Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2014). Dalcroze and animate life. Mind, Music, and Language, 1, 1-12.

Dalcroze and Animate Life

Maxine Sheets-Johnstone

University of Oregon

ABSTRACT

Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2014). Dalcroze and animate life. Mind, Music, and Language, 1, A1 (pp. 1-12). http://mindmusicandlanguage.org/2014-sheets-johnstone-dalcroze-and-animate-life/

Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2014). Dalcroze and animate life. Mind, Music, and Language, 1, A1 (pp. 1-12). http://mindmusicandlanguage.org/2014-sheets-johnstone-dalcroze-and-animate-life/ © 2014 Maxine Sheets-Johnstone

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I look forward to a system of musical education in which the body itself shall play the role of intermediary between sounds and thought, becoming in time the direct medium of our feelings – aural sensations being

reinforced by all those called into being by the multiple agents of vibration and resonance lying dormant in our bodies; the breathing system punctuating the rhythms of words, muscular dynamics interpreting those dictated

by musical emotions. The child will thus be taught at school not only to sing, listen carefully, and keep time, but also to move and to think accurately and rhythmically. (Dalcroze 1921, p. 8)

Muscles were made for movement, and rhythm is movement. (Dalcroze 1921, p. 82)

What makes music expressive? What gives life to successions of musical sounds? Movement, rhythm.

(Dalcroze 1921, p. 101)

Animation is definitive of the biological Kingdom Animalia, the Kingdom to which humans and more than 99

million other species of life belong. Animate forms of life move and in moving create qualitative dynamics that

are kinesthetically experienced by the animate form that is moving, and kinetically experienced visually and

auditorily (and even tactilely as we shall see) by those who are attentive to it. Its qualitative dynamics are

meaningful; they are semantically charged in straightforwardly significant ways as well as subtle and complex

ways both to the animate form itself and to those attentive to it. Animation is not only a linguistic affirmation

of aliveness as opposed to deadness, but a linguistic affirmation of movement. Species within the Kingdom

Animalia move; even sessile ones do at the beginning of their lives. Given their ubiquity on this earth and given

the moving earth itself and the integral moving bodies that constitute the earth itself – bodies of water as large

as oceans and as small as raindrops, to say nothing of the air we breathe that manifests itself in fluttering

branches and howling winds – movement clearly warrants our attention.

To understand movement it is necessary to begin by eschewing those wayward definitions of

movement that deflate it and turn instead to those dynamics that are its living reality. This initial turning of

attention to the phenomenon’s living reality is akin to the beginning steps of a phenomenological methodology

in that it confronts the actual experiential nature of the phenomenon in question. In turn, it has the possibility

of bracketing all manner of received wisdom, all assumptions, all preconceived beliefs about the phenomenon.

For example, though received wisdom tells us otherwise, movement is erroneously defined as a “change of

position.” In such a definition movement is necessarily linked to objects in motion, objects which may indeed

have a starting and an ending position. It is, however, that un-elucidated “change” that constitutes movement

and our experience of movement. When a fully blown balloon, for example, is purposefully untied and allowed

to splutter about, it creates a particular qualitative kinetic dynamic. While the balloon is clearly an object in

motion, what we experience in attending to what we verbally label “spluttering” is a vigorous, erratic, highly

punctuated, wholly capricious flow of movement that ends in a sudden collapsing stillness. What captures our

attention and is at the heart of our experience is movement, not a balloon in motion. We experience a

qualitative kinetic dynamic. In short, movement is not equivalent to a change of position and neither are


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understandings of movement equivalent to understandings of objects in motion. Movement is equivalent to

movement tout court.

A further example of the way in which received wisdom, assumptions, and preconceived beliefs

compromise movement centers on space and time. Movement is not simply a force in time and in space. When

commonly so conceived and described, the integral dynamics of movement itself go unrecognized. In

particular, we fall short of acknowledging and grasping the inherent dynamics of its complex spatio-temporal-

energic structure. Certainly a walk across the street is a walk in space, a walk that takes place in time, and a walk

that involves a measurable degree of force or energy. But the walk across the street is a dynamic phenomenon

in and of itself, meaning that it creates its own spatiality, temporality, and energy in its very execution or

performance. The walk might be slow and proceed with small mincing steps, for example; it might be rushed

and proceed with long forward strides; it might veer off suddenly to right or left; it might be vigorously or

lethargically energized; and so on. In short, a walk – any walk – has spatial, temporal, and energic contours. By

the very nature of its movement, it is a particular qualitatively-inflected dynamic through and through.

Moreover, its contours may be changed at any moment. We might be surprised by the sight of a friend ahead

and spontaneously change our walk to a run, at the same time raising our arms and opening them in

anticipation of a warm greeting; or we might get caught up in the dread we feel about the meeting we are about

to attend, slump down, slacken our pace, even pause and shudder. In short, the qualitative kinetic dynamics of

everyday movement are always mutable: we can change those kinetic dynamics virtually at will, which is to say

that space, time, and force are inherent in any movement. In effect, when we move, we are not simply moving

in time and in space, but creating a spatio-temporal-energic qualitative dynamic, a dynamic that we experience

and that is readily experienced or open to experience by those around us. (Relate 7:30 a.m. dance class with

H’Doubler.)

Aristotle was eloquently insightful not only when he observed, “Nature is a principle of motion and

change,” but when he immediately urged thereafter, “We must therefore see that we understand what motion

is; for if it were unknown, nature too would be unknown” (Physics 200b12-200b14). In her book God’s Hotel: A

Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine, medical doctor Victoria Sweet (2012) recalls Aristotle in

singular ways. She writes of anima, the classic Aristotelian term for soul. In lieu of soul, however, she conceives

anima as “the invisible force that animates the body, that moves it, not only willfully but also unconsciously – all

those little movements that the living body makes all the time. The slight tremor of the fingers, the pounding of

the heart that shakes the living frame once a second, the gentle rise and fall of the chest. Those movements by

which we perceive that someone is alive. Anima, ancient medicine had observed, is just as absent from the dead

body as spiritus” (Sweet 2012, p. 3).

Sweet’s (2012) medical practice is literally enlivened by anima, by her own anima and by her

recognition of the presence or absence of anima in her patients. Her description of efforts to resuscitate a dying


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man where standard efforts to resuscitate were denied by the administration of the hospital where she worked

is remarkable. With a colleague, she instigates “ancient measures”: “I called Meng Tam’s name [Meng Tam is

the patient’s name], and I shook him, and Dr. Mack started to move his legs. I even slapped his face a few

times. And sure enough, Meng Tam’s pulse returned; it became quite steady; and then his eyes opened and

stayed open, staring at me […] In my first autopsy I’d been surprised by the difference between the dead body

and the live Mr. Baker I’d known. There was something missing – that I missed, and that I’d missed. And now

with Mr. Tam I’d caught it; seen it go toward death, stop, change its mind, and come back. I’d seen anima –

that which animates the body and the mind” (pp. 311-312).

Anima and dynamics go hand in hand. They pulse through us, inside and out, which is to say that the

dynamics of a whole living body pulse through all forms of animation. The dynamics of breath pulse through

our movement, for example. Those dynamics are or can be alive with meaning, with import, with a bodily felt

resonance and a bodily apparent resonance. Consider, for example, two insightful observations of Sir Charles

Bell made close to 170 years ago. In his third edition of The Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression, published in

1844, Sir Charles noted that “the first sound of fear is in drawing, not in expelling the breath; for at that instant

to depress or contract the chest would be to relax the muscles of the arms and enfeeble their exertion.” To

make the point more strongly, Sir Charles asks the reader to imagine two men wrestling in the dark, asking

whether “the violence of their efforts” would not be apparent from the sounds they make: “The short

exclamation choked in the act of exertion, the feeble and stifled sounds of their breathing, would let us know

that they turned, and twisted, and were in mortal strife” (Bell 1844, pp. 190-191).

Anima and dynamics. We breathe in and out. Our breath rises and falls. A built-in fundamental binary

rhythm is at the heart of our being. That fundamental binary rhythm is mirrored morphologically in two arms,

two legs, two hands, two feet, two eyes, two ears, two breasts, two testicles, two lungs, two nostrils, two hip

joints, and so on. It is moreover mirrored in our natural bipedality and in our consequent natural binary rhythm

in walking and in swinging our arms in walking. Our natural bipedality anchors our conceptual three-

dimensional bodily specification of up/down, forward/back, side/side. At a virtually open-ended conceptual

level, it might be said to support if not anchor a disposition toward dynamic binary oppositions generally, as in

weak/strong, near/far, in/out, fast/slow, tight/loose, straight/curved, sharp/blunt, and so on, and in a more

extended sense, a disposition toward binary affective oppositional pairings such as happy/sad,

certain/doubtful, dauntless/ fearful, and so on, particularly in terms of either a contractive or expansive felt

body. When it comes to animation and the possibilities of animate movement, it is in fact instructive to hone in

on bipedality, and this because humans are not the only bipedal creatures. Long ago, I wrote an article titled

“Evolutionary Residues and Uniquenesses in Human Movement” that was published in the journal Evolutionary

Theory (Sheets-Johnstone 1983). I mention it here to call attention not to my writings but to evolutionary facts

of life. In that article, I pointed out the seemingly limitless possibilities afforded to human movement in virtue


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of bipedality, what Russian physiologist Nicolas Bernstein aptly termed “degrees of freedom.” I noted in

particular how bipedality sizably expanded our possibilities in ballistic movement, movement that has an initial

impulse and that then travels on its own in virtue of its initial force, the momentum generated by that initial

force, and gravity. Skipping is one such example of ballistic movement; kicking is another; arm swinging is

another. Bipedality is integral to such movements. It frees not only arms and legs but torso and head – the

whole body – in myriad ways and opens a path toward seemingly endless movement possibilities, including but

not limited to ballistic movement. Mentioned earlier was an important observation attaching to this freedom,

namely that humans are not the only bipedal creatures. They are furthermore not the only ones to improvise

and play with movement possibilities. These evolutionary facts of animate life warrant recognition, and in fact

not just verbal recognition but real-life exemplification.

[VIDEO LINK: Sulfur-crested cockatoo]

You’ve just seen a sulphur-crested cockatoo dancing to the music of Ray Charles. Experimental

studies of birds moving in conjunction with music show that, as one reporter put it, some birds do have

“rhythm.” In particular, the reporter wrote that after studying a cockatoo that moved in relation to a piece of

popular music, “scientists say they’ve documented for the first time that some animals ‘dance’ to a musical

beat” (Ritter 2009). According to these scientists, “fourteen species of parrots (and one species of elephant)

have been found to move their heads rhythmically in conjunction with music, their bobbing heads being

synchronized with the musical beat” (Ritter 2009). Nothing further is mentioned of the one species of elephant,

but we might note with respect to elephants the import of freely hanging parts that allow ballistic movement.

Rhythmic possibilities are inherent in such parts. When a sulphur-crested cockatoo – a species of parrot – was

donated to the Bird Lovers Only Rescue Service in the state of Indiana in the U.S., “he was accompanied by a

CD noting that he particularly liked a song performed by the Backstreet Boys. When the song was played,

Snowball [the sulphur-crested cockatoo] began to bob to the beat, raising his legs, strutting and extending his

crest in a ‘dance’” (New York Times 2009; Patel et al. 2009).

Now rhythmical movement is commonly conceived as movement that flows forth with certain

accents along an unfolding continuum, precisely as in rhythmical head movements in conjunction with music.

In finer terms, however, rhythm is an inherent dimension of movement, specifically, the tensional and

projectional qualities of movement that describe its manner of release – sustained, abrupt, ballistic, collapsing –

and its intensity. Rhythm is thus readily experienced kinesthetically and readily observed visually. Rather than

investigating these kinesthetic and kinetic realities of rhythm and of movement generally, many if not most

scientists find the ability of an animal to move in relation to the sounds that it hears to be a matter of brain

circuitry. They in fact, state that,” the brain circuitry that allows animals to move to a musical beat is the same

as the brain circuitry that “lets people learn to talk, and evidently also to dance or tap their toes to music” (New

York Times 2009). In effect, not only are the inherent qualitative dynamics of movement ignored, but in


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essence, movement is regarded no more than an appendage to language. Obviously, the focal point of attention

of these scientists is not on understandings of the relationship of music to dance in terms of movement,

rhythm, accent, and so on, nor, to begin with, the relationship of movement to morphology, namely, that birds,

like humans, are bipedal. Such scientists instead fix their attention on what in today’s neuroscience amounts to

the oracle at Delphi, namely, “the brain,” the place to which all questions concerning humans are addressed

and from which all bona fide answers are sought. What should be of definitive interest and curiosity, namely,

movement and the relationship of movement or dance to music, gives way in present-day neuro- and cognitive

science to brain circuitry and language. Alas! Movement, dance, and music are nowhere on present-day neuro-

or cognitive scientists’ maps. The brain, they say, is simply “wired for dancing.”

Were he alive today, Charles Darwin would undoubtedly give far more edifying analyses of a bird’s

‘moving to a musical beat’, and this on the basis of bird song – what in his book The Descent of Man and Selection

in Relation To Sex he discusses over some 15 pages under the topic “Vocal and Instrumental Music” – and on

the basis of bird dances – what he discusses in the same book under the heading “Love-Antics and Dances”

(Darwin 1981). Although Darwin does not mention bipedality, he gives lucid, real-life descriptive analyses of

the songs and dances of birds and thus would eschew a reductionist explanation of a bird’s ability to move to a

musical beat. Indeed, he is at pains to describe in meticulous fashion the physiologies and morphologies that

allow vocal and instrumental music, “instrumental” music being made by a rattling of quills, for example, as

with peacocks and birds of paradise, for instance, or a drumming of lower wings on tree trunks or against the

body, as with grouse and pheasants, for instance (Darwin 1981, pp. 61-62). Toward the end of his examples

and discussions thereof, Darwin puts the rhythmic or musical facts of bird life into evolutionary perspective,

specifically into the perspective of sexual selection. He states, “It is not difficult to imagine the steps by which

the notes of a bird, primarily used as a mere call or for some other purpose, might have been improved into a

melodious love-song. This is somewhat more difficult in the case of the modified feathers, by which the

drumming, whistling, or roaring noises are produced. But we have seen that some birds during the courtship

flutter, shake, or rattle their unmodified feathers together; and if the females were led to select the best

performers, the males which possessed the strongest or thickest, or most attenuated feathers, situated on any

part of the body, would be the most successful; and thus by slow degrees the feathers might be modified to

almost any extent. The females, of course, would not notice each slight successive alteration in shape, but only

the sounds thus produced. It is a curious fact that in the same class of animals, sounds so different as the

drumming of the snipe’s tail, the tapping of the wood-pecker’s beak, the harsh trumpet-like cry of certain

water-fowl, the cooing of the turtle-dove, and the song of the nightingale, shall all be pleasing to the females of

the several species. But we must not judge the tastes of distinct species by a uniform standard; nor must we

judge by the standard of man’s taste” (Darwin 1981, pp. 67). His second injunction is of particular import given

“man’s” present-day reductionist “tastes.” Indeed, Darwin wrote, “Experience shows the problem of the mind


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cannot be solved by attacking the citadel itself – the mind is function of body – we must bring some stable

foundation to argue from” (Darwin in Barrett et al. 2009, pp. 564). I have elsewhere shown how this stable

foundation is movement. “What!” someone might exclaim. “How can movement be the stable foundation? It

won’t stay still!” Precisely, I would answer. Animate minds are on the move in relation to themselves and the

world about them. In a word, they don’t stay still. They are in fact mindful bodies on the move (Sheets-

Johnstone 2011).

A further observation is of note. Darwin (1981) observes that “nothing is more common than for

animals to take pleasure in practicing whatever instinct they follow at other times for some real good […]

Singing is to a certain extent, as shown in a previous chapter, an art, and is much improved by practice. Birds

can be taught various tunes, and even the unmelodious sparrow has learnt to sing like a linnet. They acquire the

song of their foster-parents, and sometimes that of their neighbours” (pp. 54, 55). Moreover three further

observations are briefly notable. The first concerns Darwin’s fine-grained specifications of insect music. He

begins his section on the biological Order Homoptera, for example, with the following observation: “Everyone

who has wandered in a tropical forest must have been astonished at the din made by the male Cicadae […] The

sound […] is produced by the vibration of the lips of the spiracles, which are set into motion by a current of air

emitted from the tracheae. It is increased by a wonderfully complex resounding apparatus, consisting of two

cavities covered by scales. Hence the sound may truly be called a voice” (Darwin 1981, pp. 350-351). The

second observation concerns amphibians. In remarking upon “the musical powers possessed by the males,”

Darwin states, “[T]o speak of music, when applied to the discordant and overwhelming sounds emitted by male

bull-frogs and some other species, seems, according to our taste, a singularly inappropriate expression.

Nevertheless certain frogs sing in a decidedly pleasing manner. Near Rio de Janeiro I used often to sit in the

evening to listen to a number of little Hylae, which, perched on blades of grass close to the water, sent forth

sweet chirping notes in harmony” (Darwin 1981, pp. 27). Finally, it is notable that psychologist Havelock Ellis

elaborates in thoughtful and culturally-cognizant ways what Darwin first described under the heading “Love-

Antics and Dances” and later simply as male “love-dances.” In particular, Ellis bases his thesis that the “love

dances” of courting males – insects as well as birds – are the forerunners of human dance precisely on

Darwin’s research (cf. Ellis 1976; Darwin 1981; for a full discussion cf. chapter 12 in Sheets-Johnstone 2005).

Clearly, species other than humans make music. Music is obviously made by moving and does not in

all instances require bipedality. In fact, when we consider ontogeny, our own human ontogeny, moving to a

musical beat does not require bipedality either. Again, this fact does not require simple verbal recognition but

real-life exemplification.

[VIDEO LINK: Infant]

Clearly, an upright stance is not required for improvisation. Even infants, who by definition do not

speak, can be motivated to move when they hear music. What grounds this motivation? Is it not the fact that


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we are affected kinetically by what we hear or see or feel? We are in other words moved to move. We are

receptive to the world around us, though that receptivity is surely not always positive. We may be motivated to

turn away as well as toward objects or events in our surrounding world. Unless we are feigning or restraining

our movement, there is a natural dynamic congruency between our affective feelings – our emotions – and our

everyday movement. Indeed, we could hardly feign an emotion, smiling and opening our arms in the semblance

of a fond feeling which we do not in the least feel, nor could we restrain our already tightening fists and felt

urge to strike someone if our fists were not already clenched or in the process of clenching and if we did not

already precisely feel that felt urge. Music moves us to move not only because of its rhythmic patternings but

because of its tonalities, its harmonies, its crescendos and diminuendos, and much more. It has, like our bodies

ourselves, vitality affects. Vitality affects are a descriptive term that infant psychiatrist and clinical psychologist

Daniel Stern. He describes them as follows:

“[M]any qualities of feeling that occur do not fit into our existing lexicon or taxonomy of affects.

These elusive qualities are better captured by dynamic, kinetic terms, such as ‘surging’, ‘fading away’, ‘fleeting’,

‘explosive’, ‘crescendo’, ‘decrescendo’, ‘bursting’, ‘drawn out’, and so on. These qualities of experience are most

certainly sensible to infants and of great daily, even momentary, importance. It is these feelings that will be

elicited by changes in motivational states, appetites, and tensions […] The different forms of feeling elicited by

these vital processes impinge on the organism most of the time. We are never without their presence, whether

or not we are conscious of them, while ‘regular’ affects come and go.” Stern goes on to say that ‘infant

experiences these qualities from within, as well as in the behavior of other persons” – for example, in “how

mother picks up baby” “grooms her hair or the baby’s hair.” He furthermore adds that “The infant is

immersed in these ‘feelings of vitality’. Examining them further will let us enrich the concepts and vocabulary,

too impoverished for present purposes, that we apply to nonverbal experiences” (Stern 1985, p. 54).

We are precisely affected by the vitality affects of music. We are precisely moved by music because

music itself moves. It is not simply a temporal art form but a moving form of art. The felt sense of the vitality

affects of that moving form of art move us in concordant affective ways. When music moves us literally to

move, it moves us along its qualitative affective/kinetic dynamics, precisely as we have seen in the infant video

and as we saw earlier, it moves other animate forms to move along its qualitative affective/kinetic dynamics,

precisely as in the sulfur-crested cockatoo video. It is important to call attention specifically however to the

infant’s position. In particular, in their easy and comfortable half-sitting, half-reclining position, infants can kick

their legs and fling their arms about. Their degrees of freedom with respect to arms and legs are quite

extraordinary with respect not only to other animate forms of life but with respect to human adults who, unless

they were dancers or gymnasts, for example, would be hard put to kick their and fling their arms about as the

infant in the video does. That said, when it comes to making music, the possibilities and actual accomplishment

of movement in a sitting posture are extraordinary.


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When we are at a concert and are attentive to the various members of the orchestra playing their

instruments, we experience extraordinary subtleties and complexities in human movement. In all instances,

musicians are doing two things at once – three, of course, if we count breathing. String players are fingering

and bowing; wind players are fingering and blowing, or blowing and pulling back and pushing forward as

trombonists do; the pianist is doing one thing with one hand and quite another with the other; percussionists

are striking with one mallet or stick while momentarily holding the other. While a conductor like a cymbalist

moves his or her arms in sync with one another, a conductor more frequently gestures singly with one arm or

differently and concurrently with both arms. In short, musicians are gifted through and through in complex

and subtle coordination dynamics (Kelso 1995). Doing two things at once when playing an instrument such as

bowing and fingering on the violin, blowing and fingering on the trumpet, or pedaling and hitting on drums, is,

as noted, complimented by a third movement, namely, breathing which adjusts itself naturally to the flow of the

music. Though breathing is not voluntarily initiated and carried out, it is involuntarily of a piece with the

playing of the instrument. Indeed the vitality affects of one’s breath are of a piece with the vitality affects of the

music one is playing. Think of a pianist coming down in a rapid and percussive series of chords […] is she or

he inhaling or exhaling?

It is relevant in this context to point out the relationship of breath to music when no instrument is

being played. An opera singer is particularly challenged to work with breath along with his and her very

production of sound – its pitch, its intensity, its timbre, and so on. It is rhythmically of interest, of course, that

breathing is binary. Whatever is vocalized in singing must necessarily accord with that basic binary rhythm.

Thus, however elongated or truncated each voluntarily made vocalized sound in terms of the demands of the

aria, melody, or song being sung, its temporal flow and amplitude must be concordant with the possible

temporal flow and amplitude of breath. It is relevant to note further that in addition to their musical

significance, the cadences and flow of breath are or can be significant in and of themselves. As Sir Charles

reminds us in describing two men wrestling in the dark, “The short exclamation choked in the act of exertion,

the feeble and stifled sounds of their breathing, would let us know that they turned, and twisted, and were in

mortal strife.” Moreover the limitations of breath are equally notable. As we ourselves might realize, it is

impossible to sound a note, all energized and buoyant, and inhale at the same, just as it is impossible to jump,

all energized and buoyant, and exhale at the same time. Clearly, inhaling and exhaling are of fundamental

import in the making of music and dance and may present formidable challenges to a performing dancer as to a

performing musician.

When we duly recognize the fundamental import of movement, vitality affects, and breath, we readily

recognize that whether it is a matter of making music or dancing – or wrestling – the whole body is involved

and further, that in the making of music in particular, there is a complex of both involuntary and spontaneous

bodily movements and sound-making movements. Indeed, the spontaneous movement of musicians in


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performance involves the whole body in striking and unique ways. Performing musicians lean forward,

backward, and even sideways; they shake their heads; they press down with their feet – and not just pianists in

the process of pedaling; and so on. We may in fact well wonder to what degree we as audience implicitly read

the dynamics of their spontaneously performing bodies in conjunction with the dynamics of the music they are

making and that we are hearing. To my knowledge, no one has studied these spontaneous movements and their

naturally synchronized dynamics. Except perhaps by way of a funny and fun-poking Monty Python skit, it is

difficult to imagine their dis-synchronization.

I would like now to relate three basic themes of which I have spoken – movement, vitality affects, and

breath – to Dalcroze’s writings and practice and this in order to emphasize the cogency of Dalcroze’s work to

education in music, dance, and art generally. Dalcroze wrote of movement, breath, and of emotions – the latter

similar to if not the exact equivalents of the “qualities of feeling” that Stern describes as vitality affects – all in

relation to music and music education, and all of them themselves intermeshed. For example, in detailing the

importance of what he termed “restor[ing] living or moving plastic” – meaning restoring our awareness of

bodily movement and its possibilities – Dalcroze listed study “of the effects of breathing on the different parts

of the organism, both from the dynamic and from the spatial point of view.” He further specified the

importance of studying “the relations between the effect of breathing on the expansion and contraction of the

limbs in the vocal emission of sound, where spoken or sung” (1930, pp. 18-19). He wrote of “the art of

musical ‘breathing.’ (1921, p. 137). With respect to movement itself, we should note that though he never

mentions kinesthesia, Dalcroze definitively emphasizes its seminal import over and over again, whether in

terms of “muscle sense,” “muscular sensations” (1930, p. 116; 1921, p. 137), “muscular dynamics” (1921, p.

207), “muscle consciousness” (1930, p. 151) or in more removed neurological “motor” talk. He is at pains to

emphasize the value of freeing movement from disciplinary strictures, be they of classical ballet, gymnastics, or

physical education that limit the exploration of new paths, that thus limit creativity. His emphasis is indeed on

“freedom of expression” (Dalcroze 1930, p. 61) and on the pursuit of “artistic emotion” (Dalcroze 1930, p. 61).

If, as he writes, “emotion of an aesthetic order [is] created by the harmonies and counterpoints of movements”

(Dalcroze 1930, p. 42), then it is surely up to each of us to take up the challenge that our very animation poses

to us, namely, to educate ourselves from the bottom up as it were, that is, take into account the bodies we are

and the bodies we are not, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically, and to resonate sufficiently in those

awarenesses and understandings to arrive at ever deepening understandings of the kinetic dynamics that ground

our lives and that are at the heart of artistic creation. As Dalcroze realized, those dynamics – realized in rhythm,

in continuous movement, in what he termed “the technique of moving plastic,” that is, in the actual and

potential plasticity of living bodies, and in a host of other dimensions of animation – those dynamics are at the

heart of making music. They are all – each of them – open to study. Hence they are all dimensions that can be

part of a child’s education.


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Dalcroze (1930) lamented that “Unfortunately, the aim of education is often considered to be the

developing of children to maturity in the shortest possible time: education hastens to make them into men.

This is a noble aim, and undoubtedly the educator’s task is largely to depart from the present in order to

prepare and assure the future, but is it not of primary importance to assure the present and to allow the child to

develop all the qualities of his age, to procure for him the innocent joys which should keep alive his freshness

and his curiosity?” (p. 83). In this age of information and emphasis on the brain, we would do well as educators

to anchor ourselves in keeping freshness and curiosity alive. Through such anchorage, we keep receptivity and

responsivity alive. In fact, we have the possibility of keeping it alive in relation to Nature in the fullest sense –

to the sound and sight of surging ocean waves and of roaring and whistling winds, to the patter of raindrops

and to the wavings and flutterings of tree leaves and branches, to the fact that seedlings grow, that plants turn

toward the sun, that tree cuts heal themselves, and so on.

Dalcroze (1930) comments further that “The object of education is to enable pupils to say at the end

of their studies, not ‘I know,’ but ‘I experience,’ and then to create the desire for self-expression” (ibid. p. 58). But

to be noted too is that just a page later he states, “The object of art studies is not solely to educate artists

capable of communicating aesthetic impressions to the public; they also aim at forming a public able to

appreciate the artistic representations offered to it, to unite with them and be vividly conscious of the emotions

manifested in them” (p. 59). Clearly, what Dalcroze envisions is a humanity alive to its natural artistic

proclivities and possibilities.

In sum, by keeping the fullest sense of Nature in mind, what we learn from the study of animate life

and of human nature in particular is precisely that the origin of music and dance, and indeed, the very concept

of music and dance, both owe much to our morphology and to the degrees of freedom inherent in that

morphology. We are richly endowed to make music and to dance in virtue of the fact that we stand not on all

fours, but on two legs and have a spinal column unique in the world of both primates and avians. Whatever our

cultural heritage and cultural groomings, however those heritages and groomings have been expressed in music

and dance, and at whatever point in time we find ourselves in relation to our cultural history and groomings,

our cultural heritage and groomings have their foundation in Nature. Indeed, our human morphology and the

same qualitative dynamic structure of movement bind us all in a common humanity across all cultures,

whatever their historical period. This natural perspective accords with Dalcroze’s (1930) observation that

“From its birth, music has registered the rhythms of the human body of which it is the complete and idealized

sound image,” and that emotions are tethered to these rhythms (p. 7).


Sheets-Johnstone 12

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Documents

Transcript of Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2014). Dalcroze and animate life. Mind, Music, and Language, 1, 1-12.