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Updated: May 21, 2025
M. Jaques Dalcroze has shown, through his Rhythmic Gymnastics, the extraordinary effect that rhythmic movements can have, not only on physical health, but on mental and moral poise. For highly nervous children some such work is of especial benefit, but for all children it is of great value. It should be supplemented in the ear-training class by constant practice in beating time to tunes.
If ear-training is being done at the same time, it is possible to shorten the amount of instrumental practice each day. In few cases should it be allowed to exceed half an hour up to the age of thirteen, and in many cases twenty minutes is found sufficient.
The classes will now become smaller, an advantage for the more detailed work. It is important to note that the best results in ear-training will only be obtained if the classes do not exceed twenty-five pupils in number. Voice Production and Songs. These classes can be larger without prejudice to the work, but the above classification as to age is desirable.
If the ear-training be done along the lines suggested in earlier chapters, the child will have been taught to sing easy melodies at sight, she will have approached the question of time by means of the French time names, she will have learned to beat time with the proper conductor's beat, to find notes on the piano, and, what is more important, to know these notes by sound, in relation to fixed notes.
"Here, again, ear-training will benefit the pupil who is studying with a virtuoso teacher. It is impossible to show exactly how certain touches produce certain effects. The ear, however, hears these effects, and if the pupil has the right kind of persistence he will work and work until he is able to reproduce the same effect that he has heard.
Matthay believes, and rightly, that the beginning pupil should learn essentials of note values, rhythm, time, ear-training and so on, before attempting to play anything at the piano. When first taken to the instrument, its mechanism is carefully explained to the learner, and what he must do to make a really musical tone. It is only too easy to sound notes without making music at all.
I find in pupils who come to me so much deficiency in these two subjects, that I have organized classes in ear-training and rhythm. "If pupils have naturally a poor sense of rhythm, there is no remedy equal to practising with a metronome, using this instrument of torture daily until results are evident, when, of course, there must be a judicious slowing down in its use.
This is due to the great neglect of the study of ear-training in early musical education. "To be able to recognize a chord when you see it on paper is not nearly such an acquisition as the ability to recognize the same chord when it is played.
L. Cope Cornford, writes apropos of this, and I think I cannot do better than print what he says as a corrective to my own assertions: "All you say on the importance of letting a child hear good English cleanly accented is admirable; but we think you have perhaps overlooked the importance of ear-training as such, which should begin by the time the child can utter its first attempts at speech.
If, in addition, the children have joined an ear-training class, they will, at any rate, be intelligent listeners for the rest of their lives to other people's playing. For all children, sight reading should form part, not only of every lesson, but of every day's practice.
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