As arts education strains under the pressure of cuts, the Kod\u00e1ly method for teaching music has never seemed more important, suggests Helen Wallace <\/p>
\u00a0Composer Zolt\u00e1n Kod\u00e1ly (1882-1967) was also an ethnomusicologist, pedagogue and cultural visionary. The ethnic field recordings he made as a young man fed his own composing and the resurrection of a distinctive Hungarian repertoire. Far from being narrowly nationalistic, however, he was a cosmopolitan pragmatist. <\/span><\/p>\n When something worked, he embraced it. He was impressed by John Curwen\u2019s system of hand signs for relative tonic sol-fa<\/a><\/strong>, used by non-music-reading massed choirs in 19th and early 20th century Britain. In Paris, he admired both the rigorous teaching of solf\u00e8ge<\/i> (developed in the 19th century by Emile-Joseph Ch\u00eav\u00e9, Pierre Galin and Aim\u00e9 Paris) and its equivalent rhythmic language.<\/span><\/p>\n Inspired by his belief that musical literacy was the birthright of every child, he returned to Hungary after the Second World War and surrounded himself with experienced teachers (including the gifted early years specialist, Katalin Forrai) with whom he began organising material pedagogically.<\/span><\/p>\n It was very much a joint enterprise, and while Kod\u00e1ly lectured and published exercises and songs, he was careful never to \u2018fix\u2019 a method. His principles, though, were clear: he wished to offer a unified, singing-based curriculum to every child, using high-quality music (be it folksong or art music) learnt initially through sol-fa and a gradual unpacking of the musical elements in logical steps. At its heart was the voice, the child\u2019s own instrument: anything learned through the body is learned profoundly.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Nikhil Dally, founder of Kod\u00e1ly-based Stepping Notes<\/i> classes in Surrey, amplifies the theme: \u2018I came to Kod\u00e1ly having spent years teaching Javanese gamelan through singing. It\u2019s a measure of the slight dysfunction of western society that we have become so obsessed with teaching instruments from notation. Around 90 per cent of other cultures learn music through singing: it\u2019s fundamental.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n For pre-school children, simple, active game songs are learnt by imitation, with a focus on careful listening and individual singing. They begin with the minor third \u2018soh-mi\u2019, and gradually build up more pitches. Sol-fa is learned with hand signs which provide a physical link with the sound, and can be easily \u2018read\u2019 when learning new material. Sol-fa not only expresses relative pitch but the tonal function of each note in a scale<\/a><\/strong> or chord, dispensing with the need to focus on different musical keys<\/a><\/strong>. Children move from pentatonic<\/a><\/strong> to diatonic to modal scales, and experience pulse and rhythm through the body, gradually learning to read stick notation and, much later, on to stave notation.<\/span><\/p>\nWhat is the Kod\u00e1ly method?<\/h2>\n
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