RONDO* OR RONDA**

Rondo*: music form
Ronda**: ugly in Hungarian  -  title refers to a play in words

 I came across the test paper by chance. A furious mom was waving it in front of my face. The long test was carried out in an elementary school class. The numerous test questions examined the children’ factual knowledge in the field of music.

“How would you define “rondo”? - was one of the questions. Their music teacher was not present at the time the test was conducted and she had no knowledge about the test taking.

This circumstance suggests that the test was probing what topics she had failed to teach. Indeed, when the time was up, most of the test questions remained unanswered.

Looking at the lame results, everyone wondered: “What on earth these children did in their music class?”

I happen to know the answer: They sing songs, and mostly folksongs and they are fond of singing them. In this particular class children are enthusiastic when it comes to singing folk songs. Their teacher really fires them up. She knows countless songs and keeps adding new ones to her collection. She is young and tireless.

Singing competitions are held regularly in her classes. The prizes vary, such as a chocolate bar or a fairy-tale book. And now, out of nowhere came the music comprehension test. It hit like thunder, blasted into their idyllic, sort of old-fashioned existence. The enthusiastic, song-loving children were dumbfounded, staring at the myriad of questions, with their blank faces. They wished the teacher were in the classroom, because her sheer presence would have made them feel less vulnerable.

Eventually they arrived to the following question: Define rondo. They knew what RONDA means, but RONDO. . . The children had no clue about rondo. The answer was left blank. They jumped to the next word to be defined. Soon enough they all knew the test is pure torture. Not long after the entire school was whispering in disbelief:

“The children in the music class failed the music-education test!”

“They did not even know what rondo meant!”

“What a scandal.”

The whisperers did not know the answer either of course, but in their mind they  were not supposed to know such things anyway, since they did not take music classes.

The parents of the failed children reacted to the bad news depending on their temperament.

Some of them did not care about it at all, since as far as they were concerned, music education takes the last place on the priority list of subjects. As far as they are concerned music education is unimportant.

Other parents made a huge deal, screaming and preaching almost endlessly, until they realized what day it was. Then, all of a sudden they stopped and gathered around the TV set.

Their favorite sitcom had just started to air. The yelling parents suddenly became pacified.

The teacher heard of the test and the results while having her dinner at home. One of the moms called her with the news.

The next day the whispering continued. She felt the whole world had become united against her and the ideas she stands up for. Ideas like the importance of nurturing our rich musical traditions by singing and learning the songs that our ancestors left for us; and maybe doing so regardless of formal music education. The colleagues and villagers felt that the test proved the uselessness of her subject altogether.

The purpose of a school is to teach children, not to make them spend their precious time singing those songs....

“Finally justice has been brought.” the villagers felt.

When I was growing up in Sopron in the forties, the wave of re-discovery of our national treasures like the folk song had begun. A similar phenomenon would emerge on the other side of the Atlantic twenty years later. (Peter Seger, Joan Baez, Woodie Guthrie). Our enthusiastic and modern music teacher taught us all those beautiful songs and the more songs we knew, the more privileged we felt. If a young man wanted to be on good terms with his sweetheart, he had better make sure that he was equipped with a lots and lots of folk-songs in case he wanted to serenade from under the girl’s window. Singing these songs became an integral part of our lives back then, at least for a while.

Then came the dark fifties and our beloved folksongs were suddenly forbidden and replaced by the songs that were created by the composers under the communist dictatorship. On national holidays, all the school choirs had to perform these communist theme songs along with the Russian anthem. One of the songs had the following message: work used to be a shameful deed, but today it is a heroic act. My personal experiences proved otherwise.

My grandfather for example worked long hours, frantically but eagerly in his tiny grocery store, serving the needs of his customers. I never experienced that he was ashamed of doing his work. My mother's father was a peasant and shoemaker, working hard from dawn to dusk. My parents never were ashamed of the work they had to do. In fact they found pride and enjoyment in it. My mother sang while working around the house and she did not seem to mind the hard work. It took a long time until we could sing those beloved folksongs again not only in the privacy of our own home but in the state-owned schools as well. The communist government eventually moved away from the point of view of its predecessor, which had considered singing folksongs a nationalistic act.

With reference to RONDO (remember, it was on the test: define rondo), my first encounter with Rondo was during my studies at the Hungarian Academy of Music. I learned about this music form from one of my excellent instructors, Atala Simon. She demonstrated a rondo via the piano. And then she asked me to play, repeating it after her. She was not interested in my defining the rondo with words; she just wanted to hear me play it. Another teacher of mine at the Academy, Zoltán Gárdonyi, made us do a lot of research on many rondo. Eventually the rondo and I became close friends.

The test questions in the elementary school focused on the factual word-based knowledge of the children. Definition after definition on page after page. True, the children had not even heard of the word “rondo”. Their teacher simply did not have sufficient time to teach every definition; her pupils are assigned to one 45 minute music class per week. Considering how much can be squeezed into a 45 minute lesson (from time to time some of the classes were even cancelled for various reasons), music teachers must prioritize between various topics that he/she thinks carry the most importance.

If she/he considers that rondo is something of an importance, she will most likely follow the usual teaching methodology by demonstration of a rondo using a recording, giving a verbal definition and/or drawing the rondo form on the black board. When all this is done, formal discussion of the rondo form will then be finished. Those who will remember it will the children who are either interested in music or learn to play an instrument. They might come across the structure and recognize it. “Wow, I have learned this in school!” The rest of them will likely not remember anything about the form until it surfaces again out of nowhere as a test question. “Hey kid! You must define me!” It screams from the paper.

The list of people who promote and construct school tests is endless. But most often, it is the music teacher who resides at the end of the list and she alone sits in front of her pupils’ test results. As she contemplates the results, all kinds of thoughts are zooming through her mind. “In the future, would it be better to put more emphasis on the teaching of musical definitions? If I did so, it would require giving up teaching some or maybe all of those beautiful folksongs to my students.” She feels pressure to make a decision.

It certainly is less difficult and time consuming to teach facts than correcting the students’ singing. Most of them, at this age, are in the process of the infamous adolescent voice change anyway. As well, using the stereo system, instead of rehearsing and conducting a choir is a far more convenient solution whenever the school gathers for a holiday celebrations. But for my generation, the memory of the songs of our youth will remain intact forever. We will never forget the time when Zoltán Kodály taught us to sing them and love them. The night when Lajos Bárdos conducted our five-hundred member choir will always stay in our loving memories as well.

Music education, no matter which part of the globe we look at, always has one common goal: emotional development of children. Hungarian music teachers in today's schools face a great dilemma: they either stick to this great goal or they stir away from it for the sake of successful test results. If the teacher chooses to stay with the emotional development, test failure rates will be high. Would that failure be acceptable in our achievement-oriented world? The number of music classes is reduced to a minimum in schools; this sad fact makes the teacher’s decision even more painful. How can he/she achieve both emotional development and factual knowledge within the limited class time?

            Each music teacher must consider that, music has the capability to touch and to entwine the human body to its core more thoroughly than any other art form . The body reacts miraculously to the sound of music. This happens the first time in the mother’s womb. Hungarian music education has a privileged position in the world since our traditional music, dances and songs are widely accessible to educators from a rich cultural heritage.

Giving tests can be justified in many school subjects, but not in music education. The goal and function of music education is different from those of the other subjects. In the name of our music educators, let me ask the question: are these teachers given enough trust? Are they being thought of as responsible, conscious people who are real professionals?

There is science in art and art in science. If the music teacher is denied to be a provider of emotional development, then who will do the task?

Conducting tests without the consensus of the teacher is an act against basic ethical considerations. Please, begin an open discussion regarding the above issue.

Klára Kokas
Professor Emeritus - Zoltán Kodály Association of Music Pedagogy