The School of My Dreams
Q: Have you imagined the school of your dreams?
A: I have clearly imagined it, I can see every detail, even the children in it.
Q: What kind of children?
A: All sorts of them, very different ones. Quiet contemplators who can watch a spider like my grandson, Miklós. Once in the Dinosaur Park he was crouching by my side, almost without movement and without a sound, for an hour or so. He was watching a spider working at the bottom of the bush. He was five at that time.
Q: Is he a slow child?
A: No, he is very intense. He stays with his own experiences, and it is very difficult to distract him from them. He follows his own tempo. He devotes time to his activities and observations. He rebels if he is disturbed.
Q: Would you allow children to choose their own activities in your school?
A: I would give them time to reflect and contemplate. Contemplation results in wonderful attention deep, real, joyful attention. I know this about myself. One of my fabulously beautiful memories is when I was watching the blue sky among the blooming branches of acacias. There was some special combination of colours, blue, green, so many types of white in the play of shadows and lights. None of my school experiences can be compared to this.
Q: But you couldn’t have learnt how to read from the acacias, could you?
A: I couldn’t have learnt how to play the piano or how to sing. Still, when I sing, the light-play of the acacias and the blue infinity help.
Q: What do they help in?
A: In breathing. I breathe more fully. I know that breathing is good, that singing comes from my breath, and I love to breathe. Acacias and their blossoms breathe, too, every single one of them differently, still, helping each other. Years later when I was conducting my choirs I understood the bunches of acacia blossoms. They didn’t want to stick out and push the others to the background. They breathed together and that is how the beautiful sound came about.
Q: How should children contemplate in group-activities?
A: Yes, that needs absolute mastery of organization. In the school of my dreams the learning of arts is related to contemplative observation. There is a garden, tress, bushes, grass, places to hide, places from where we can listen to sounds or watch colours and movements. We did such things during our one-week camp in Velem, and there was always some beautiful continuation: children took on wings, wonderful new creations came into being. Andrea Marikovszki made natural creations from stones, twigs and earth. She didn’t show what we should do. She only came up with a couple of ideas.
Q: Did children put their experiences into words?
A: Yes, their creations set free the flow of words, tales and fabled happenings. If I had a school, I would join the learning of reading and writing to such activities.
Q: The writing and reading of musical scores, too?
A: Evidently. The magic of recording sounds. Sounds cannot be described, only approximated. Writing down music is only possible in tales. What is high? Is a sound high? No, it is not. We find adjectives to describe it: high, low, thick, thin. We stamp around with the help of props when we would need wings.
Q: Wings?
A: Don’t all sounds arrive on wings? You hum a lullaby to your child who is about to fall asleep, the tune is more delicate than a butterfly’s wing. Can you commit your mother’s song to score? The colour, the tone, the warmth of it, its picture as you see it.
Q: Musical score is a great invention, isn’t it?
A: Oh, yes, it is a wonderful invention. Kodály was right: it is worth teaching writing and reading music at school. To put sounds into a readable system of codes? It is an interesting game.
Q: Why does it usually become so boring?
A: A person with average intelligence may only memorize sound-elements through frequent and varied practice, that is, a music lesson every day. That is why the model of Hungarian singing schools became world famous. One or two occasions a week are not enough. Intervals must be conditioned, repeated as the bell signals are repeated for rats in experiments. But human children like only entertaining repetitions, inventive teachers of the Kodály method have therefore varied the different forms of repetitions in many ways: from hearing to singing, from singing to score, to a score in letters, to simplified signs. They selected short motifs that are easy to memorize from well-known and frequently sung songs; from the motifs they selected the safe basic intervals. They made variations of these then, putting them into new situations, new contexts of music.
Q: Is this how your inner ear for music was being made?
A: That’s right, this is how it was made for everyone and anyone, for even those who had weak musical hearing. It was a simple conditioning in a joyful, uplifting emotional context. An uplifting, refreshing activity for both children and teachers.
Q: Why are people afraid of it, why do they criticize it so much nowadays?
A: Because it has entered impossible conditions, it doesn’t work, and it can’t work. The basic requisite of conditioning, frequent repetition, is missing. Dénes Szabó, the wonderful music teacher whose choir recordings I listen to enthusiastically, said straightforwardly in a radio interview that writing and reading music may only be learnt if children have music lessons every day. The sentence was said, the reporter did not care to continue the theme even though it would have been interesting.
Q: The writing and reading of music would then be taught in the school of your dreams?
A: It would be taught to everybody, the Geography teacher as well as the kitchen staff. During the day we would sing canons, madrigals, and folksongs. In the evenings we would sing polyphonic chorals. If the weather is good, then out in the open by a fire. If it is cold, then by the fireplace or the oven. We would set the table and wash the dishes singing. We would of course use a dishwasher for certain things, and we would scrub those things that have to be scrubbed. Those who break the dishes sweep up the fragments and chips singing. Ironing is only pleasant if one is singing to it. You can’t even wash the windows without singing.
Q: What about those who have no ear for music?
A: They sing with their own tunes. They improvise, hum, whistle. They ask for a singing partner. Hopefully a child.
Q: What about those with speech-impediments? The stutterers? Those hard of hearing?
A: They would have great opportunities to sing. Those hard of hearing would listen to Mozart according to Tomatis’s method. And they would sing many-many Mozart pieces, thank God he wrote many works for singing. Stutterers could make presentations singing even in foreign languages.
Q: How would they quarrel? How would they vent their anger?
A: Tension is a sad state. I have a couple of books which provide recipes or getting out of it. This has to be practiced. Sometimes the sense of humour, at other times falling silent helps. You can always watch ants turning on their paths, or bugs walking among the leaves of grass. I sometimes sing my anger to a bush hoping it would ask for advice from its roots. That is from where it gets its wisdom. Its roots know which branch or leaf needs liquids, food. This needs great wisdom. Less is needed to stroke away my anger.
Q: Will it be allowed to have enemies in your school? To hate or envy each other?
A: Saint Paul encourages his disciples to peace, understanding and love with such beautiful words. Reading his epistles it is hard to believe somebody could resist such encouragement. Then you think about the date of the letters, a little bit of time has passed since they were written: people could have practiced peace and understanding. What I could safely require, perhaps, would be that they accept others with their weaknesses. I have learnt methods of how to make people more open towards each other. Perhaps I would be able to achieve that such levels of acceptance of one another so that whispering behind the back and backbiting would stay away from our gates, even our garden.
Q: Do you make a compact in teaching?
A: An ethical compact, yes. In methods you can expect liberty. But we pay serious attention to the results. O’Neill, the English psychologist, in whose book I first read about the liberty of children – in 1968, just count how many years ago that was! –, wrote wonders about his students who were considered desperate cases and unfit for education. I always think about one of them when my fellow pedagogues complain about difficult students: this boy was just cycling around in their institute, not attending classes, not going to school, just riding his bicycle all day long. Then at length the structure of the bicycle awakened in him the desire to learn.
Q: Would you allow such things in your school?
A: No, I would try other things. Don’t forget that our dream-school would build its curriculum around the arts. More precisely, around the reception of the really valuable, great pieces of music. We would look for connections between the reception of music, imagination, memory, the creative activities, the need to cooperate, the courage to express oneself, empathic attention and the joy of getting to know something. None of these are secondary, all of them are integral and important parts of the personality. There is no hierarchy among them, they are of the same rank of importance.
Q: Is music related to the learning of chemistry, physics, languages, computer, sports or visual representation?
A: I have just heard in Geneva that the French Ministry of Education has made it obligatory to search for and utilise connections within schools. I can’t wait to get to know more about this programme. I have only known about László Németh’s school experiment: his description has been a wonder to me for forty years. He recognized a deep truth and showed all of us the way. It is not a way to be followed, not practically at least, since most of us teachers have specialized in only one or a few fields to the extent that we could teach them.
Q: What kind of connections can you see in the teaching of music?
A: We have seen several. We started connections with representation in 1968 with MáriaVida in the children’s home on Csatárka Road. Judit Vas made a nice film about this. We worked out our current program with the help of József Pállai: we have decades of experience of working together. Scenes of such cooperation are shown in several of our films, and it is also a great advantage that József Pállai himself shoots films of my different courses. Szilvia Granasztói brought puppetry to our courses, her beautiful, expressive puppets are a great experience, and they have healing power, too. Lilla Lakatos introduced excellent novelties with her puppets made of crops, which could be nicely imitated. Éva Józsa taught the participants of our course the use of living symbols in puppet-making, and how this edifies the soul. Éva Puskás and the children in her study circle use representation prompted by the treasures of Hungarian folk poetry, songs, and tales. Erika Fleck has developed individual methods in her study circle to connect representation and listening to music. Moving and painting to music have become the everyday pleasure of the kindergarteners of Valéria Garamszegi in Zebegény. In the classes of Ilona Duga singing has become the mother tongue of children: at any time of their day they could connect other creative activities, other forms of expression to it. There are more and more beautiful programs countrywide, for example, the world-famous couple Mária Apagyi and Ferenc Lantos, or the wonderful teaching of Mária Winkler have provided inspiring examples, as many others have, too, whose work now we can freely get to know.
Q: What about the writing and reading of music? Would you teach it in the same way as it is taught elsewhere?
A: No, we wouldn’t. I cannot wait to find music teachers whose spirit is infused with the need to renew thing: I will share my ideas with them. Methodologies scream for renewal. Children need discovery, and what could be more exciting than the personal, individual discovery of the code-system of sounds, with variations?
Q: But musical score was invented a long time ago, wasn’t it?
A: As all musicians know score-writing stands on rather weak legs, many composers try to introduce new types of notation systems. Why couldn’t children make individually imagined scores? Scores with drawings, figures, colours, flowers. It could be imagined in space. Erika Fleck’s adolescents in Pécs put clay on their tables and danced the sounds into it, we can see it on the footage. There are thousands of solutions.
Q: But Mozart’s string quartets should be read in the way he wrote them down, shouldn’t they?
A: Yes, but they don’t start reading scores with those, but the simplest of notation forms. The first motifs of a children’s song, for example, which would be divided into rhythm with the help of rhythm signs, that is, sticks. And letters signifying intervals.
Q: Why is this a problem?
A: It is not a problem at all. This incremental simplification has been an ingenious trick, it couldn’t be simpler. I would keep it, but I would consider the discovery of scores and the discovery of many other kinds of music more important. I have tried once to draw a Byzantine song from hearing. A nun was singing it in Arabic, her solo was meandering as a seagull in the wind, floating. Way below the long notes of the accompaniment resounded in male voices like the barely moving sea. As if the sun was sinking into a great smoothness. It was a perfectly visual experience, sounds melted into sight, into a view I have experienced. Children have not experienced this, Hungary does not have a sea. Still they represented music similarly, especially this strange polyphony. The song evoked the ancient Hungarian dirges which are meandering in unison. They represent the intensity of grief and despair put into sounds. Children understood the magic of this special sound-experience: they tried to approximate the floating above and the constancy of the deep with colours.
Q: Would you like children to discover the connections between sounds and visualizations?
A: Yes, and I would like them to discover this at an early age before they are set on the tracks simplified for them. I would like them to discover by themselves the connections between sight and sound.
Q: Why is this good?
A: Independent discovery is always more enduring than connections that are explained. Many children hate pureed baby food. Their attention starts to wander. They wonder immediately when teachers give them explanations, perhaps because they are bored and their brains are faster. It is always essential to find the individual tempo in group-learning.
Q: May there be some wider, deeper connection between sight and sound?
A: Yes, a deeper, higher and wider connection. The quality of the connections differ, too. It’s not just about committing to signs what they have heard. Of course it is also an exciting task to find out signs which can be deciphered. That is, signs that can be communicated. Children’s imaginations are made for this. There are, however, more to connections than this: in my contemplations of nature I have discovered more valuable, nobler connections recently.
Q: Do you have the eyesight of a painter?
A: Unfortunately, I don’t have the eyesight of a painter. My greatest friend, my soulmate, Ignác Kokas has talked to me about these things. My heart is broken since I couldn’t record his words, but I’m simply not able to impose on him with machines. I sit at his feet like Mary must have watched the Master, with my mouth agape, listening to all of his words. It is at home that I then take out the small-scale reproductions of his paintings and study them silently.
Q: Does he explain you the secrets of painting?
A: No, he doesn’t. He explains nothing. He just tells the truth. The truth as the sufferings and the experiences of the artist. He is the one to understand best the representations created by my children. He doesn’t analyse drawings like a psychologist. He just looks at them and understands them. I could cry. I cry at home after I get home and retire to my den like an owl as I recall such rich moments.
Q: Why do you cry?
A: Because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to remember and transmit his words as accurately as I should. Only my feelings contain the entire experience. In the school of my dreams I would teach all of his words, but not only his words but his essence, just as if it were his voice talking. I would teach with his face, his complexion and his hands. Even though his hands are wounded, he continues his incredible painting and has demonstrated his special techniques to me.
Q: Would you teach crafts in the school of your dreams?
A: I would let other teachers teach the crafts, I would teach people. Living people, while they leave, and their memories if only their souls stay with us. That’s how I relate to Kodály, too.
Q: How did you see him?
A: Oh God, how could I explain? I could not understand the evangelists either: how could they describe Jesus. They did not describe him, just what he said and did. But they did not start to describe his face when he was sleeping, his head leaning on a pillow while Lake Genezareth was heaving under him. I imagine his face. I can see he is tired. The boat must have thrown him around heavily, I know this, I was frequently on stormy waters, and I was afraid, trembling. I could barely have slept. But He slept. I imagine his face to this.
Q: Did you see Kodály many times?
A: Many times and in many ways. Once, a long time ago I wrote about my memories of him, the book appeared in English and Swedish, but not in Hungarian. I may write it down once again, or tell stories about him in the school of my dreams. How did those close to the master speak about Mozart, Bach and Beethoven? Imagine how it would be to be the student who wrote messages to him in books or the one who made his bed. Of course even his death-bed had to be made.
Q: The school of your dreams seems to be very personal. Aren’t you afraid of that?
A: All I am afraid of is impersonality. The idea, if it is taken out of the man, may be horribly distorted; it will become like the person who makes use of it.
Q: Are children drawn to personalities?
A: Yes, fortunately. In the school of my dreams we play special attention to this. It isn’t easy to step out of the role of the teaching adult and to live our real lives. What am I like? What would I like to be like? What would I like to look? Do I like my wrinkles? The mottles on my skin? I usually discuss my brave appearances with the trees.
Q: The looks?
A: Yes, the looks, trees have external features, too, decaying bark, drying branches. I have a wonder-tree in my brother’s garden, I can discuss my problems with it, it is not vain, and not secretive. It protects me from the sun, in the heat it helps me. I don’t have to play a role with it, it accepts me completely. We are real, all the time.
Q: But it cannot answer your questions.
A: Of course it can. Its speech is clear, easy to understand. It only needs time. You can’t just chat with it. It never says commonplace things. It doesn’t have time for those. It is very busy: it has to think about all the little leaves of it branches, to feed or to drop them if it’s time to get rid of them. Its roots are especially exacting, and they are also hidden.
Q: Do you want to teach such things in the school of your dreams?
A: If I did not teach such things, it would not be worth sending children to me.