Evaluation Of The Dalcroze Rhythmic Approach In First Steps

Of Music Education  
Pablo Puentes1 and Pere Godall1, 2
1
Department of Music, Plastic and Dance Expression. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Edifici G6
08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès), Barcelona, Spain.
2
Department of Music, Plastic and Dance Expression. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Edifici G6
08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès), Barcelona, Spain.

Final research project,

MA in Musicology, Musical Education
and Ancient Music Performance,
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
ABSTRACT
Here we have performed an exploratory work to determine
the effectiveness of Dalcroze rhythmic approach during the
first steps of music education. We collected data in terms
of audition accurateness, performance and comprehension
of music. Our results highlight the importance of an
introductory period (from around 4 to 7 years) in which all
the musical concepts are worked in an instinctive way, as
we do with our mother language, before starting a formal
music education typically gathered in the laws of each
country (Loras, 2008).
A participant observation methodology was
carried out for this research. During the three sessions
designed, we worked with two different groups of students
between 7 and 8 years old in their respective classes
applying the same concepts with two different
perspectives, one in each respective group. On one hand
we had an approach based on the traditional music
education method; on the other hand we implemented a
Dalcroze approach focused on the sound and the
movement.
The aim of this study is to analyze and quantify
the results obtained within each group to decipher whether
the learning process from the sound to the symbol in a
dalcrozian perspective improves the results in audition,
performance accuracy and musical understanding.
Keywords: Dalcroze, Embodiment, Music
Education, Eurhythmics, Language And Music.
1. Introduction.
th th
During the 19 and 20 centuries, music education
programs have been mainly focused on teaching
performance, composition and music theory (Loras, 2008).
During this period, some voices alerted about the risk of an
over-theoretical vision of music education. Émile Jaques-
Dalcroze (1865-1990) was one of these pedagogues, who
realized that his students were not able to execute rhythms
and intervals, albeit they did know them theoretically
(Dalcroze, 1905). Shin’ichi Suzuki (1898–1998) and Edgar
Willems (1890–1978) are the other main figures that also
criticized the musical system and defended that “…In
learning his mother tongue, the child begins to read only
after he is able to speak” (Suzuki, 1995, p. 6).
2. The Dalcroze Perspective.
Dalcroze can be considered a representative of the New
School movement in music education. He created
Eurhythmics, a system founded in three core ideas:
Rhythmic, Solfeggio and Improvisation.
What is novel in his method is that music students
must experience the sensation of every musical parameter
before learning how to represent it symbolically, and try to
experience it is using the highest possible embodiment. As
Dalcroze explains (1921, p.4): “ Not only, then, should the
ear and voice of the child receive adequate training, but, in
addition, every part of his body which contributes to
rhythmic movement…”
The revolution here comes from adapting the musical
learning in a similar and natural fashion as people learn
their language: by listening, imitating, memorizing,
creating and finally reading and writing. The pedagogy is a
reaction against a traditional model: “A predominance of
the intellect over the nervous functioning.” (Dalcroze,
1921).
2.1 The Importance Of Movement
Movement is the equivalent in dance to sound in music; to
stand then, is the musical rest.
Music is sound articulated in time. Every sound has a
beginning and a final, the same as a movement. Both are
therefore related through the concepts of time, space and
energy: the arc movement of a violinist, the breathing of a
trumpeter or the attack of a note that a pianist makes in a
phrase… all these examples contain calculations in terms
of time, space and energy.
The Dalcroze perspective proposes to learn all the
musical concepts through movement because “the best
musical instrument is the whole human body which is more
capable than other of interpreting the sounds in all their
grades” (Dalcroze, 1921).
2.2 Process: From Instinctive To Intellectual
“… The nature has given to humans this extraordinary
capacity of imitation, it has wanted that men learn to speak
before knowing the grammar, learn to think before
knowing the logic; learn to sing before knowing the music;
in conclusion, we learn everything before even suspect that
there are rules to learn it” ” (Heymsi de Gainza, 2000).
Dalcroze and Suzuki complained about the precocity of
reading music in musical education. Instead, they proposed
a natural process properly resumed in Elisabeth Vandespar,
Manual Jaques-Dalcroze (Fig. 1)
THINKING PROCESS
Transmission through
3. Methodological Frame
We carried out an observational participative interaction
with these two classes where the researcher acted as
teacher at the same time. The motivation of this choice
relies on the knowledge the teacher had about the
functioning of both groups and the differences in the music
programs.
Following the line of Sandín (2003) and Elliott
(1991) our finality was to improve the educational practice
through the action research, so instead of generating new
knowledge what this research pretends is to improve the
teaching-learning practice.
The two groups chosen for the study are
summarized in Table 1 and explained below:
i) “Escola Salesians Sant Joan Bosco”. In this music
school, students start the music program at the age of 6,
and from the beginning they attend to Music Theory
lessons based in the book “Lenguaje Musical 2,
Pentagrama ” Ed. Boileu. (Fig. 3). We defined this model
as traditional education.

SIGNALS SYMBOLS
sound writing
gesture(movement)
touch
Fig 3. Learning workflow belonging to the book used in
Physical activity Mental activity
traditional lessons: theory, tuning (solfeggio lessons), coral
Movement and Silence repertoire, rhythm, dictate and audition.
sound
ii) The second academy is “Escola de Musica Fusió”. This
Reception through music school considers the Musical Awakening Phase as a
previous stage that children must take between the ages of
SENSES SYMBOLS 4 and 7, and afterwards they jump-off to the next step, the
audition reading Music Theory. We defined this model as dalcrozian due to
observation the pedagogy used by the school in this phase, based in
sensation Dalcroze pedagogy.
The study has been modeled using 4 instruments:
i) initial test, ii) three 45 minutes lessons per group to apply
Fig 1. Communicative thinking process (Vandespar, 1990). a musical concept, which was recorded in video, iii) field
notebook, iv) questionnaire to teachers.
In the Dalcroze education children experiment a
musical sensitization before starting with solfeggio and 3.1 Hypothesis And Objectives Of The Study
formal training. In the early music
The hypothesis of this research is that “the Rhythmic
education this one “ should be entirely based on hearing,
Method created by Dalcroze applied in a initial phase of
or, at any rate, on the perception of musical phenomena”
music education improves the results in audition,
(Dalcroze, 1921). The learning process must start with the
performance and awareness of music in students”.
sound, the musical material, before any intellectual work
Therefore, the main question that we aimed to
(Fig. 2).
answer here is whether we can determine the benefits of
Musical Awakening Phase prior to a more theoretical
INSTINTIVE INTELECTUAL

Fig 2. Flow of Dalcroze learning process.

 Years in
Born in music
Students/Parameter
education
2003 2004 0 1
E.S. Sant Joan Bosco 6 2
E.M. Fusió 5 1 2 2
TOTAL 11 1 4
Table 1. Profile of students.
study of music. In addition, we established 4
secondary objectives:
i) Evaluate if the results in audition, rhythmic
precision and musical dictation can be improved working
the ear before introducing students into reading and
writing.
ii) Analyze if a process that goes from the most
instinctive to the most rational can be more effective due to
the similarity with the mother language learning process.
iii) Evaluate if the song, the movement or other
proceedings are the most effective for rhythmic learning.
iv) Observe the benefit of teaching music through
movement when we treat concepts like form, phrase,
melody or rhythm.
3.2 Indicators And Typology
The design of indicators has followed what is known as
theoretical sample (Flick, 1998). The main characteristic
within this design is that not all the indicators are defined
before applying the research. In contrast, this design is also
complemented during the process while the researcher
observes the relevant data for the study. According to Flick
(1998), when no more data generated is important for our
goals we reach what is known as theoretical saturation.
This implies gathering the largest amount of data possible
to select relevant indicators through theoretical saturation.
The typology of indicators is classified according
to the goals exposed in the methodological framework.
These indicators are compiled in three types: musical-
instinctive, logical-operational and movement related.
i) Musical-instinctive: referred to the musical
parameters, which can be transmitted without code.
Examples of this group include rhythm audition and its
discrimination; intonation of a song, or spontaneous
improvisation. Thereby we look for parameters that justify
the musical quality without taking into account the reading
and writing process.
ii) Logical-operational: those, which do take into
account the reading and writing process manifested in a
correct relation between the sound and the symbol. Some
examples of this group include dictation or the melodic and
rhythmic reading.
iii) Movement-related: we wanted to remark some
important innovations coming from Dalcroze pedagogy to
analyze if teaching music through movement can be
1
EPO: Educación Primaria Obligatoria (Obligatory
Primary Education)
Musical Knew the rhythm
Grade
awakening before before
2 2ºEPO 3ºEPO1 Yes No
4 6 0 4 2
5 2 0 5
6 5 6 2 4 7
beneficial. We focus here on indicators such as movement
quality, phrase or gesture when representing a sound.
The indicators are filled before and after the
fieldwork phase (pre-test and post-test in fig. 6). Thus, we
can obtain the progress of each group. The values vary
between 0 and 5 being a 0 none and a 5 perfect.
4. Implementation.
4.1 Pre-Test
We devoted part of the first lesson to determine the
previous knowledge of the students regarding concepts that
would be worked in the unit (Fig. 4).
PRE-TEST
1. ¿Have you seen this group of notes?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
Fig4. 1st question Pre-test
4.2 Video Analysis
Through the observation of the video taped sessions, we
completed the frame we had designed for measuring our
indicators (Table 2).
From our analysis, we can observe a better
starting point in musical-instinctive indicators in the
Dalcroze group (overall 21 points) compared to the Music
Theory group (overall 14 points), based on the pre-test
results. However, the Music Theory group had better
results in individual indicators such as intonation and
introductory reading and spontaneous improvisation.
Overall, based on the instinctive indicators we
find that there is a better level of the Dalcroze group both
in pre- and post-test, although the progression is
significantly higher in the Musical Theory group.
Secondly, based on the logical-operational indicators, the
Music Theory group shows a better starting level,
especially in melodic reading (4 points). Importantly,
although the reading and writing of this group is
significantly better, they showed a very low level in
dictate. This suggests that the codification between sound
and symbol has some problems. Thus, the Dalcroze group
shows a lower starting point and final level with slightly
decreased progression (9) compared to the Music Theory
group (10) when we introduce reading music.
The last group of indicators is the movement
related indicators. These results don’t admit comparisons
across the two groups given that the Music Theory group
was not familiarized with this kind of exercises, making it
difficult to compare the two groups. Nevertheless, our
results show that the Dalcroze group shows better rhythmic
and polyrhythmic coordination. Indeed, the Music Theory
group shows in general a lack in accentuation and phrase
understanding, which have significantly higher values in
the Dalcroze group.
Overall, we find that based on the instinctive
parameters, results are better in the Dalcroze group,
especially in the rhythm recognition in a song and
rhythmic. In contrast, the logical-operational processes are
more established in the Traditional group, especially the
melodic reading.
4.3. Field Notebook And Surveys To Music
Teachers
The most important fact reflected in the field notebook is
referred to the second lesson: [Music Theory group]
“…The student didn’t remember neither the rhythm nor the
symbol to write it but they did with the drawing we used
(cat-mouse-mouse)”, [Dalcroze] “…when I sing the song
they remember it and even they start walking through the
ways we draw walking in the space in the last session” (4
phrases). In more general terms, from our notebook we can
deduce that the song became the most important tool we
can use to teach a new rhythm due to its meaningfulness
and the easiness for our memory to remember it.
5. Conclusions
Each conclusion is directly linked to one of the goals
previously described. They are based in our four
instruments and three groups of indicators.
i) Evaluate if the results in audition, rhythmic precision
and musical dictation can be improved working the ear
before introducing students in reading and writing.
The Dalcroze students had better absolute grades
at the beginning and at the end of the research. Even
though there was a bigger progress in the Music Theory
students, the level of Dalcroze students at the end of the
process shows an outstanding accuracy in this field.
It is also remarkable the importance that the song
has in this point, achieving better reaction in memory than
games or exercises.
Therefore, we can assert that a hard work on ear
training before introducing writing symbols contributes to
improve the results in audition and rhythmic precision,
especially if we introduce the concepts with the help of a
song.
ii) Analyze if a methodology that goes from the most
instinctive to the most rational can be more effective
due to the similarity with mother language learning
process.
In verbal language we start imitating, copying,
memorizing and making up sentences around the age of 2
before we are ready to read and write comprehensively
around the age of 6 or 7.
Accordingly, when we compare both
methodologies studied here we can assert that imitation,
performance and rhythmic discrimination works better in
the Dalcroze group (4,5 and 5 points) than in the Music
theory group (3,4 and 3). Hence, it is important to open a
discussion about the suitableness of emulating the natural
language learning for music education in order to achieve
similar proficiency in both.
iii) Evaluate if the song, the movement or other
proceedings are the most effective for rhythmic
learning.
The field notebook and the video with both groups refer us
to the same point: there is not a meaningful learning in the
learning process until we introduce the song. It constitutes
a powerful tool due to its effect in the instinctive layer of
our brain and in our memory, which helps to control all the
elements in a language.
iv) Observe the benefit of teaching music through
movement when we treat concepts like form, phrase,
melody or rhythm.
The movement seems to be important in terms of
phrasing and rhythmic discrimination. Encouraging
students to do the same rhythm in different manners such
as producing a sound, stepping or using instrument
improvisation, help the students to understand the nature of
this sound more completely. There are some other
parameters such as gesture and accentuation, which seem
to be correlated with accuracy in musical performance.
Further work would be required to statistically confirm this
correlation.
5.1 Final Conclusion
The hypothesis of this paper established that “the Rhythmic
Method created by Dalcroze applied in a initial phase of
music education improves the results in audition,
performance and awareness of music in students”.
Although the available data we dispose may not
be conclusive due to the time and sample size limitations,
this research proves that aspects such as audition and
rhythmic recognition are better with a pedagogy that works
exhaustively the ear before the graph. These students didn’t
know the symbol but they did recognize better when they
listened to it than students who were guided through
traditional music learning.

Table 2. Indicators, typology and quantification. Scores vary from
0 (none) to 5 (perfect).
Looking at the results and supported by the specialist
surveys we can conclude that a Musical Awakening Phase
is convenient in a pre-operational stadium (before 7 years).
Learning music in an instinctive and sensorial way should
occur when children acquire their own mother language.
They acquire more ear abilities and an accurate
performance when they only focus on copying sounds and
they don’t loose attention reading. In this way, students are
able to be proficient in the use of musical language
elements before they transcribe and codify them, which is a
posterior step in the human language learning.
On the other hand, this study also shows specific
favorable aspects of traditional education learning systems,
such as increased melody intonation, melodic reading and
sign-symbol correspondence compared to the Dalcroze
group. We must not forget that the reading and writing
process is still a very important point in music education,
which helps to stabilize our knowledge in a symbolic
process (see Fig.1). It is also remarkable that Dalcroze
pedagogy offers very good results in rhythmic processes
but it has some shortage in intonation and other concepts
that need to be complemented.
Thus, we can conclude that a correct order in the
music contents is dramatically important to improve the
musical learning of students. Although methods such as
Dalcroze or Suzuki may have lower scores on some of the
individual results (see Table 2), our results highlight the
importance of accommodating the music learning process
to the natural language learning process. The moment in
time to introduce music reading and writing in music
education is a teacher’s decision, however, the children
must be sufficiently proficient in audition, performance and
understanding before introducing them into the reading and
writing process of the music language .
Moreover, the results of our study are in
accordance with those found by Edgar Willems in his
works, where we described how the song is the most
powerful tool we have to teach students a musical concept
(Gómez, 2010). All the games, improvisations and
exercises have the ultimate function of working a certain
musical aspect but it is the song what brings out the most
noticeable music learning.
6. Discusion And Study Limitations
The main limitation of the study was the number of
available video taped sessions, given that the whole study
was implemented in 3 sessions. In order to obtain results
with stronger statistical significance, at least 4 or 5 sessions
would be required.
The second limitation is about the design of
indicators. We finally gather the parameters in three
groups: musical instinctive, logical-operational and
movement related indicators. This distinction aims to seek
the effect of being in contact with the reading and writing
process before knowing the own sound or not.
However, the aim of this research is to be an
explorative work. Our intention was to design a
methodology to establish methods capable of quantifying
and analyzing how the sequence of contents impacts in
music education and in the learning process. In this regard,
we have provided a framework for future research works in
this field.
We have focused on Dalcroze pedagogy because
it is one of the most revolutionary that is nowadays
implemented in some music schools, where music learning
is treated as a natural process.
This research provides some insights about the
importance of introducing read music only when the
musical elements are totally acquired by the child, which
will potentially lead to a better accuracy in audition and
performance.
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