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Becoming music: Reflections on transformative experience and the development of agency through Dynamic Rehearsal
No full textDynamic Rehearsal (DR) is a way of clarifying interpretation and improving performance influenced by the ideas of Jaques-Dalcroze and developed experimentally by the author. It has been demonstrated internationally with singers and instrumentalists of all ages, beginners and elite performers who frequently describe it as a transformative experience. The underlying premise of DR and Dalcroze Eurhythmics (DE) out of which it grew is that music originates in the body and bodily movement and that musical participation of all kinds is a foundationally corporeal, personal and social event. These claims relating to the nature of music and musicmaking are supported by a wide range of philosophers, psychologists, educationalists and neuroscientists. In this paper a brief description of DR and an account of the experience of one performer are followed by the author’s reflections on the contribution of various elements of the DR process to its perceived effectiveness
Henry Purcell and the construction of identity: iconography, heraldry and the Sonnata’s of III Parts (1683)
Get PDFThe frontispiece to Purcell’s Sonnata’s of III Parts is examined as a potential source of new information about the composer’s life and personality. A discussion of the rhetorical status of frontispieces and other preliminary matter in 17th-century print culture reveals that they played a significant role in shaping the reception of a text, predisposing readers to award it considerable status. The attribution of the unsigned portrait to Robert White, the most prestigious engraver of the day, plays into this desired reading. How one saw oneself and expected to be perceived in a community or hierarchy found expression in one’s choice of dress, and Purcell’s selection of apparel is analysed as an indicator of socio-economic status. His coat of arms beneath the portrait further substantiates the gentlemanly persona projected by the sartorial image. The publication’s dedication to the king, and the image of the composer as court musician and member of the cultivated élite, combine to validate for English audiences the novel foreign genre materialized in the Sonnata’s . One hitherto unnoticed feature of Purcell’s escutcheon settles a controversial issue concerning his position in the family succession; the five-pointed star is a cadency mark, showing conclusively that he was the third son. The armorial bearings of his wife Frances are identified as those of the Petres, an aristocratic Catholic family; the conjoining of those arms with his own on the Purcell memorial in Westminster Abbey suggests that the impalement was a further strategy to demonstrate his exalted social standing
Dalcroze Eurhythmics: bridging the gap between the academic and practical through creative teaching and learning.
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Making music for mental health: how group drumming mediates recovery
No full textBackground
While music-making interventions are increasingly recognised as enhancing mental health, little is known of why music may engender such benefit. The objective of this article is to elucidate the features of a programme of group drumming known to enable mental health recovery.
Methods
Qualitative research was conducted with 39 mental health patients and carers who had demonstrated recovery following engagement with a programme of group djembe drumming in the UK. Data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews and focus group interviews designed to understand the connection between drumming and recovery and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA).
Results
Results revealed three overarching features of the drumming intervention: (1) the specific features of drumming, including drumming as a form of non-verbal communication, as a connection with life through rhythm, and as a grounding experience that both generates and liberates energy; (2) the specific features of the group, including the group as a space of connection in and through the rhythmic features of the drumming, as well as facilitating feelings of belonging, acceptance, safety and care, and new social interactions; (3) the specific features of the learning, including learning as an inclusive activity in which the concept of mistakes is dissolved and in which there is musical freedom, supported by an embodied learning process expedited by the musical facilitator.
Conclusion
The findings provide support for the conceptual notion of ‘creative practice as mutual recovery’, demonstrating that group drumming provides a creative and mutual learning space in which mental health recovery can take place
The touch of sound: Dalcroze Eurhythmics as a somatic practice
Get PDFDalcroze Eurhythmics is a rich and multifaceted, living practice that has developed a wide range of applications and pedagogical approaches during more than a century of endeavour. Most researchers have situated this work within music education, dance and theatre history and therapy of various kinds. In this article we argue that it may also be considered a somatic practice owing to the ways in which movement, space, sensation, presence, touch and improvisation are central to the method. While recognizing that not all somatic practices include touch and improvisation, we focus on these aspects to explore the notion of the haptic nature of vision and sound, as they are manifest in the Dalcroze class. Drawing on practical examples of widespread practice within the Dalcroze community as well as personal experiences, we assert that the touch-like nature of sound not only makes contact with the body, inciting physical and emotional movement, but also develops awareness of self, others and environment due to the social nature of musical participation in general and of the rhythmics class in particular
A conceptual study of spirituality in selected writings of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze
Get PDFSeveral authors have noted that one of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze’s aims was to dissolve the mind–body dualism, typical of Cartesianism. However, there has been little research on the spirit–body connection, as it appears in Jaques-Dalcroze’s writings. The purpose of this document analysis is to understand how a hermeneutic phenomenological model for spirituality in music education can inform our understanding of spirituality in selected writings by Jaques-Dalcroze. In the adapted model holism, balance, aesthetic experience, and movement in time, space, and with energy emerged as core concepts. This gives us a much richer understanding of the Dalcroze approach than has hitherto been available and adds to a growing narrative about the spiritual as it pertains to Jaques-Dalcroze and the approach he initiated