Approaches To Music Educatio - LECTURE NOTES

Approaches to Music Education
What Is a Method?.
A music education, or any other type of education method, is a teaching approach that has: 1) an
identifiable underlying philosophy or set of principles; 2) a unified body of pedagogy unique to it
with a body of well-defined practice; 3) goals and objectives worthy of pursuit; and 4) integrity
(i.e., its reason for existence must not be commercial) (Chosky et al.).
Although these approaches are often taught in music education classes, they are highly
applicable, accessible, and integrated methods appropriate for anyone interested in working with
children and the arts, or music in education in addition to music education. All educators can
incorporate the basic techniques used in these methods as they offer creative, arts-driven
curricula through which to teach.
Method Similarities
The music methods of Jaques-Emile Dalcroze, Zoltan Kodály, Carl Orff, and S. Suzuki are time-
tested and contain well-practiced and researched techniques for teaching music. All of these
approaches to music learning contain fundamental similarities in that they:
 Are systematic and sequential in design;

 Utilize music with authenticity and integrity, such as folk music;
 Are based on incorporating the “mother-tongue” approach to rhythm, pitch, and timbre
from the child’s persepctive, innate behaviors and how interaction with their natural
environment; and
 Encourage active engagement with the student.
They are also “comprehensive and holistic [in preparing] children to be artists, creators, and
producers and not just consumers of music. They pair active and actual music-making with
conceptual learning experiences offered in a systematic approach” (Moore).
The holistic nature of these highly integrated approaches, is still conducive today for
implementation in an integrated arts program. This is due to the fact that their core identities,
particularly Orff and Dalcroze, contain elements of drama, movement, sound, and music.
Orff Schulwerk
Philosophy
Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather
play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will
find that what they have mastered is child’s play.
—Carl Orff
The Orff Schulwerk method is the only approach that is not a systematic “method” per se,
although it does entail fostering creative thinking through improvisational experiences. Rather
than a system, Schulwerk combines instruments, singing, movement, and speech to develop
children’s innate musical abilities. There are four stages of teaching:
 Imitation
 Exploration
 Improvisation
 Composition
Schulwerk is rooted in arts and subject integration. In the early 20th century, Carl Orff met
gymnastics and dance educator Dorothée Gunther and established an innovative school for
children based on the idea that all human beings are musical by nature.
Their approach was to combine movement (gymnastics), music, and dance. Orff developed the
concept of elemental music based on the synthesis of the arts of the Greek Muses, which
combined tone, dance, poetry, image, design, and theatrical gesture. Gunther and Orff’s
approach were to create a comfortable environment that approximates the child’s natural
world of play, thus allowing children to be introduced to a range of musical skills in a relaxed
and stress-free setting.
Carl Orff’s definition of elemental music is based on small-scale musical patterns (e.g., ostinato,
drone) familiar to the students.
What then is elemental music? Elemental music is never music alone but forms a unity with
movement, dance and speech. It is music that one makes oneself, in which one takes part not
as a listener, but as a participant. It is unsophisticated, employs no big forms and no big
architectural structures, and it uses small sequence forms, ostinato and rondo. Elemental
music is near the earth, natural, physical, within the range of everyone to learn it and
experience it and suitable for the child… (1963)
Orff Schulwerk utilizes children’s natural behaviors of play—experimenting, improvising—to
access children’s innate musicality. Schulwerk uses the native language, sounds, timbres,
rhythms, melodies, and tonal material surrounding the child, particularly in its folk music
repertoire. Similar to many of the other methods, the Orff Schulwerk emphasizes that children
should experience first and then analyze or intellectualize about music afterwards, and
encourages hands-on music-making regardless of skill level.
“Instrumentarium Orff-Schulwerk” By Société Studio 49 CC BY-SA 4.0
The Orff Instrumentarium
Orff believed that one of the easiest ways to encourage student participation in music while also
contributing to beautiful music-making is to have them play a simple accompaniment on a
xylophone. By second grade, most students will be able to keep a steady beat, with a fair number
able to do so by first grade. Below are some basic accompaniment patterns on the xylophone or
metallophone that students should be able to perform easily.
Orff as arts integration
One of Orff Schulwerk’s major contributions is its emphasis on arts integration. Orff includes
language (stories, poetry, rhythmic speech), movement (dance, improvisation), and drama as
well as music.
The Orff process
The American adaptation of Orff Schulwerk utilizes four stages to organize the process of
teaching music: imitation, exploration, improvisation, and composition. These four stages
establish the fundamental building blocks for children to develop musical literacy. They are
similar to Bloom’s taxonomy, in that they begin by introducing a very basic skill set and then
gradually move on to more complex activities such as composition, which is represented in the
upper phases of the taxonomy.
Parallels between Orff’s building blocks and Bloom’s taxonomy

Orff’s Building Blocks Bloom’s Taxonomy
Imitation Remember
Exploration Understand
Improvisation Apply
Composition Create, Analyze
1. Imitation: Echoing, responding
Imitation builds the student’s repertoire of pitches, rhythms, meter, tempo, and dynamics.
Students absorb the fundamental music materials for their “tool box” to be used in more
complex activities in the future.
2. Exploration
Students begin to understand and even apply the knowledge learned through imitation.
They hear the movement of pitches, the content of rhythms, the movement of meter, and
explore the timbre of whatever instrument or voice with which they have access. The
Orff Instrumentarium provides almost limitless possibilities for exploration.
3. Improvisation
After exploration and imitation, students not only understand, but also can apply some of
the possible combinations of rhythms and pitches, form and dynamics, etc., within a
musical framework.
4. Composition
Composing is a pinnacle of music-making in that the composer must also analyze the
musical material s/he is working with in order to create a new piece.
Applying the Orff approach developmentally
Schulwerk understands that to be an excellent musician, the art form must be highly familiar and
internalized to the point of being second nature. Through the practice of imitation, exploration,
improvisation, and composition, students learn what music is by performing.
Step 1: Preparation for instrument playing
Before playing instruments, Schulwerk requires that all sounds be internalized, or practiced on
and in the body. The voice is primary, and singing songs and speaking and creating poems
should be mastered before playing an instrument, which is seen as an activity that extends the
body. Before playing a bordun on an instrument, the musician should be able to simultaneously
sing a melody and patsch (literally means “smack” in German, but refers to patting legs with an
open hand) or clap a separate part such as a bordun as body percussion.
The Orff method makes use of nursery rhymes, folktales, folksongs, folkdances, and authentic,
classical compositions—all music and literature of primary importance and quality.
Step 2: Body percussion
Orff also made use of body percussion—i.e. use of snap, clap, patsch, and stamping. The use of
body percussion is not only a helpful stage towards externalizing rhythm before instrument
playing, but when coupled with singing or rhythmic speaking, it allows practice towards the type
of multitasking required to perform multiple parts, e.g., harmony, polyphony, and so forth.
Patsching, which is done on the lap, and snapping can have markings indicating which hand
should be used, right or left. For patsching or snapping, if there is no R or L indicated, both
hands play simultaneously.
A good way to internalize the rhythm is to by first learning the rhyme, then adding the body
percussion. After that, gradually drop the lyrics one measure at a time (either from the beginning
to the end or from the end to the beginning) so that children end up only performing the body
percussion, as the following example shows.

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Approaches to Music Education

 Are systematic and sequential in design;

“Instrumentarium Orff-Schulwerk” By Société Studio 49 CC BY-SA 4.0

The Orff Instrumentarium

Orff as arts integration

Parallels between Orff’s building blocks and Bloom’s taxonomy

Step 1: Preparation for instrument playing

Step 2: Body percussion

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