"The Kindergarten Band" is another way in which children can join in
rhythm. It came to us from Miss Bishop and is probably the music
referred to in the description of the Pestalozzi-Froebel House. The
children are provided with drums, cymbals, tambourines, and triangles,
and keep time to music played on the piano. They can do some analysis in
choosing which instruments are most suitable to accompany different
melodies or changes from grave to gay, etc. A full account was given in
_Child Life_ for May 1917.
Several years ago, knowing nothing of M. Dalcroze, Miss Marie Salt
began an experiment, the results of which are likely to be far-spreading
and of great benefit. Desiring to help children to appreciation of good
music, Miss Salt experimented deliberately with the Froebelian "learn
through action," and her success has been remarkable. Because of its
freedom from any kind of formality, this system is perhaps better suited
to little children than the Dalcroze work, unless that is in the hands
of an exceptionally gifted teacher. M. Dalcroze himself is delightfully
sympathetic with little ones.
Miss Salt tells her own story in an appendix to Mr. Stewart Macpherson's
_Aural Culture based on Musical Appreciation._
Good music is played and the children listen and move freely in time to
it, sometimes marching or dancing in circles, sometimes quite freely
"expressing" whatever feeling the music calls forth in them. The stress
is laid on listening; if you see a picture you reproduce it, if the
music makes you think of trees or wind, thunder or goblins, you become
what you think of. It is astonishing to see how little children learn in
this way to care for music by Schumann, Mendelssohn, Grieg, Dvorák,
Brahms, Chopin, and Beethoven. The music is of course selected with
skill, and care is taken that the "expression" shall not make the
children foolishly self-conscious. Emphasis is always placed on
listening, and the children's appreciation is apparent. Such
appreciation must enrich their lives.
CHAPTER XII
FROM FANCY TO FACT
Creeps ever on from fancy to the fact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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