II
This is briefly the essential part of the Jacques-Dalcroze school of Eurhythmics. The method falls into three main divisions: (1) ear training; (2) rhythmic gymnastics; and (3) improvisations. The ear method is nothing but the training of the pupil in an accurate sense of pitch and a grasp of tonality. However, the system of teaching rhythmic gymnastics is based upon two different methods: time and time-values. Time is expressed by movements of the arms; time-values—note durations—by movements of the feet and body. A combination of these two methods is called the plastic counterpoint, in which the actual notes played are represented by movements of the arms, while the counterpoint in crotchets, quavers or semi-quavers, is given by the feet. The crotchet as the unit of note-values is expressed by means of a step. Thus for each note in the music there is one step. Notes of shorter duration than the crotchet are also expressed by steps, only they are quicker in proportion to their frequency. ‘When the movements corresponding to the notes from the crotchet to the whole note of twelve beats have, with all their details, become a habit, the pupil need only make them mentally, contenting himself with one step forward. This step will have the exact length of the whole note, which will be mentally analyzed into its various elements. Although these elements are not individually performed by the body, their images and the innervations suggested by these images take the place of the movements.’
The first training of a pupil in the Dalcroze school consists of steps only. Simple music is played to which the pupils march. After the pupil has an elementary command of his legs the rhythmic training of his arms and body begins. At this stage the simple movements to indicate rhythms and notes are made a second nature of the pupil. This can be compared to the pupil’s learning of the alphabet. Plastic reading consists of composing more or less definite images from the elementary rhythm-units. This is done either individually or in groups. The pupil is taught to form clear mental images of the movements corresponding to the rhythm in question and then give physical expression to those images. As a child learns to compose letters and syllables to words and words to phrases, a Dalcroze pupil is taught to understand the elementary parts of the music and the rules of its composition and to recompose it into a lengthy series of body movements.
The main object of Dalcroze’s method is to express by rhythmic movements rhythms perceived by the ear. The exactness of such expression is the main aim of the school. The body must react momentarily to the time and sound-units of the music that the ear perceives. As the wind creates waves in the sea, music is meant to create motion in the human body. Percy B. Ingham writes that characteristic exercises of this group are ‘beating the same time with both arms but in canon, beating two different tempi with the arms while the feet march to one or perhaps march to yet a third time, e. g., the arms 3/4 and 4/4, the feet 5/4. There are, also, exercises in the analysis of a given time unit into various fractions simultaneously, e. g., in a 6/8 bar one arm may beat three to the bar, the other arm two, while the feet march six.’
According to Dalcroze’s plastic theory the arms should express the theme in making as many movements as there are notes, while the feet should mark the counterpoint in crotchets, quavers, triplets or semi-quavers. A compound rhythm can be expressed by the arms taking one rhythm, the feet, another. This is meant to correspond to the technical exercises of orchestral music, by training the body to react to the various tones of different instruments. The general purpose, however, is and remains the development of feeling for rhythm by teaching the physical expression of body rhythms. There is no doubt that shades of crescendos and decrescendos, fortes and pianissimos are achieved by this method, yet the question remains: how near does the Dalcroze school come to visualizing the music in all its symbolic and spiritual depths?
Music is more than rhythm; it is a subjective symbolic language of our soul and the universe. It is a mystic factor of life, human and cosmic. There is an unaccentuated language in every genial and great composition, an æsthetic image and philosophic meaning that we can grasp not by means of the intellect but mostly through the emotions, and it is in expressing this that Dalcroze’s school has failed in so far. Dalcroze has aimed to express the elemental factors of the music, and in this he has succeeded. The performances given by Mr. T. Jarecki, one of the most talented of the graduates of Hellerau, are sufficient proof of the fact that the school has its shortcomings in the above-mentioned directions. He performed a Prelude by Chopin, a composition of Rachmaninoff, one by Schubert, and several numbers of other classics in a costume that looked like a bathing suit. Powerful as he was in all his rhythmic grace, he yet failed to translate the musical language of the compositions by means of bodily plasticity. Chopin’s and Rachmaninoff’s preludes possess distinct tonal expressions and designs of something very human and emotional that lies beyond mere rhythm. Poetry is based on the laws of rhythm, yet it is not alone the rhythm that makes a poem beautiful, but the image that it creates. Thus in the art of dance it is not only the rhythm but the æsthetic episode that concerns a dancer most of all. It is the transformation of this phonetic episode into plastic forms, the visualization of the audible beauty, that lies at the bottom of every great dance. This requires certain symbols and those lie beyond the achievements of the Dalcroze graduates.