Pick a team

Preferences help define who we are, who we spend time with, how we communicate and live our lives. Whether you're a Roosters or Storm supporter, or prefer warmer or cooler seasons, these choices will affect your life.

In music education, some of the teams available include (better known as methods) Orff-Keetman Schulwerk, Kodály, Dalcroze/Gell's Eurythmics, Gordon, Suzuki. This chapter of Music and the child offers a solid summary of the afore mentioned methods.

They follow a systematic and sequential design.

• Incorporate music authentically and with integrity, including folk music.

• Utilise a mother-tongue approach to rhythm, pitch, and timbre, considering the child’s perspective, innate behaviours, and interactions with their natural environment.

• Promote active student engagement in music making.

All of which are appealing to me as a former child and current teacher of music.

Many schools in Australia connect with a particular method and are known as an Orff or Kodály school. Interestingly more primary schools ascribe to Kodály and Orff seems to be for the middle years. Subscribing to only one of these teams is not appealing for me, as I am in deep agreement with the following quote from Jay Mabini's work

"By drawing on the strengths of Kodály, Suzuki, Dalcroze, Orff, and Gordon Music Learning Theory, educators can foster a comprehensive musical experience that nurtures diverse talents, enhances musical literacy, and cultivates a lifelong love for music among young learners."(Mabini, 2024)

Side quest option here to hear Jay making music

Another contemporary pedagogy you could pick is Comprehensive Musicianship through Performance (CMP). (Rather a grand title in the assumption of a single method or attitude being comprehensive.) It began life at a number of American music education seminars, including The Yale Seminar 1963, with the following important contributors: soprano Adele Addison, Lukas Foss, Billy Taylor, Marcus Raskin and Leon Kirchner.

"Comprehensive musicianship is a concept about teaching and learning music. It is an approach that suggests that the source of all music study is the "literature" of music and is one that promotes the integration of all aspects of music study—whether in the classroom, in private or group lessons, or in ensemble rehearsals—at all educational levels. This approach provides a focus for an entire music curriculum, enabling students to synthesize material and to see relationships in all that they do. It makes possible more complete musical experiences."(Willoughby, 1971)

It involves students building their knowledge of music and musical skills by listening, transcribing, analysing, arranging, conducting, improvising, composing, rehearsing and performing music. The teacher directs, designs and controls the learning experiences of the students. It is an integration of musical performance, theory and knowledge to emphasize their interdependence. The CMP rationale appears to be the birthplace of an explicit part of the NSW music curriculum - the concepts of music!

Comprehensive musicianship... is a program of instruction that seeks, through performance, to develop an understanding of basic musical concepts: tone, melody, rhythm, harmony, texture, expression, and form.(Wisconsin Music Educators Association, 1977)

On reflection, I have realised when teaching individual students I use some aspects of CMP. In part, spending time with the students analysing the music they are learning, identifying and building their knowledge of different ways to be expressive and reading different notation. I do offer students choice in the music they learn, in addition to making suggestions. As I feel using only CMP is not as collaborative, as I prefer to be.

References

• Mabini, Jay. (2024). Comparative Analysis of Kodály, Suzuki, Dalcroze, Orff, and Gordon Music Learning Theory in Early Childhood Music Education: A Literature Review. International Journal of Research Publications. 150. 956-967. 10.47119/IJRP1001501620246690.

• Sarrazin, N. (2016). Chapter 4: Approaches to music education. Music and the child. Milne Publishing. https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/music-and-the-child/chapter/chapter-4/

• Sindberg, L., & National Association for Music Education. (2012). Just good teaching: Comprehensive musicianship through performance (CMP) in theory and practice. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Education.  

• Smith, B. (2024) Weeks 2+3 Orff-Keetman Schulwek Seminars, University of Sydney.

• Trott, C. (2024) Weeks 1+2 Kodály Method with Carla Trott Seminars, University of Sydney.

• Willoughby, D. (1971) Comprehensive Musicianship and the Undergraduate Music Curricula. Contemporary Music Project of the Music Educators National Conference, 197), p. vii.

• Wisconsin Music Educators Association. (1977). Comprehensive musicianship through performance. Madison, WI: Author.