The Montessori Elementary Material / The Advanced Montessori Method

by Maria Montessori

EXERCISES IN RHYTHM

One of our most successful exercises has proved to be that originally conceived as a help in teaching children to walk, viz., "walking the line." It will be remembered that among the exercises in motor education used at the outset of our method, appeared that of walking with one foot in front of the other on a line drawn on the floor, much as do tight-rope-walking acrobats. The purpose of this exercise was to stabilize equilibrium, to teach erect carriage and to make movement freer and more certain.

Miss Maccheroni began her exercises in rhythm by accompanying this walking of the children with piano music. In fact, the sound of the piano came to be the call signal for the children to take up this exercise. The teacher starts to play and immediately the children come of their own accord, and almost without exception, to take up their positions on the line. At the very beginning the music seems to be purely a signal, at best a pleasant accompaniment to the motor exercise. There is no apparent adaptation of the child's movements to the musical rhythm. However, as the same measure is repeated for a considerable period, the rudiments of this adaptation begin to appear. One of the children begins to keep step with the rhythm of the music. Individual differences in adaptation persist for some time; but if the same musical rhythm is kept up, almost all the children finally become sensible to it. In fact, these little people begin to develop general attitudes of body, in relation to the music, which are of the greatest interest. First of all, the children change their gait according to the music: the light walk, the war-like march, the run, develop on the impulse of the rhythmic movement. It is not that the teacher "teaches" the child to change his walk according to the music: the phenomenon arises of its own accord. The child begins to interpret the rhythm by moving in harmony with it. But to obtain this result the teacher must play perfectly, carefully noting all the details of musical punctuation. The creation of musical feeling in the children depends upon the teacher's own feeling and the rigorous accuracy of her own execution.

It will be useful to give here a few details on the execution of these first rhythmic exercises. The children begin, as we have said, by learning to walk on the line. They develop a passion for walking on that line, yielding to a fascination which grown-up people cannot conceive. They seem to put their whole souls into it. This is the moment for the teacher to sit down at the piano and without saying anything to play the first melody in our series. The children smile, they look at the piano and continue to walk, becoming more and more concentrated on what they are doing. The melody acts as a persuading voice; the children begin to consider the time of the music and little by little their tiny feet begin to strike the line in step with it. Some of our three-year-olders begin to keep step as early as the first or second trial. After a very few attempts a whole class of forty children will be walking in time. We must warn against the error of playing with special emphasis on the measure; in other words, of striking more loudly than is required the note (thesis) which marks the inception of the rhythmic period. The teacher should be careful simply to bring out all the expression that the melody requires. She may be sure that the rhythmic cadence will become apparent from the tune itself. The playing of one note more loudly than the others, thus to emphasize the rhythmic accent (thesis), is to deprive the selection of all its value as melody and therefore of its power to cause the motory action corresponding to rhythm. It is necessary to play accurately and with feeling, giving an interpretation as real as possible. We get thus a "musical time" which, as every one knows, is not the "mechanical time" of the metronome. If it is certainly absurd to play a Nocturne of Chopin on the metronome, it is hardly less absurd and certainly quite as disagreeable to play a piece of dance music on that instrument. Even those people who have a great aptitude for feeling "time" and who play with special attention to exactness of measure, know that they cannot follow the metronome without positive discomfort. Children feel the rhythm of a piece of music if it is played with musical feeling; and not only do they follow the time with their footsteps, but, as the rhythmic periods vary, they adapt the whole attitude of their bodies to the melodic period, which is developed around the beats constituting the rhythm as around points of support. There is a vast difference between this exercise and that of having children march to the clapping of hands or to the time of one, two, three, etc., counted in a tone of command.

A child of ten years was dancing to the music of a Chopin waltz played with most generous concessions to the different colorations indicated in the text. She put into her movements a certain fullness of swing, to bring out the effect which a marked rallentando gives the notes. Of course this method of dancing demands on the part of the children a perfect and intimate identification of spirit with the music; but this is something which children, even when they are small, possess in a very special way, and which they develop in their long and uninterrupted walks on the line to the sounds of a tune often repeated. It is curious to see them assume a demeanor entirely in harmony with the expression of the music they are following. A little boy of three, during the playing of our first melody, held the palms of his hands turned parallel with the floor and as he walked he bent his knees slightly with each step. On passing from our first to our second tunes, he changed not only the rapidity of his footsteps, but the attitude of his whole body. Considered as something external this may be of slight importance, but considered as evidence of a mental state, the change in demeanor bears witness to a distinct artistic experience. The composer of the tune could well be proud of such a sincere response to his work, if the test of musical beauty be regarded as successful communication of feeling.

Our second tune is a rapid andante somewhat staccato. The first was slow and blending (legato). The children feel the legato, answering it with very reserved movements. The staccato lifts them from the floor. The crescendo makes them hurry and stamp their feet. The forte sometimes brings them to clap their hands, while calando restores them to the silent march, which turns, during the piano, to perfect silence. The completion of the musical period brings them to a halt and they stand there expectant until it is taken up again; or if it be the end of the whole tune, they suddenly stop.

Beppino, a little boy of three, used to keep time with the extended forefinger of his right hand. The music was a song in two parts repeated alternately, the one in legato and the other in staccato; with the legato he used a uniform regular movement; he followed the staccato with sudden spasmodic beats.

To-day forty children may be seen walking as softly as possible during a tune played pianissimo. These same children on the day when they first heard the piano kept calling to the teacher "play louder; we can't hear" and yet at that time the teacher was playing not pianissimo, but mezzo forte!

At first the children interested in the first tune are deaf to any other. The children in the St. Barnaba School in Milan got in step with the first tune. They did not notice that the teacher had changed to the second and kept their step so well that when the first tune was resumed, the teacher found them in perfect time, while on the faces of the children appeared a smile of recognition, as it were, of an old friend.