A Dalcroze Approach to Musical Analysis
Joan Pope · 2005
Natural rhythmic movement, with expressive dynamic qualities, created in a collaborative group, graphically illustrates musical form, and analyses the structure of a composition in a vivid and memorable mode of learning. After introductory movement warm-up, and following group decision on choice of examples, we take a musical form e.g. rondo to canon, an invention or a fugue and go through a process of discovery, investigating the components through improvised gesture and simple group movement in space. Emile Jaques-Dalcroze used the term 'plastiques animee' to describe the experience of living the physical expression of music in real time, allowing the body to respond to the flow, the phrases, the weight, the pulse, the measure, the dynamics and the rhythmic patterns within a composition. Others have termed it 'rhythmic choreography'. Find out for yourself this conference! We not only sing while we move, to trace the inner voices of the music, but rapidly sketch the shapes and sequences in a coloured crayon conclusion.