And I have to always be adjusting. So - uh - I have this question asked about assessment. So I would like to say that Dalcroze teachers assess at every moment and adjust at every moment depending on what we see.
Jessica: Because you're, you're constantly feeding off of one another.
Terry: Yes.
Jessica: And you're taking what the students are giving and them responding to them.
Terry: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: There are a lot of different rhythmic elements that are explored. Through movement. What are some of the more advanced rhythmic elements that are explored?
Terry: You've got me in my passion!
Jessica: Yes? Oh good!
Terry: I love teaching unequal beats, mixed meter, and unusual phrase lengths. And like the kinds of meter you find in Bulgarian Dance like 11/16, 2+2+3+2+2. These are - it's so quick that the Bulgarians call those beats: longs and shorts.
Jessica: Okay.
Terry: So like: (series of longs and shorts). That's eleven.
Jessica: Okay.
Terry: And the footwork is really quick.
Jessica: That would be fun.
Terry: And if you look at Hungarian folk songs and dances, there are a lot of three measure phrases. I've done entire workshops on unequal beats including Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead which is in 5/4 and Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms with is 2 + 2 + 3. And Sting! Sting loves unequal beats. Just take a listen to Seven Days in 5/4.
Jessica: Okay. I love pieces in 5/4. I know the Dave Brubeck Take Five piece, kind of that classic jazz. And there's one that I came across a couple weeks ago that I've been notating because I can't find the score for it anywhere, but I want to do a mixture and kind of a different composition piece with it with my students and it's by a band called Skye. It's called Dance of the Little Fairies and it's also in 5/4. And it has this really beautiful, simple melody. And I'm hoping to have my recorder students play the melody, the barred students play the bass part, and then create a drum pattern underneath it to form kind of a variation on that piece. But that's kind of another one if you haven't heard of that one. It's just kind of a neat little melody. And there's also a version, and I don't know how authentic the dance is, but there's a group of men performing with what look like swords and they do this sword dance in lines with the piece, but it's separate than the one that the band performs. So it's just a neat piece. So yeah, unequal beats and mixed meter would be a lot of fun to explore for advanced rhythmic elements. Are there other ones that you enjoy?
Terry: I love teaching syncopation. And we Dalcrozians define syncopation as avoidance of the beat. I find it's very easily misunderstood, even when I sing in my chorus with very, very good choir director. It's so clear when you express it in movement. Syncopation is, more theoretically you might say, a juxtaposition between the known and the unknown. But when you actually work it out, it's a relationship between weight and balance. Or energy and direction. And I like cross-rhythms. They're great fun to explore. And another device that Sting is really skilled at, he's just incredible! He'll do cross rhythms in unequal beats and it's so beautiful. So, you know, all rhythmic issues are about time, space, and energy and when you explore them in the laboratory of the Dalcroze class, always connecting movement with sound, then these things become deeply imbedded in the essential musical creature that I want to be or am, but is waiting to be expressed.
And, let's see other things. I like playing with different modes. Dalcroze Eurythmics uses fixed 'do' so middle C is always 'do.' So at the Dalcroze School of Music with Hilda Schuster, we studied all the keys by singing from 'do' to 'do'' or from C to C'. And just changing the accidentals as you go up and down. Let me sing you an example. (singing up and down the scale). We know we're in 'do' major. Or if we change an accidental, we can go (singing up and down scale). Which brings us to the key of 'so' because that accidental is F# - G. Or we could go (singing up and down scale). And the key is 'Ab.' For example. And we had to do it lickety-split, up and down. So it does sound like the church modes, but the way of thinking about it is quite different. And also when you do Dalcroze solfege, there's always got to be a rhythmic element to it. You don't read it - oh that's a 'do' - oh that's a 'mi' - that's a 're' - that's a 'mi.' It has to be some kind of rhythmic structure to keep your brain working.
So when I was in New York I rode my bicycle across New York City to get to class. While I was pedaling I would do my solfege exercises so I could stay in rhythm.
Jessica: Oh. Yeah.
Terry: Really changed my brain!
Jessica: Did you pedal faster if you sang it faster then?
Terry: No I mean I tried to be steady but yeah, there were all kinds of rhythmic issues and solfege issues you can try out by pedaling or walking.
Jessica: I know in high school my choir director had us learn in fixed do. It was in Michigan and so I had already done moveable do before then and then all through high school used Fixed Do. And then in college went back to moveable do and so my brain got used to hearing it multiple ways, but I actually found the fixed do really helpful. Although I will say that it was a little different than Dalcroze because if we were in the key of G, then we were in the key of 'sol.' And we would sing from 'sol' to 'sol.' Is that the same thing as the solfege for Dalcroze or is that a different type of fixed do then?
Terry: Well, middle C 'do' was, I don't even know how to describe it. We would go to class and before we would say anything, she would say, "Sing Do." and the other thing is that any time there was a car horn or any kind of screech, she would ask us, "What pitch is that?" So she really felt like you could teach perfect pitch that way and yeah, I got closer and closer.
Jessica: I was going to say, after doing it so much, I would think you'd get if not very relative pitch.
Terry: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. And then what about, cause we're talking about modes and how you always do something with a rhythmic element in it, what about complementary rhythms? How does that work?
Terry: Well, in Dalcroze, complementary rhythms is very, very specific. It's not a rhythm that complements another rhythm like aesthetically. I like to think of it in terms of positive and negative space. You have a melody and wherever there is no attack, there is space. You can fill it in with a specific note value. So let's see - you've got - let's see. (sings Viva la Musica) So your steady beat is this. So that inbetween you have the attacks of the note, you've got spaces for eighth notes. (sings Viva la Musica with clapping) If you clapped both the melody and you clapped the complementary rhythm in eighth notes, this is what you would get: (clapping). I just did that phrase.
Jessica: Okay. Then it's all eighth notes then.
Terry: Yeah. So you're, or you can do it, you can get more complicated. You can do sixteenth notes or half note or whatever the music is going for or whatever your exercise calls for. Let's say you are expressing the complementary rhythm in pitches so the first person or the first group goes "Vi-va-vi-va-la-mu-si-ca" and the second group would go (pattern is sung and clapped).
Jessica: Okay - filling in.
Terry: The exact positive and negative.
Jessica: Okay.
Terry: You have to work with it for a while to get it, but it's very interesting work.
Jessica: That would be fun. I would imagine students would enjoy doing that and hearing where the complementary negative space is to fill in those pitches and...
Terry: And one way that I like to do it is - let's say the person whose singing the melody is stepping it forward. (singing) And they have a partner in ballroom position holding shoulders and so the other person is the complement and they're stepping backwards so (singing). So that's the kind of thing you get into with movement. It's so cool!
Jessica: Fun! Yeah. Oh that's great. And can you also share with us about canons?
Terry: I love canons! I mean, I think canons are rich and delightful and educational and challenging and stimulating and amazing. And I'm not just talking about singing rounds which I also do. The canon in the Dalcroze class has a very specific purpose, form, and meaning. For example, it can be interrupted or continuous. Like I can play on the piano (singing) and you have to echo (singing). Or I can just play a whole melody and you have to follow me a measure later either by singing or stepping or by clapping or by using your brain and thinking it. So the classic form is where you follow the piano improvisation one measure later.
Jessica: We did that in your session. I remember that. We moved.
Terry: While performing Dalcroze's large conducting beats and I'm pretty sure I asked your class to do that.
Jessica: You did. Yeah.
Terry: Yeah so using very full, arm length conducting beats so that you can get the architecture of the meter. I'm so glad you got to experience that.
Jessica: Yeah. I enjoyed it a lot. It really made your brain work! And sometimes I could feel my feet not doing what it was that I had heard and then I'd have to get back on and then I get better at it the more we did it.
Terry: Right. And so when I taught at the Cleveland School of Music, everyone there has to take two years of eurythmics. Every class had a canon. Every class, three times a week, all year round for two years. So everyone had this sort of challenging exercise which also was integrated. The more you do it, the more it integrates all the parts of your musical self. And another way, like in the Dalcroze school, she would have us sing a melody and then step the same melody one measure after myself singing it.
Jessica: So you're doing a canon with yourself?
Terry: Yes. Or with your right and left hand.
Jessica: Oh wow.
Terry: Yeah. And actually sometimes she asked us to do three parts. There are lots of parts of the body that can be independent. Sing, step, and clap.
Jessica: That's. Wow. So speaking of the experience that I had with you at the AOSA Conference in Cincinnati - you did a workshop called Dalcroze Eurythmics with Russian Overtones and that was where I met you and was very excited to experience it. Can you kind of walk us through what an experience, or maybe using that workshop as an example, what an experience with Dalcroze would look and feel like?
Terry: Okay now remember those people in that class were adult music teachers so I was teaching to them: the adult musicians, but I was also teaching to them as music teachers wanting them to have such a great experience that they would want to figure out how to bring it back to their students so some of the things I did with you adults, I wouldn't do with children. It was too advanced.
So the first thing we did what's called follows. We learned two Russian proverbs by speaking the text and stepping each rhythm all supported by my piano playing so I could push the class slower or faster, thereby, you are following the piano. Then I asked you to step the one proverb that I wasn't playing. So now you have a situation. You soon discover that one rhythm is crusic and the other rhythm is anacrusic. So in this little exercise, the music taught you to be more independent than just "following the piano" and also it is very evident now that I have to know where the downbeat is. If I'm going to go against what I hear on the piano and it's crusic, then I have to know to start a little bit before the downbeat.
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