Wonderflower
From the Series “With Babies”
1. Q: Do children tell you what parts of the music they associate with the parts of the story they dance?
A: Sometimes they do. Like: “when this low sound came” or “when the music became soft” or “when the music cried out”. They listen to music very seriously, and they memorize it due to the repetition.
2. Q: Do you know how they memorize it?
A: I can only guess but they memorize differently than we adults do. We learn the important guidelines, and memorize consciously.
3. Q: Whereas they are not conscious?
A: There are many fine passages between instinctive and conscious attention, I would compare it to the nervure of a leaf. If we take a careful look at it, the small nerves are almost dancing. They run into one another, swishing, telling tales, joyfully. They work, they bring food and liquids, but they don’t grudge as we do during work.
4. Q: We think work and fun are separate functions.
A: Yes, we do. Work done as an obligation is like that, it has to be shaken off and forgotten the sooner the better. Then we should have a different attitude in order to have fun. The experience of learning is similar.
5. Q: Do we learn because we must learn?
A: It is considered at the least a serious obligation. We have to put such effort into it and it can feel burdensome. When we are interested in the subject, which sometimes happens, then the effort is not a burden. They often ask me when I “switch to conscious work”?
6. Q: Well, when do you switch to conscious work?
A: Never. I hate the expression, in the joy of music you do not need to do this. Music makes listeners conscious on its own, by sounding and resounding. It speaks with its vibrations. My children receive it in this way.
7. Q: Shouldn’t they know the name of the composer or the essential data related to the piece? These things belong to musical culture, don’t they?
A: You can read these in any good library, and those who are interested will read them. I read such things myself, and I love reading them. But children listen to music differently: differently and for different reasons, not only the little babies.
8. Q: Perhaps their free movements reflect some course of attention? They listen differently because they are allowed to move?
A: Are you too beginning to see? This is the same notion that I am thinking about. It may be that as they gather and use their creative energies with so much strength, such intensity that even their learning of music takes place in a particular and special way.
9. Q: Do they think of “themes” or the structure of the piece while they are dancing?
A: I don’t know whether they do or not. They hardly think about such things “consciously”, because I never talk about such things to them.
10. Q: You don’t even say that this is a rondeau movement or a variation?
A: I would never say such things, not even for primary school children. There may be older children in the group who happen to know these things from somewhere, but I don’t think that is what they are thinking about during dancing.
11. Q: Well, what are they thinking about then?
A: I try to do my best to get to know some of that. It would be unbelievably exciting to look into their little heads. If you read the transcripts of my classes, you can see how I try to approximate their thoughts with my questions. If I am lucky they say a couple of things.
Wonderflower
13 May 1986 Resedas
Händel: Partenope, overture
Ági: When the music started, with that low sound, we were a simple little egg. Then when the music continued we fell to three pieces, and all three of us became fairies. Yes, but a witch cursed us so that we wouldn’t be able to live like fairies and dance until we have plucked the wonderflower. Unfortunately, that happened to be impossible, because we did not know what it was and where we could find it. We were sad about this. As I was there feeling sad I plucked a little flower by chance and put it on my hat. At once I became softer and could dance as real fairies can. But the wonderflower did not only work wonders, but could make itself wonderful by growing again at the place where it was plucked – because there was only one wonderflower. This, however, could only be done three times. Fortunately, there were three of us, and all of us could pluck a flower. Then the wonderflower disappeared. All of us became soft like the other fairies. Toward the end of the music we started to feel drowsy, and by the end we fell asleep.
K: What do you mean you became soft?
Ági: We became like the other fairies. We did not use to be evil, but we looked rather old. We were benevolent, but it did not show on the outside, only inside, in our hearts. At the bottom of our hearts there was a little goodness.
K: And how did this goodness come out from the bottom of your hearts?
Ági: Well, it could come out because this witch
was not so powerful. She could only make us split into three, but she could not make goodness disappear.K: W
hat do you mean she could not make goodness disappear?
Ági: It was very-very difficult for her to do bad things, but fairies have some sort of magic power.
K: Where is this magic power from?
Ági: From the music, immediately with that low sound.
K: What did you agree on in advance?
Bori: We only agreed that it would be nice if we were fairies and plucked a wonderflower. Then we did everything relying on the music, on our ears.
Réka: Ági’s wonderflower was pink. Bori’s was white as snow, mine was light blue.
K: How do you know this?
Réka: I saw them.
12. Q: They were a simple little egg with the starting sound?
A: She says “that low sound”, she must remember the music. The egg is a nice symbol, we often play with it with babies, it has a good potential for variations. For them it meant that they were fairies. A very productive and varied state of being fairies at that, since they were not evil, only looked old. Benevolence did not show in their appearance, only in their hearts.
13. Q: What prompts this striving for goodness in your children?
A: I think such strivings are prompted in children elsewhere, too, but they never get expressed. In our classes, the joy of music prompts the need to express themselves: it is a higher need towards artistic beauty. At the same time it is a moral value for them.
14. Q: How do so many events find their place within one relatively short piece of music?
A: I am intrigued by their timing, too. I think it is an extraordinary intellectual achievement. They have to memorize the piece in a way that the events would find their place, for example, this “softening”. Had we recorded their dance on videotape, this could be precisely indicated in the score. If I edited such a film, I would emphasize this part, repeat it so that the viewer could study their movements.
15. Q: Why didn’t you make more recordings?
A: This question hits a nerve really painfully. In 1973 when I came back after three years of teaching in America, I was looking for possibilities to record my classes on videotape. In America I could see how they work with videos, each and every university had their studios. I knew exactly that my “invention”, spontaneous musical movement, may only be analysed with the help of recordings.
16. Q: What would such an analysis involve?
A: For example, in the case of the Wonderflower story the movements could be analysed: what happened to which musical motif? From these analyses it could be known what musical units children understand. Much later, Dr. Zsuzsa Pásztor made analyses of this type, when she had the time.
17. Q: Does this need much time?
A: It needs a lot of time. Zsuzsa learnt the piece by heart and then watched the one- or two-minute-long excerpt sixty or a hundred times. She just had a presentation on this at a conference in Pécs organized by Erika Fleck and her students.
18. Q: Why don’t the teachers you teach use video-recordings?
A: Such analyses need a wide range of skills. You have to be a trained musician with a stable aural and visual memory, and good verbal skills. On top of this you have to understand what we do, you have to know many scenes and variations.
19. Q: It sounds like a task for students training to be music teachers. A good task for their theses or dissertations perhaps?
A: Indeed. But I don’t teach would-be teachers, I only train already practicing pedagogues.
20. Q: You could have taught at universities in America, couldn’t you?
A: Of course, I was there near them. I wouldn’t have had to deal with the lack of equipment there. Still, everybody chooses a task for himself or herself, and I chose my task in Hungary. Let another generation do the analysis of video recordings.
21. Q: Do you find it important, though?
A: I think it is important, essential, if we are curious about our children’s musical abilities. It would provide much wider, and much more personal knowledge on this topic. It will radically change music education.
22. Q: Why don’t you urge it?
A: I never urge anything. I believe in it with all my strength. I have many plans and great colleagues. For example, the conference in Pécs that I have just mentioned was not by my urging but my believing in its importance. You see, Réka could see the colour of the wondeflowers, not only hers, but the other fairies’ too. She was four at the time. People, adults mostly, can only accept radically new inventions slowly. When they find out something new and unusual they take much time to consider it.
23. Q: Human life is short, don’t you take that into consideration?
A: It is not my concern to consider time. I have to deal with my own vocation. I believe that there will be people who continue what is valuable. In Ági’s story the witch was not so powerful. “She could not make the goodness disappear”.