IN HARMONY WITH OURSELVES

Published in Budapesti Népművelő 1982/No. 3. and 4.

It was a rainy, grey Saturday morning and I was on my way to the Balaton. Not just me, many others as well and it took me a while to get back to the highway from the long queue at the petrol station. There, two hitchhiker girls said that they needed help with their travel. Was it a coincidence, that it was them, and then?

As soon as they got in the small car, we started chatting. I had great pleasure of helping young hitchhikers before, because I know they help me grow my belief in the present and my hope in the future.

The gifts of this rainy Saturday were more beautiful than ever before. The brown haired, talkative Monika and the blond, shy and smiling Anikó were on their way from Szeged to Zalaegerszeg to visit a friend. One of their closed ones was sick. Anikó held a small bouquet wrapped in paper.

“I teach Music. And you?” “We go to the University of Medicine and the University of Humanities” – they laughed – “but we could even form a choir”. Mónika graduated from the Kodály school in Kecskemét, and Anikó learnt music for 8 years in Kaposvár. 

I often get the question on my lectures abroad that what is the result of having the Kodály-method in practice for decades in Hungary. I would love to show them these two girls: “Look!”.

I got to know on our hour-long journey together what Kodály had given to these two young ladies that he never had a chance to see. Mónika, even after 7 years, joyfully recalls her heart-warming singing experiences and memories of her beloved choirmaster, Pál Kadosa and his tenet. She remembers from the “Whitsuntide” how “madam Julis walks wearing her swishy, round skirts”, and she knows from the bright chords of “St. John stood up” that it is good to lift our hearts up towards the higher truth of music. And they just talked and talked about their music teachers. How they used to go to sing at Miss Judit’s home, who had three beautiful children, and lived such a harmonic family life that the three children begged for a fourth sibling. And Miss Alíz, with whom they made a record as well, and they had to work on the record the whole day, and even though they had gotten tired, they did their best because of Miss Alíz. 

The two beautiful, clever girls, on their way from Szeged to Zalaegerszeg, presented me with the examples of the Kodály philosophy: they carry the results of their music education within; they have already consciously evaluated what they had received of that for the harmony of their lives.

Nowadays – even in a bit of fashion – many people argue whether singing in choirs, being able to read music and solfeggio are beneficial and about the values of folk singing. There was even a Hungarian lecture about the failure of the Hungarian music education at this year’s International Conference of Music Education in Bristol. 
This would be a dangerous avalanche. If it didn’t make any sense, why so many music lessons? Why to have music specialised classes? I hear that in the music specialised primary school with excellent reputation students of fifth grade classes are being mixed up in most recent days: children who have had more music lessons and excelled singing from score and musical inner hearing for four years are placed together with children who struggle with these skills in a basic level. The music teacher then may be wondering which part of the class should she let get bored in the lessons.

If the choir rehearsals are in the seventh or eighth period (or even before lessons), the weary teachers should motivate the already tired, sleepy, hungry and exhausted children. Both the content and the circumstances of  music making are responsible for what the music can give.

Why did Mónika and Anikó love their choirs? Why do children attend to rehearsal seven in the morning? Others late at night after their tiring workhours? What do they get at the rehearsals? Uprising? Enlightenment? The safety of belonging together? The beauty of sounding together? And of course, the excitement and memories of performing.

But for all of this they do important things: they take everything in, work together for something that, through their collaboration and their feelings flowing together, is born at the given moment to enchant them with its beauty. A sound raises from the will of many Mónikas and Anikós. The sound only appears once, so that its vibration to disappear immediately like the waves of the river or the breath of the wind. And yet, the memory of its volatile beauty leaves its never-ending mark on the singers’ cells. These sounds, like the life-giving vapours, pass through the trees of souls. Mónika remembers: “We had a performance in Zurich. We were tired, the trip, the rehearsals, the uncomfortable accommodation, it was cold… But when we were on stage, the teacher, Mr. Kardos looked at us, we looked back, and we forgot all our problems and just wanted to sing. Because it was so good to sing!” 

He looked at us and we looked back. The connection between the eyes triggered the sound of this collaboration. Could you not look when the look of true music called you? They had lived hundreds and hundreds of moments like this together: the message from the starting beam of the leaders look started the sound from many throats. The certain sound that Kodály created, described and let it go. The conductor found it, digested it, absorbed it, shaped it first in his imagination then in the thoughts, memories, vocal chords and feelings of his children.

And like that together: they started the “Whitsuntide”. You could hear the chords with their beautiful overtones, so that the children can visualize and experience the sound of the fiery flames from the music like the rumble of the winds.

Is it really possible for a child to live through the poignant experience of spiritual enlightenment? Surely. When rays of light shine through yet undiscovered dark corners, in which the sparkles of the hidden treasure appear. If the real value is really there, you need to return to its beauty again and again, many times. Could the Mónikas and Anikós forget it? Could they leave in the dark what once had shone? The children hold on to their memories tightly throughout their years of growth and disappointment. They carry them, take care of them so that not even a single shard of them get lost.

Is that true that someone looking for the living and successful use of Kodály Method, needs to travel to Japan? The school on Váli street is not a music specialised school. Last year, however, we heard a wonderful performance of “King László’s Men” from them. A hundred schoolchildren sang that “oh, the Hungarian people” with real passion. The principal, the leaders, the enthusiastic majority of staff members listened to the concert proudly, not regretting that their Saturday afternoon programme became and evening one.

After all, the music lessons can be boring, they don’t learn how to read music, for weeks the children don’t sing or they never discover the joy of music in many schools. There may be many hundreds, thousands of such schools here, in Canada on Denmark, Australia, Texas or the Philippines. But behold, we have our Whitsuntide, and we have our Mónikas and Anikós. And we have Kodály. Do we know that? As for what the brightness is for the stars, it is the music for our children. It is there, it is theirs. Even when sometimes it is covered by clouds. Because it can be theirs.

What could an educator from Texas do? Could he collect Texan folk songs? Could he categorise them in the order of musical elements, based on their tonality, range, melody, rhythm, for the purpose of developing musical skills. Then could he search for choral pieces in which these melodies soar into the air like birds, sail away like soft clouds in the sky, resonate together like seashells?

There was not born a Kodály in Texas. He was born in Kecskemét. A hundred years ago.

He lived among us, we knew him. He wrote, he composed, taught, ha planted the appreciation of learning and teaching music into generations of his disciples.

When the first American Kodály Institute, the Kodály Musical Training Institute, contracted me to be the leader of their research programme in 1970, only a few of us set out for the unknown waters. Nowadays, by five Hungarian music educators, who speak foreign languages, are asked to hold courses abroad. Many asks: why is this popularity? We have become carriers of values. The name, Kodály-method became a trademark, it hardly can be missed out of elegant programmes. Hundreds and thousands of music teachers experienced that reading and writing music becomes much easier if the developing of inner hearing and singing happens in a balanced, logical combination.

Thus, a safe approach to musical knowledge is born. They learn, they teach the methods of Kodály because the proved themselves and are successful.

Its results make the music students return back to the sources of the Hungarian music education both here and abroad. And going further, they transform it for their use, according to their needs and possibilities.

Here at home, the cells of the “Kodály oak” have long merged. Countless famous, well-known and beautiful strangers add their own strength, sweat, minerals and light in order to keep it growing, keep its roots cling securely, its trunk life-giving, its branches lively full of liquid, its foliage shining green and its fruits carrier of the future. Does it have dry twigs? More than one. It takes time for them to fall, to fade. But even them become food. From a Kodály-fruit extraordinary, beautiful shoots grow. From others only stunted, lifeless little trees.

Mónika mentioned the eyes of their conductor, years after they faded, “He looked at us, and we looked back.”. Maybe this is the secret from which the germs come to life, and the “Whitsuntide” or “King László’s Men” echo in such way that the harmony of the souls can be built from its sound.