DR. KLARA KOKAS: KODÁLY’S CONCEPTION OF MUSICAL EDUCATION 

Compiled as an Introduction to the book “Music Makes a Difference” by Ilona Barkóczi and Csaba Pléh,
published by the Zoltán Kodály Pedagogical Institute of Music, Kecskemét, 1982
Dedicated to the memory of Márta Nemesszeghy

 I

Kodály’s conception of musical education

At the heart of Kodály’s ideas on how a child should be educated lies the belief that the arts, particularly music, should be at the centre. The systematic discipline of actively making music, singing and developing a faculty for music causes a child to become receptive to art while developing her/his personal musical talents. The content is perceived through an emotional insight into music that gives way to a conscious recognition of its aesthetic qualities. That is the objective to which the logical, planned, demanding development of a musical faculty leads.

The child is principally influenced by the emotional charge of music, and s/he is open to that influence from a very early stage in his development. So Kodály considered it vital that musical education should begin as young as possible. In the first years of development, a child discovers music through personal and environmental influences. S/he will only develop a day-to-day need for music if her/his musical faculties are purposefully developed. Through that process, through a series of positive experiences, s/he will develop an inner demand for valuable music that conveys and expresses the universal emotions of mankind and the message of society, with its tensions and their resolution.

Kodály rated the best folk music alongside the works of the classical composers. Folksongs, and composed music chosen for the purpose form the musical material with which the musical faculties are developed in accordance with the teaching principles Kodály set forth in his life’s work. The musical material for education is built out of the motifs of the pentatonic system, since experience shows that the melodic turns of the pentatonic music of the Hungarian and cognate peoples, which contain no semitones, are admirably suited to developing inward awareness of sounds even in children who lack an innately keen ear for music.

Another basic concept of Kodály’s teaching is that the most direct path to an insightful understanding of music is through singing. Singing is a full experience in itself. It involves the whole body and exerts a specific physiological effect through breathing and internal resonances. One can experience the usefulness of it in several ways, despite the scanty knowledge of the nature of those functions and the scarcity of investigation into them in Hungary.

The breadth of opportunity for musical education inherent in singing stems in the first place from the fact that every sound human body is capable of doing it. It even plays a primary part in speech development - a child’s first voices are closer to singing than to the speech forms s/he develops later. Singing is eminently suitable for expressing and conveying emotion and forging emotional links. At the same time it provides an easily negotiable path by which a person may develop an internal ear for music. Internal hearing means the “inner perception” of how notes, intervals and chords are arranged in time and pitch. Such perception develops gradually, and the developmental pace depends upon innate faculties that range from a positive musical talent to a total or partial absence of musical ability. It is a lengthy and complex process to develop the internal ear for music, and singing can be particularly useful in promoting it.

The tool Kodály considered best suited to developing internal hearing and then the ability to read and write music was relative solmization. The sol-fa syllables show the relationships of the notes to one another, in other words the role the notes play within a particular tonal system, and not their actual pitch (in terms of acoustic oscillations). The syllables are easy to sing, sound pleasant and encourage note awareness. Children like them too. Relative solmization allows the pitch to be changed to the register best suited to the singer.

The internalization of intervals is assisted by the series of exercises Kodály composed for educational purposes. He built into them a logical system on which internal hearing and precise singing intonation can be steadily developed. The process of development is linked with knowledge of a system of musical codes (notes and solmization signs in letters), thus exercising the mutual relationships between hearing, sight and also motion in certain forms. The knowledge acquired remains active and dynamic firstly because the addition of new knowledge always involves practice with what has been learnt before, and secondly because hearing and the repetition of what has been heard provide a wide variety of potential combinations.

In composing his educational volumes, Kodály relied on practical experience gained of Hungarian musical education stretching back over years and indeed decades. The exercises train pupils to solve a variety of different musical problems, and to visualize and utter the sounds. Moreover the various beautiful and proportioned exercises serve as models of form. One might compare the combinations of intervals (the musical motifs) to be found in Kodály’s volumes of exercises with the algorhythmic practice employed in teaching foreign languages. The various motifs and intervals appear in a number of different varieties, at different points and with different environments, rhythms, tempos, etc., so that the child has abundant varied opportunities for practicing, recognizing, repeating, comparing, adjusting and memorizing them so that they can be applied again later.

The musical memory is developed at first by imitation. The children repeat songs, rhymes and playful movements, and then the hand-signals to match the sol-fa names that help them in determining the intervals. The motifs are drawn from the songs they have already practiced. The use of relative solmization provides education in flexibility. The elements heard are varied and so are the forms in which they are notated. The singing practice provided in the various codes is a training in quick and precise recognition of and adjustment to changes. From the melodic, rhythmic, harmonic and formal structures inculcated an understanding of style is acquired. Pupils gradually learn to recognize the distinctive features of various composers and styles and by doing so acquire the ability to memorize longer and more complex units as well.

Although musical knowledge is principally built upon memory, practice must also cause a development in logical thinking, since the major units cannot be memorized in isolation without an understanding of their logical construction and relationships. Musical notation is ascribed a specific form in the practical realization of the Kodály concept. Initially the notation of melodies is made easier by the addition of letters (abbreviations of the sol-fa syllables) and by a simplified rhythmic notation indicated only by the stem of the note. In the Hungarian method of musical education the development of ability is accompanied by a constant contact between the musical elements that sound and those that are heard internally. This varied system of contacts serves to hold pupils’ attention and allow musical elements to be absorbed more easily.

One important type of exercise the method uses is improvisation - one not generally employed. It is employed in a fixed way. Initially it consists merely of rearranging elements provided, of exchanging and varying familiar elements of which pupils have already been made aware in reading and writing as well. A positive result of this fixed system of rules is that pupils practice the musical elements they have learnt thoroughly, learning to move within limits. Furthermore, they are able to find their bearing within given forms, and by gaining acquaintance with a set of limits, develop a better sense for comprehending the structure of major musical forms. Improvisation can be put to another use if free forms of expression are used to help the child’s demand for self-expression to attain the same level as his other musical faculties. Exceptionally gifted teachers of music have been able to surmount the barriers and foster richer forms of improvisation than those generally employed in primary school music teaching.

II

The story of the investigations

In 1968, when Dr. Ottó Eiben and I made the first surveys and comparative studies on music groups and control groups in Szombathely (Western Hungary), under the guidance of Dr. György Kontra, we were principally interested in physiological changes. We entitled our research program “The effect of singing on the respiratory system; the effect of games connected with singing and rhythmic movements on children’s faculty for movement” [1].

Having made our first surveys, we were impelled by curiosity to add further tests of other faculties. Not knowing of any tests that would elicit what we wanted to know, we ourselves compiled groups of visual and aural tasks that would measure the various changes in the power of observation. We took care to select the control groups from the Szombathely nursery and primary schools with the best reputations, not so much as a requirement of the psychological test as to allay our own curiosity. We wanted to compare our music group with groups of children from the best social environment in the city. I shall never forget the afternoon when I and two of students from the teachers’ training college, Éva Horváth and Terézia Takács worked out the first data, and having done so sat astounded at the superior performance of the music groups.

Since then a decade has passed and the theme I embarked on as a music teacher using  my own observations, has become the focus of international interest. In countries where music and the arts can still not command a wide public and receive no subsidies from the state, the future of musical institutions may depend on whether the beneficial effect of musical education on other faculties can be demonstrated[2]. But the experiment we conducted in Kecskemét was not motivated by any such intention of providing proof. The superior school achievements of classes where the number of singing and music lessons is higher than elsewhere is generally realized among the teachers in this country of ten million people irrespective of proof that tests provide. Indeed, it is taken so much for granted that despite frequent discussion of the subject the statistical data on the school achievements still remain unpublished.

We were invited to Kecskemét by Márta Nemesszeghy, the founder head of the first specialized primary school for singing and music. She asked us to launch a four-year program in which we would monitor both the first form at the Zoltán Kodály Specialized Primary School of Singing and Music and a music class started expressly for the study at a suburban school drawing pupils from a disadvantaged social and cultural environment (the Czollner square Primary School). As there were two parallel first forms at Czollner square school, we could clearly have daily singing lessons for one class and use the other, which would study the normal curriculum, as the control group. The pupils in both classes came from a similar social and cultural environment. The parents were not even informed about the test study, and no selection procedures of any kind were used. The daily singing lessons were conducted by Katalin Czeizner, the singing teacher of the Kodály School. (The control group in the case of the Kodály School was chosen from the Ilona Zrínyi Primary School, where the children had a similar social and cultural background and received two singing lessons a week.)

Actually to set up the study was a far more difficult task. First of all we had to find adequate funds, but a long-range pedagogical study of this kind involved sums that no educational institution were prepared to supply. The wife of Zoltán Kodály came to our rescue. She offered to cover the expenses of undertaking and evaluating the studies for a period of four years. In return she asked that after the four years the material should be published by the Kodály Institute, which was being set up at that time, as its own publication. (The paper, by Ilona Barkóczi and Csaba Pléh, appeared in Hungarian in 1978.)

Alongside the psychological tests that make up the material of this volume, surveys were also carried out on mathematics, Hungarian language and drawing. The drawing test was published by Mária Vida Székács, in her book The System of Effects of Education in the Arts (Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1980).

The classes taking part in the Kecskemét study were labeled “musical” and “non-musical” groups. In Hungary that seemed adequate, as the principles of singing and musical education in schools are uniform throughout the country. The distinction referred to the fact that the musical groups had more music lessons (five music lessons a week, as opposed to the compulsory two lessons laid down in the national curriculum and given to the control groups). In the music groups singing was taught by a teacher trained specially in that subject, while in the first and second forms of the control groups singing was taught by the class teacher. The comparison extended beyond a study of the effects of that quantitative difference. The two groups also received a different quality of musical education, as the subject teachers employed several essential factors in the Kodály concept not used by the class teachers.

In any comparative study the biggest problem is in the selection of control groups. For the Kecskemét experiment it was not possible to provide a special program for the control groups at the same time as the music groups received singing lessons; such a program might have been conducted by a teacher at home in some other method of music education, for example. While the music groups had their singing lessons, the members of the control groups were at after-school centers or at home.

Circumstances did not allow us to eliminate this flaw in the experiment. It might have been possible to choose an interesting pastime for the control groups involving another subject, such as drawing. But one would suppose such training would develop the pupils’ powers of observation along with their visual skills. In that case it would have been difficult to distinguish test results in observational powers developed through musical education from those developed through drawing. Gymnastics or dancing might also have been taught, but the same problem would have arisen with testing rhythmic skills, which might have developed either from the dancing or from the games in the singing lessons. (These arguments were also decisive in the test carried out by the Kodály Musical Training Institute at Wellesley, and led them to devise a musical program for the control groups instead of drawing, dancing, gymnastics or something else[3].

Dr. Gábor Paneth joined in the Kecskemét study with a brief survey that constituted a kind of a trial of strength, but his subject impinges on the significant aspect of the community links within the music classes. As early as the 1968-69 school-year, Dr. Paneth took down sociograms in two specialized classes of music and two parallel control classes in the Kolozsvár street Primary School in the 21st district of Budapest. His results showed that 25 out of the 29 fifth form pupils in the specialized class of singing and music enjoyed a reciprocal social relationship, while the remaining 4 (13.8%) did not. In the parallel control class 27 of the 39 students had a reciprocal relationship, and 12 did not (31%). Of the 21 students in the specialized sixth form, 18 had developed reciprocal relationships and 3 had not (18%), while in the parallel control class the figures were 13 and 13 (50%).

The results collected from the study of the four classes cannot provide a comprehensive picture, and chance may have played a big role. Nonetheless, the data had a dramatic effect on the research workers, who decided to carry out a few tests on our Kecskemét groups. They   made sociograms in one of the seventh year classes of the Kodály School, using a seventh year class at the Czollner square School as a control. Here the data were even more interesting. Of  the 24 pupils of the Kodály School 23 had a reciprocated relationship (and one not), while of the 23 pupils at the Czollner square School, 16 had reciprocal relationships and 7 did not. Beyond  the quantitative difference, there was also a striking qualitative difference, as the relationships described as reciprocal by the control group were exclusively pair relationships, while the specialized class of music formed a complex, manifold network. Such intensity of social relationships calls attention to the effect musical education exercises on the development of community feeling and will certainly stimulate further examinations.

The four school years of the Kecskemét experiment were significant for the pupils and educators of the four groups alike. Katalin Czeizner, the music teacher from the Kodály School, took the Czollner square class under extremely difficult conditions. Her timetable was determined by that of the Kodály School’s and it was no easy task to fit in her regular classes at the other school as well. She was a visitor at the Czollner square School, with no say in school affairs. Her report reveals how seriously she was affected by a re-grouping of the members of the experimental class (in the third school year), which hindered the collective progress of the group. The new children in the class were unable to keep pace with the others, who had already attained an advanced stage of musical education. Several pupils obviously lost self-confidence and patience, and began behaving in a disorderly way. Nevertheless, through all the difficulties listed there shined the delight of a true teacher who had undertaken a difficult task that differed from what she normally did, and had completed it successfully.

III

The significance and perspectives of the studies

The significance of the studies outlined above is that they were pioneer attempts. They dealt with a subject psychologists had never written about either in Hungary or abroad. An added unique feature of the four-year Kecskemét survey is that until its completion in 1973, an examination of effects over such a long period had not been carried out on any subject in the history of Hungarian pedagogy.

Moreover, the study throws light on the educational potential in one of the arts - music, and now perspectives have been opened up through the survey made in a creative field. By the end of the second year, the experimental music class at the Czollner square School was matching the performance of the control group with a higher social background in some important indices. If social and cultural environmental disadvantages derived from the family can be compensated for, then one must certainly act accordingly. In educational terms one must organize special music classes in appropriate places, and in psychological terms one must launch further studies. If the positive effect of musical education could become apparent in the communal relationships of randomly selected classes, an unequivocal lesson must be drawn: there are more than a hundred special singing and music classes in Hungary where sociometric surveys could be conducted. No other country has such opportunities.

The Hungarian studies are also significant because they were conducted not in order to demonstrate a point but in order to acquire knowledge. The possibilities for musical education in Hungary have never depended on the results of any studies, as the institutions responsible for education are aware of the usefulness of musical education. But although there is no need for a demonstration, there is a need to explore and learn more about the processes that take place in a Kodály musical education, or may later become susceptible to study through the further development of musical education. Even if it is not possible in all respects to ensure objective control conditions for comparative examinations, a field of even greater significance can be worked upon: knowledge of the contexts of musical education in terms of developmental and educational psychology.

Before we drew up the plans for the American study, we visited Kodály classes for some weeks with the psychologists planning it. We made notes on the examples they found at the singing lessons of the development of particular faculties. At planning the experiment at the Kodály Musical Training Institute, these data served as the motive for psychological examinations of the children raised according to the Kodály method.

The list was entitled: “What faculties are influenced by the Kodály System of Musical Education?”

Language teaching:

1. Differentiation between nuances of linguistic intonation. 
2. Separation of sounds from words by attentive listening.
3. Vowel formation and correct articulation.
4. Increase in vocabulary.
5. Understanding of terms such as high-deep, long-short, up-down, and distinguishing of them aurally and visually.
6. Attention to detail, precision in writing.
7. Ability to form sets, recognize relationships and make deductions.
8. Manipulation with two abstract concepts.
9. Recognition of forms and units heard and seen.
10. Symbols and interpretation of them. Auditory and visual recognition of symbols.
11. Proceeding from left to right in writing and reading.
12. Survey of major units (sentences) through a rhythmic eye movement.

Mathematics:

l. Counting: aural recognition of numbers by name.
2. Recognition and understanding of symbol units, evaluation of relationships within the symbol, manipulation with symbols.

Memory and attention:

l. Strengthening of the kinesthetic, visual and auditory memory, the effect of each upon the other.
2. Increased attention span.

Faculty of movement:

1. Development of the faculty of movement, co-ordination (stepping, walking, dancing).
2. Development of precise movements (hand).
3. Movement in space: in games, in dance forms.

Faculty of co-operation:

l. Precise attention to instructions, carrying them out.
2. Learning and applying the rules for joint work.
3. Building up of self-command.
4. Development of a positive self-awareness with the help of encouraging experiences.
5. Development of an ability to do reliable work independently.
6. Development of personal contacts within the group.
7. The understanding of group goals and identification with them; voluntary co-operation in the interest of group objectives.

Other faculties:

l. Dealing with the physics of sound.
2. Widening mental horizons through acquaintance with other cultures, human relations and traditions.

The list is far from being complete. If psychologists were to make similar observations of classes taught in Hungary by the Kodály method, they would be able to elaborate a far richer system of aspects, first, because in this country an edifice has been erected, whereas in America the foundations are still being laid. (In 1972, the highest special music class at the Kodály Musical Training Institute contained 12-year-olds.)

Secondly, the professional demands in the training of Hungarian music teachers have been progressively raised in the last few decades (at least as far as musical abilities and knowledge are concerned). It will be some time before other countries can match this tradition. They may have eminent teachers, but quite some time must elapse before they have a generation of eminent teachers at their disposal.

Thirdly, this country’s folk music has specific, unique values. Apart from its beauty, conceptual richness and musical variety, its ancient roots are still living. It is precisely this ancient melodic realm that offers optimal material for the development of musical faculties.

This material is available to teachers, having been collected, processed, and to a large extent published. None of the Kodály programs abroad can make use of anything similar.

It is a pleasure to look over the valuable material collected during the four-year psychological study made at Kecskemét.

We look forward to its continuation.

[1] The material of the studies can be found in the published form of my doctoral dissertation: The Development of Faculties through Musical Education, Edition Musica, Budapest, 1969.

[2] Wolff, Hurwitz, Bortnick and Kokas: Nonmusical Effects of the Kodály Music Curriculum in Primary Grade Children, Journal of Learning Abilities, 1974.

[3] The material of this study is in the hands of the KMTI, Wellesley, Mass. USA.