The difference between an artist and a politician ... is that an artist, to be true to himself, has to have the courage to be totally uncompromising; and the politician, to be true to himself, has to have the art of compromising at the tip of his fingers; otherwise, he’s not a politician. And therefore, to be an artist in a political society is to go against the mainstream.
- Daniel Barenboim, in Parallels and Paradoxes
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Process and Product
Chapter 2: Listening and Singing
Chapter 3: Body Movement
Chapter 4: Imagination, and Putting It All Together
Chapter 5: Some Songs Which Exemplify the Principles Discussed So Far
Chapter 6: Pulse
Chapter 7: Rhythm
Chapter 8: Metre
Chapter 9: Phrasing
Chapter 10: Pitch, Melody and Scale
Chapter 11: Harmony
Chapter 12: Lesson Planning
Chapter 13: Curriculum Planning
Appendix: Song Sources
Appendix: Sources of Material and Training
What is Stepping Notes?
Stepping Notes is a music curriculum for children aged 2 to 9, developed by
What is music teaching?
What exactly do we mean by “teaching music”? It is important that we address this question before all else, for unless we are clear about our answer to it, we can be led up any number of interesting, but nevertheless irrelevant, cul-de-sacs.
Listening
Developing the ear is the most important thing of all... Your pieces must not be in your ten fingers only: you must also be able to hum them... Train your imagination... Do not play a piece without hearing it very clearly in your mind.
- Zoltan Kodály [1]
I look forward to a system of musical education in which the body itself shall play the role of the intermediary between sounds and thought.
- Emile Jaques-Dalcroze [1]
This burning quality… should be there in every human being, really. In order to live a full life, you have to burn about something… Let’s not pretend that this is a nicely air-conditioned room. This is a furnace at times, and so it should be, because you’re dealing with things which are at the absolute heart of what it means to live a meaningful life.
- Stephen Hough [1]
We have talked at length, during the preceding chapters,
about the primacy of the body and the voice in music education. We saw in
Chapter One how children learn the roots of musicality not princip
And yet, children love to play instruments. So how do we
Itsy Bitsy Spider
/ Hunky Chunky Spider
Rat Tat Tat, Here
Comes the Postman
Be as Thin as a
Pin
Let’s All Go
Walking
Everybody Sing
With Me
Magic Fingers
A Ring a Ring o’
Rosies
Roly Poly Up Up Up
Down the Road
Thread Follows the
Needle
Round and Round
the Village
Two Little Dicky
Birds
Jelly on a Plate
Mice, Mice
Cats in the
Cupboard
Bananas
Way Up High
Zum Gali Gali
In the first four chapters of this book, I have discussed some of the fundamental principles of how to teach music through the combination of singing, body movement, and the imagination. And in Chapter Five, I have presented some songs which use all the above skills, together.
(a rumination, for Kodály-based music teachers, by Nikhil Dally)
I love Kodály. To put it more clearly, I love the approach, and the techniques which the approach embraces. By the approach, I mean the conviction that learning music should happen gradually, moving from the internal to the external, from the subconscious to the conscious; step by step, one small layer at a time, every new thing building upon what has been introduced and practised before; respecting the natural physical, intellectual, and emotional development rates of children; and emphasising the importance of deeply felt, deeply understood musicianship, which is the key to all music making. The techniques I particularly love – which follow, of course, from the general approach – include the use of the voice to lead the hand and the mind, which enables the continuous practical cross-relating of pulse, rhythm and pitch; and the use of rhythm syllables and relative solfa to clarify and anchor musicianship. Specifically, relative solfa is a work of genius, in my opinion the best ever means for developing the inner ear and thereby teaching sight-singing and tuning. The Kodály emphasis on learning through singing is, therefore, life-changingly insightful.
Over the
past few decades, we British Kodály-based teachers have worked hard to counter our
often stuffy reputation, becoming generally more broad-minded, both in regard
to the type of repertoire we admit into the classroom (see this article: https://steppingnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/bka-2017-issue-2-pp15-16.pdf ), and also in regard to our
attitude to the use of movement. We now extol the virtue of the latter,
recognising that singing and movement are complementary, and doing our best to
include “movement” in our classes and courses. This is undoubtedly a good thing.
However, in
our enthusiasm to embrace movement we are faced with a triple challenge. First,
we need to ensure that we know what movement actually is, so that we do
not make the very common mistake of thinking we are doing movement when we are
not. Second, we must make sure that we genuinely understand what the value
of movement is – otherwise we may miss out on some of its greatest benefits.
And third, we need to know how to incorporate movement into our practice
in a manner which is as deeply embedded and carefully thought through as our
use of singing.
Hence the triple title of this article. In sum, we need to (1) know what movement really is, so that (2) we really know what it is for, and therefore (3) we know how to use it to its maximum effectiveness.