TOUCHING A UNIVERSAL CHORD

Our process for absorbing and incorporating the values of pure music:

Intense concentration - absorption - involvement
Sensitivity – creativity
Self expression - communication
Improvisation - learning
Experience and discovery

A joyful experimental floating between senses – organs - mind - soul through the vibration and radiation of great music.

Learning universal values of truth, beauty, honesty, trust, hope, confidence, pity, respect, humility, love in an expressive freedom.

Self expression and creative communication helped by free movement, improvised choreography, spontaneous dramatization, singing, painting, and modeling.

I don’t teach skills for music or knowledge about it. I teach inner attention through concentration on pure music and awaken the ability to absorb its beauty and universal truth. We don’t use conventional, traditional oral or instrumental training methods. Neither do we train the senses or the so called musical capacities. Instead of a usual, sequential step by step training, we offer abundant opportunities for imagination, developing a strong desire for individual learning and challenge the senses toward discovery. This is what we refer to as our “dancing”.

We drink from music’s pure fountain, let it circulate in our veins, palpitate in our heart. Music’s magnificent vibration penetrates into our bones, fluids, and intestines. It enhances our breathing, reaching and enriching our very existence.

My nine year old student, Orsi, said simply, “Music raises my arms, my hands and plays with them.” This is what we call dancing. It is free movement with spontaneously improvised content and choreography, either alone or with chosen partners. The music piece is short and repeated again and again until the unknown becomes familiar, close, bright, clear, and finally our own.

Our learning circumstances are different from those in schools: we don't evaluate, compare, direct, dictate, or order. We inspire, we offer chances, we appreciate and trust. We challenge with great music not hesitating to dance to Bach's fugues, Kodály’s string quartet, to Bartók’s concerto, music composed for concert audiences.

Our spontaneous, silent movements may fit into the patterns of rhythm, beat, melody, harmony, phrases or motives, accents, pauses, timbre, tempo or sonority ….that is: the “body” of music presented to us as a special vibration-cloud. But, because we are body and soul interwoven, our spirit also receives the message which is resonating in the internal organs.

On secret pathways of our blood, hormones and other vibrating liquids, our absorbed music piece carries its content over to our emotions, to our subconscious, and to our memory.

Our spiritual eyes open up to its universal messages. We recognize ourselves in the composition and become part of it.

Thus, we become able to choose images of our subconscious and look at them in the shining light of the recognized genius.

Is music a therapeutic force? It can be, when needed. Is it therapy for the sick? For the handicapped? No, it is therapy for all of us. Great music shields us from the crass, chaotic and commercial trends. Pure music is a magic fluid; it cleans, purifies, revitalizes, and renews our hope and trust. It strengthens our spiritual muscles and vitalizes our nerves.

It may open a path for our painful hidden secrets. Its light can penetrate innermost shadows and while vibrating through the bones it may shake off any gloomy darkness in the soul.

Because the musical genius creates out of the truth, the composition helps us recognize what is not truth and rejoice in that which is. Because the universal message for humans is pity and unlimited acceptance, it may fill our soul with more sympathy and understanding. Too, because the masterpiece is born of a deep joy and a deep pain, it resonates these feelings.

Does it do this for all alive? No, it does not. Highly trained professionals may be poor in virtues, even morals. Thousands and millions simply analyze, memorize, and perform. Thousands and millions in audiences just listen and go. How do you learn to give yourself to the experience, the event of a masterpiece? How do you throw yourself into the air, the water, the element? With a happy heart to share. With a joyful spirit to explore the unknown and re-explore the familiar. All you need is security and protection. Somebody has to offer it to you. That is teaching music the way I see it.

Is it for each teacher? No, it is not. Neither is it for exceptional talents only. Is it for every child? No, it is not. Neither is it for a selected few.

Julia, my pupil from Taiwan, once asked me to teach her my free spirit. Through our shared catharsis (an event with a Bach fugue), she was able to open her spirit. We may discover our wings on our own, maybe inspired, maybe helped, but never by imitating or being directed.

 METHOD

No competition, no evaluation, no comparison to others helps the free blooming of creativity. Music helps self-expression and communication with its fluency, rhythm, and vibration. The inner vibration of the body and that of certain music is integrated in vibration. Expressive free movements, creative choreography-improvisation, focused attention of non-verbal communication (gestures, mime, eye-contact) are incorporated. In the process of discovery, sounds are the basic information and offer variant stimuli in selected and timely shaped pieces.

Because none of the given music’s features are explained or emphasized by the teacher, the children choose, select, and orient themselves according to their own wishes and creative instincts. During the repetition of the piece (only one piece is presented at each session), one has the chance to deepen or sink into the piece following its characteristics by reacting naturally and instinctively. The child may choose among the characteristics presented in the music according to his own wishes or momentary needs.

The child remains involved because of his own goals: he is listening for his movement composition, at first for its preparation and planning, then for its performance.

He is involved through his

l.  listening
2. free movements
3. creative thought, findings, and ideas
4. imagination
5. innermost discoveries
6. identification with nature and nature’s creations
7. communication with creative partners
8. shared composition developed with the help of expressive free movements, gestures, eye-contact, or mime.

During the process of sensoric-activities he develops his formerly neglected senses.

1. Orally he
a. sharpens his ear for refined sound-vibrations
b. strengthens his musical memory
c. develops his inner ear
d. refines his musical expectation

2. Physically he
a. elaborates his movements in order to express his imagination
b. refines and coordinates his movements to fit the music in fresh improvisation.
c. consciously learns to absorb music with the whole body (“music raises my arms and plays with them”)

3. In singing he
a. learns proper breathing
b. discovers his vocal chords (the balanced use of the vocal apparatus)
c. the joy of sound-producing in a creative way
d. the good connection between hearing and appropriate sound making. He sings properly.

4. Mentally he
a. focuses his concentration
b. sharpens his sense of structure, form, sameness - similarity - difference, repetition, and new appearance
c. discovers abstractions and general rules
d. links his own ideas and fantasy-images to the discovered shapes, forms, structures, and sound images
e. recognizes appropriate partners adequately fitting his needs in creative action
f. learns challenges with difficult music pieces far above his capacities for an instrumental performance (or, he is challenged by the difficulties of music pieces which are beyond his instrumental capacities)

5. Emotionally he
a. develops a positive attitude toward learning through his own inner discoveries
b. trusts his creative capacities
c. respects the inventions and creations of others
d. learns to invent and create together with partners, respecting their ideas and sharing his own without fear
e. identifies himself with the truth and beauty discovered in the musical piece
f. discovers his identity in the world of art
g. searches out his own characteristics, innermost feelings, strengths and weaknesses
h. faces his subconscious memories
i. presents them in fantasy images (transfiguration, transformation) movement compositions, dramatizations, paintings, modeling, stories, poetry, etc.
j. discovers universal messages in great compositions

We can touch the universal chord, feel it, grasp it, and hang on to it. Thus, we can orient ourselves in hope, trust, respect, humility, honesty, joy and love in representations of masterpieces.