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November 2006
IAL News 2007 Conference to Take Place in Austin Major Article An Interview with Don Campbell Musica Poetica Short Articles The Learning Journey in the Accelerated Learning Cycle ReviewCelebrate Your Divinity by Orest Bedrij
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Musica Poetica
Musica Poëtica: "... coupling the words and the notes lovingly together" “In these English Ayres,
Background: What's It All About?In the world of whole-person education, Georgi Lozanov proposes that a teacher read new material to music in two specific ways: via an active and a passive concert. The approach has been developed most widely in language learning, but it is just as valid in the learning of any other subject. Teaching methodologies that adopt such an approach are known under a variety of names, including Suggestopedia, Accelerated Learning, Integrative Learning and Super Learning. When I first came across Accelerated Learning at workshops run in Sweden by Charles Schmidt and Lonny Gold, I was struck by how the first concert-reading was essentially the same as that used by Renaissance and Baroque composers, but in reverse. It is almost as though the concert were viewed through the wrong end of the telescope; I believe it will make things much simpler if people understand this connection and are able to reverse the telescope again.
Musica Humana Outside of formal Accelerated Learning, I call my own work Musica Humana. This is a whole-person approach to musical education inspired by the thinking of Early Music composers. Its goal is to show people how—in life as in music—harmony is the resolution of consonance and dissonance, how you need to hold your own voice while you interact with others in order to produce a harmonic whole. This takes place even though you are saying different things; in fact, it leads to far greater richness exactly because you are saying different things. Each of us has a number of (often conflicting) voices within us; we need to recognize such conflict in order to be able to resolve it into a harmonic whole. (This idea might be familiar to those of you who are familiar with Psychosynthesis.) When two people meet and interact, if the notes they sing, the music they make together, are only pleasant (consonant), the music of life will be experienced as pretty boring. To be interesting, there has to be unpleasantness, or dissonance. However, this can be experienced in a safe way, where each part takes into account the discomfort of the other and helps to resolve it to comfort, or “consonance.” At each period of history, there have been those who codify the current practice and teach it to others. There have also been those who ignore the “safe” tenets, established by the pedants, to create something new. This causes alarm and despondence among those who long for the established order, but the Monteverdes and the Schoenbergs and the punk-rockers simply have a wider view of what is acceptable. Sooner or later the theoreticians catch up with the practitioners, and then they teach others a new philosophy that serves until the need is felt to once again burst the bubble and create a new worldview.
Music and Rhetoric Most people you meet today probably think they have a clear idea of what music is. If you explore what the word means to them in greater depth, however, you will find numerous associated concepts, including: Mozart, Beethoven and Bach; the Beatles, Abba, House music and Hip-hop; hymn-singing, pub-singing, a choir festival, and your mother humming to herself as she irons; an orchestral concert, a street musician, a group of African men, and a symphony of sirens on the beach; or playing the piano at home and singing in the back of the bus after a school trip. Today’s scientists, musicians and listeners would say that much distinguishes speech from song. You might hear a poet comment on the music he heard as the wind caressed the strings of a harp or the music the waves make as they surge upon the beach. You may even find yourself describing a compliment as “music to my ears." And then, in the next moment, your listener will reply, “but that's not real music.”
Music, Rhetoric and the Greeks But for those who lived in ancient times, the only difference between speech and song was that in song you could measure accent and rhythm with greater exactness. In ancient Greece, which had an enormous influence on classical Western education, the concept of mousike was much broader than music is today. It encompassed everything that has to do with culture, the arts and communication. To the Greeks, Apollo was a kind of Minister of the Arts who worked through nine different departments, each of which was overseen by a Muse. For example, Thalia governed music in general, Terpsichore governed dance, Erato governed love-poems, and Polyhymnia governed sacred songs. Rhetoric was a major tenet of ancient Greek culture and education. This is the skill of communication, the art of transporting your listener from one emotional state (affect) to another, whether your purpose is political and military, like Cicero; medicinal, like the legendary Pythagoras who stopped a youth from burning down the house where his friend was entertaining his lover; or educational, like Plato (or Lozanov), who chose the style of music to fit the subject being learnt. Music is the branch of rhetoric that uses sounds, dance is the branch that uses movement, and painting is the branch that uses pictures. According to Michael Praetorius (1618, tr. DK),
Contributions from Rome The concepts of rhetoric and music expanded as power in the ancient world moved from Greece to Rome. When the Romans adopted Christianity as the state religion, Latin became the international language throughout the spiritual empire of the Church, which, of course, reached places the armies of Rome never did. The grammatical, poetical and rhetorical doctrines of Latin, for better or worse, eventually became the model for all western languages. To the Romans, musica could be divided into three concepts:
Early Views on Education, Rhetoric and Music Many people today think the ability to speak in public in a way that moves an audience is a special skill given only to a few. But in earlier times it was the duty of every educated man to become a master composer of both verse and prose and to perform eloquently while reading poetry out loud and making speeches. This was the time when rhetorical techniques such as similes, metaphors, repetition, and living descriptions were polished and their use became firmly established as the basis for life at court, within the church, and within academia. Mediaeval Western education encompassed the concept of two levels. The lower level was the crossing of the three ways, or trivium (from tres viæ, or trivial, of lower importance). Trivium referred to the Gateway to Eloquence, or the art of speaking well, and it encompassed the skills of grammar, rhetoric and logic. The upper level of Mediaeval education was the meeting of the four ways, or quadrivium. Quadrivium referred to the Gateway to Wisdom, and it encompassed the mathematical arts of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. These are the four branches of mathematics that measure pure numbers, flat space on earth, the heavens, and sounds. (In Greek, mathematiké means knowledge, or learning.) During the Renaissance, the functions and practice of music corresponded to those of poetry and rhetoric; every educated person learned the basics of spoken rhetoric before he turned to music. The teachers of the time describe in detail the connection between phrasing, emphasis, breath, and length of syllable and note. This coincided with the efforts of reformers within the Catholic Church to replace the existing muddle of sacred music—which mostly just showed how clever a composer was—with a clearer texture in which the singers in a polyphonic piece sang the same words at the same time. Palestrina's Mass for Pope Marcellus is one example of this often cited in music histories. One leading centre of experiment was the noble academy at the court of Count Bardi in Florence. Known as the Camerata, it nurtured early Baroque composers such as Caccini, Cavalieri and Vincenzo Galilei (father of the astronomer). In particular two periods of early music represent a fascinating palette of choice that repays attention. The first is the earlier Baroque period, from 1600-1700, which includes music by composers such as Dietrich Buxtehude, Matthew Locke and Jean Baptiste Lully. These composers had a much closer connection to the rhetorical tradition, so their work is much more clearly based on text thinking than that of later composers such as Mozart and Haydn. The second musical period is called rococo or gallant. This is the style used by Mozart's father, Leopold, and the sons of Sebastian Bach (notably Carl Philip Emanuel) between about 1730 and 1780. Such music features a great richness of contrasting melodies that are quite different from the Baroque style. They have a sense of “not a note too much” and a freshness that many find missing in the Classical period.
The Rhetorical Basis of Early Music Earlier musicians used phrase lengths, melody, harmony and form—all of which depended on text thinking. This practice was followed even when the composer wrote music without a text. For example, a violin sonata is essentially identical to a solo madrigal except that it has no text, and its larger range reflects the physical capabilities of the instrument rather than of the voice. An emotional experience acted as the model for natural speech; natural speech acted as the model for rhetorical speech; rhetorical speech acted as the model for singing; and rhetorical singing acted as the model for playing. The whole approach to singing, including the pronunciation of vowels and consonants, was applied both when a musician played a part that had text and when he imitated a part that didn’t. Listeners expected to understand the words that the musician “pronounced.” During the Renaissance, music was taught in three stages of complexity:
Philosophers made a distinction between pure and simple speech (oratio pura) and its ornaments (ornamenta orationis), which included figures of speech (e.g., metaphor, simile and exaggeration) as well as form, appropriateness (decorum) and elegance. The ornaments of speech have their counterparts in music—especially in the third stage of music (musica poëtica). Musicians were required to recognize the ornaments and bring out their effect in their performance. Such ornaments included:
Students began by learning a basic practice in which there were no surprises, as in the oratio pura of speech. The basics consisted of:
Students then learned a more advanced kind of composition in which the master could take artistic license. Advanced practices included:
(An example from a modern master that demonstrates all of this is Henry Mancini's music for The Pink Panther.) The most notable musical figure of speech was hypotyposis, the bringing to life of a story. It often used all of the unexpected features at once, for example, a sigh, a sudden quick note, a chromatic alteration, an uncomfortable leap, a dissonance handled irregularly. Hypotyposis typifies the work of composers such as Monteverde, Schütz and Locke.
Different Ways of Doing Things = Different National Styles As time went on, national characteristics grew up, especially in the Baroque era. The Italians dared to express the sharpest feelings in music, while the French preferred simply to flatter the ear. The Italians used elaborate passaggi to connect the main notes, while the French preferred to polish a single note. The French developed the sweetness of the flute and oboe, while the Italians concentrated all their genius on developing the art of the violin. The Germans imitated the French and the Italians by turn, keeping a clear distinction and even exaggerating the differences. The English synthesized the best of each, distilling the result into something quite their own. These differences are hard to capture in writing, but they become clear as soon as you hear them and know what you're listening for. It’s interesting to note that while the Italians did it, the Germans wrote about it. In other words, the Italians created new freedoms simply because they felt right; on the other hand, the Germans tried to systematize the practice of the Italians. So we have a modern Europe in embryo, where the Italians are busy creating, the French are busy polishing, the Germans are busy systematizing what the others do, and the English are busy making a compromise of the whole lot. Finally, it is important to recognize that the modes of expression used in earlier music are much more delicate and subtle than those of later music. Instead of a Wagnerian chorus of blacksmiths banging their anvils on the banks of the Rhine, for example, we experience a gossamer trio of Graces weaving filigree figures in a sylvan grove.
Modern-Day Performance of Early Music Since the rhetorical tradition largely died out during the 19th century, modern-day performances of early music have often been muddled and unclear. However, performers who do understand the traditions are careful to consider the basic mood of a piece; they choose phrasing that is similar to breathing (as one would do when speaking in public) and recognize rhetorical figures in the written music by exaggerating them as an actor or orator might do with prose. When playing a piece of music, the performer’s first task is to recognize the notes that constitute the basic consonant harmonies. When he comes to dissonances, he emphasizes these a little so that the following consonance will be all the sweeter. Where there are passaggi (groups of running notes, often four or eight, that link the main harmony notes), he makes them a little softer and a little shorter, so that the listener is clear about where the main notes lie. Remembering that the basic style of melody is to move step-by-step, the musician articulates leaps with a slight emphasis, so that the greater the leap, the more emphasis he places on it. He follows this hierarchical pattern with any unusual rhythms or with an occasionally-altered note—flattened or sharpened—depending on how far from the basic scale it is. He understands that all of these features were put there by the composer, who wanted to reflect some feature of the written word—whether it was an actual text written down near the notes, a text imagined by the composer, or the resonance of all the clichés floating around in his consciousness as he wrote an instrumental piece. This is similar to the maxim that things must be ten times as large as life on stage if they’re to appear life-sized when they reach the listener. It is also similar to an organist’s technique of articulating a sound with silence. In other words, a note that comes after a long pause has a great effect, even if it is no louder. To attract attention, one doesn’t need to shout; instead, one can remain silent a moment longer than anyone expects and then whisper. The musician attuned to early music will also perform with decorum, understanding what is appropriate to time, place, company and situation. As Vincenzo Galilei put it,
The question of how far to go with this depends on personal judgment, of course. Those who recognize the rhetorical basis of early music in their modern performances tend to navigate between the two extremes of reservata (the cool) and concitata (the excitable). Advocates of one extreme often find the taste of those on the other extreme questionable. Such dichotomy is part of the historical traditional. To Monteverde’s generation, around 1600, the artist had to be possessed of a genuine passion at the moment of creation, and the performer had to recreate it in the moment of performance. “Serious” musicians, however, poked fun at the comedians who took the dramatic element so far as to point upwards when they said heaven, and growl in their throats enough to frighten a child when they pronounced “hell.”
Interesting...But How Can We Use this in Accelerated Learning? In reality, what we do as Accelerated Learning teachers is actually part of this same process. Whereas the Renaissance or Baroque musician began with an existing complete text and wedded the music to it, the performer of the active concert in Accelerated Learning starts with an existing complete piece of music and weds the text to it. The more we understand a particular piece of music, the more successfully we can combine the two. The more effective we are at coupling the notes and syllables lovingly together, the more effective our presentation of spoken material will be. Renaissance musicians learned the text by heart, and so should the Accelerated Learning teacher. Using your MP3-player, sing the melody to yourself as you wash up, jog around the block, or take a bath. Try dancing to the music by yourself or with supportive, likeminded colleagues. Another fun process is to paint or draw the music; just let your pen, pencil, brush, or fingers travel over the surface of a piece of paper, a white-board, a sand tray, pavement, beach, whatever. You might notice the superficial rhythm of the melody first because the fastest elements often make themselves most strongly felt. You can place your superficial syllables as if you were to recite a crisp and incisive “And so we're off!” to the beginning of Beethoven's 5th symphony, or a gentle “just-en-joy” to the slow movement of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nacht Musik. (In practice, of course, you will let the music establish itself in the minds of your listeners before you start to contribute the text.) You may notice that there's another rhythm, deeper down, like the swell of the sea under the surface waves, or that every seventh wave is a “big one.” You may also notice the division of music into groups of regular beats, or bars. Make sure your phrases agree with these and that you leave space so the music and words can come to a pause together rather than rushing on over the break. Since it's the sounds of the words that form the major focus in an active reading, it's not critical that the meaning follow the musical phrasing here, although with a bit of practice you can get it to fit, too. Eventually you might notice an even deeper-level rhythm that indicates when major phrases or sections begin, like the monthly cycle dictated by the moon or the annual one dictated by the sun. When you feel these, make sure you present the text so that major phrases and sections coincide with the music. (This is an advanced practice that involves some pretty sophisticated juggling.) One major factor in all this is that early music composers often used a poem for their text; therefore, at its most basic, you might recognize a “strong-weak” or “weak-strong” pattern in your own material. For example:
Note that you can place a strong syllable on every strong beat in the music; these are the places where it's natural to tap your foot or clap your hands. To understand how this fits when you present prose texts, look at poetry, especially that of Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest.The older approach counts only the strong syllables in every line, and there are usually four of them. For example:
It actually makes more sense to think of four beats in every line because sometimes the fourth strong syllable is missing. However, be sure to observe the beat where it would have been:
The following lines only consist of six strong syllables, but you say them with eight beats:
One line may even have twice as many syllables as another:
Notice that in this style the rhyme may begin on the first syllable of the word instead of at the end. And why not?! Wherever you want to make a point, bring it out in your delivery. If you're working with a Latin-based language like French or Italian, you might have learnt that the poetry of your language is measured in long and short syllables, not weak and strong syllables like those in English and German. If this way of analyzing makes sense to you, use it. Place a long syllable on an accented note of music, or on a long note of music, and both will normally work well. This is the same freedom early composers took when they set texts to music. Delivering your prose as if it were mediaeval poetry gives you an organic way to couple it lovingly to music—just be sure to emphasize the strong (long) syllables and fill in with spaces to make everything fit. When trying this for the first time, you might find it helps to write it out on a big sheet—perhaps using flip-chart paper, with lots of space between the rows. You could put a large colored bubble around each strong/long syllable and a small bubble in a different color around weak/short syllables (or groups of syllables). Once you get the hang of it, a quicker and simpler method is to mark an accent above the strong/long syllables. In time you'll see and hear these groupings without needing to mark them at all. Eventually, you might begin to realize that analyzing syllables into two strengths/lengths is woefully inadequate; in fact, you may realize that you're working with at least three values and that your bubbles have become compound ones, showing one major syllable, a couple of medium strong ones, and a bevy of weak ones.
Dr. Lozanov and Early Music In his work, Dr. Lozanov uses only music from Viennese classicists like Mozart and Haydn for the active concert and high Baroque works for the passive concert. As I understand it, the essential factors that determine his criteria for the first concert reading are that:
But Lozanov wasn't able to work in all cultures or with all generations. It is also important to remember that his experiments were limited by the range of music and musical knowledge available to him in 1960s communist Bulgaria. In fact, since he developed his theories, a revolution has occurred in the world of historic performance of early music. This has led to two occurrences that Lozanov never even had a chance of hearing. The first is that a vast new repertoire of early music has become available; the second is that it is often performed in exciting ways that reflect the thinking of the people who first produced this music, rather than in the 19th century tradition that permeated the world of classical music at the time Lozanov developed his revolutionary ideas. While it may seem obvious to avoid music in which voices sing words during active and passive concerts, we should not forget that vocal music can have real value in other parts of the course—as a background to activities, to set the atmosphere when people enter and leave the room, and so on. This includes folk music and world music too, of course. I suspect a great deal of research is waiting to be done regarding which musical styles are most effective when learning the languages of Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and Polynesia. For example, the short experience I had of learning Japanese with Japanese music gave me a completely different entry into the culture than I would otherwise have had. In the end, however, my recommendation is: “This above all: to thine own self be true.” Use Dr. Lozanov's insights, which are revolutionary and empowering, because the world needs them. For further reading:
About the AuthorDavid Kettlewell is a harpist, conductor, musicologist and wholeperson educator. As a professor at Tartu University in Estonia, he proved that by using a relaxed, whole-person approach people could do what they previously thought was impossible—such as learning a language in a few weeks, overcoming dyslexia, producing an opera with people who thought they were tone deaf, enabling people who thought they couldn't paint to decorate the walls of a course-centre with frescoes, and getting former enemies to live together in harmony. He has conducted teacher-training workshops from Seattle to Nizhny-Novgorod, from Stockholm to Buenos Aires, and has twice presented at SALT conferences together with Karin Skoglund and Lonny Gold. David was also founding chairman of SOHL, the Swedish association for whole-person education, represented SEAL in his work in Russia, and was involved in the founding of SEAL-Argentina. Reveling in his English cultural background, he lives in a timber farmhouse in the north of Sweden where he keeps sheep and goats and explores traditional crafts such as baking bread, making cheese, sewing sheepskins, and mixing his own paints. Under the theme of The New Renaissance,” he shows people how to enrich their lives by doing a wide variety of things rather than specializing in just one; under the theme “Musica Humana,” he shows people how metaphors from the musician's way of thinking can help promote human harmony. These days his main interests are exploring effective ways of educating the whole-person through film, multimedia and the Internet, and sailing in the breathtakingly beautiful fjords and islands of the High Coast.
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