NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
THE STEINHARDT SCHOOL OF CULTURE, EDUCATION, AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC AND PERFORMING ARTS PROFESSIONS
23 RD SUMMER OF KODÁLY STUDIES AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY • FOUNDED 1989
ENDORSED BY THE ORGA NIZATION OF AMERICAN KODÁLY EDUCATORS
MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY
01:00 CONTACT HOURS PER DAY • 15:00 CONTACT HOURS FOR 3 WEEKS
DR. JERRY KERLIN, INSTRUCTOR day, date:
WEEK 1
Monday, 28 June topic:
Why Study Music as Culture?
The Function of Traditional Song for Singer and Researcher.
Kodály, Bartók, and the Invention of Phonography.
How to Analyze a Traditional Song: Introduction for Level 1, Guided Analysis for
Levels 2 and 3.
Tuesday, 29 June
Wednesday, 30 June
Thursday, 1 July
Friday, 2 July
Major Resources in the Study of Traditional Musics.
West Africa: Ghana, Liberia, and Nigeria.
SubSaharan Africa: Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Africa and the Diaspora: Sampling the African American Experience.
In Search of Ireland: Children’s Rhymes and Singing Games.
In Search of Ireland: Lays and Old Ballads. Historical singers: Elizabeth Cronin,
Seosamh Ó hÉainí, Nicloás Tóibín, et al.
WEEK 2
Monday, 5 July
Tuesday, 6 July
Wednesday, 7 July
Thursday, 8 July
Friday, 9 July
Independence Day Holiday Observation. No classes.
In Search of Ireland: “Cas Dún Porit” (Give Us a Tune) and Listening Lessons.
Céilí Dance (Social Dance) as exemplified by An Thonnaí Thoraigh (The Waves of Tory) and Ionsaí na hInse (Siege of Ennis).
In Search of Ireland: “Cas Amhrán” (Give Us a Song): New Ballads (Come-All-
Yes) and Lyrical Songs ( SeanNós ), Style and Ornamentation in Irish Song.
Living singers: Karan Casey, Michael McGlynn, Lillis Ó Laoire, Iarla Ó Lionaird,
Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Niamh Parsons, et al. Transcription project.
China. Chinese Children’s Singing Games from Cantonese and Mandarin
Traditions.
China: Traditional Songs and Dance from Cantonese, Mandarin, and Taiwanese
Language Traditions.
WEEK 3
Monday, 12 July
Tuesday, 13 July
Wednesday, 14 July
Thursday, 15 July
Friday, 16 July
The Celtic World: Scottish Traditional Singing Games. Susan Brumfeld, Guest
Presenter.
India: Hindustani and Carnatic Traditions.
Indonesia: Bail and Java.
Transcription work and review.
Transcription Projects: Presentations.
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LOOKING AT KODÁLY STUDIES AS A CONTEXTED (SITUATED) PHENOMENON
Have you wondered about the meaning of street games, singing games? What does “Ring
Around the Rosy” tell us? That song, common throughout the Western world, paints a picture of the “black death”, the plague in medieval Europe—the ring-shaped, rose-colored formations on the skin, the ashes from the cremated bodies. What about “The Great Big Ship Went Through the
AlleyO”? That wonderful threading game narrates the story of the RMS Lusitania sailing through the English Channel, the Cunard ship known for its speed and for its sinking by a torpedo from a
German U-boat, an event that helped bring the United States into World War I. Clearly, when we teach and learn songs, music, and dance as part of the expression of a culture group and its social history, we come to know the people that made/make the art, gave/give it value, felt/feel it, and passed/pass it on to their present-day descendants and friends. Songs stay alive, dynamic, because they continue to represent the feelingful self. The traditional musics you are learning in your Kodály Methodology classes all bear such representations, such meanings, such purposes.
Traditional Materials and Research intends to extend your understanding of the meaning of the musics you are learning to draw from in the teaching and learning of music literacy to children in school. Music is culture, and the transmission of traditional dance, instrumental music, and song becomes the teaching and learning of culture.
TOPICS
• Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók as pioneer ethnomusicologists, folklorists, who set out to recapture Hungarian identity and solidarity at the turn of the twentieth century
• the invention and development of phonography and its effect on tradition
• considering dance, instrumental music, and song as personal and collective expressions within a culture
• finding living tradition in the dance, music, and song of one’s ethnic affiliation or cultural context
• experiencing traditional dance as a living phenomenon closely related to (and, in many cases, inseparable from) song and instrumental music
• defining tradition in Ireland as a basis for discussing world traditions
• cultural pedagogy (“folk pedagogy”) and Kodály-based pedagogy
• oracy and improvisation as two key factors in traditional arts
• moving from oracy to literacy using prescriptive notation (“bar bones” or “abstract” notation)
• descriptive notation as a means of studying style (ornamentation and improvisation)
• Western traditional song analysis by tone set, scale, meter, pedagogical use, form, cadences, syllables, source, and resource
• experiencing and analyzing differing systems of time, duration, melody, and simultaneity, including those of the West
• exploring change in traditional arts as they move beyond borders (diaspora studies)
• exploring music instruments from the world and considering inclusive ways to classify these instruments (organology)
GOALS
• to relate Kodály studies as North American school practice to a larger world of musics as contexted, cultural, diverse, global, multicultural, situated, transnational, polyethnic, phenomenona
• to define streams of musicing within a culture
• to define classes of traditional song (macrotypology) and topics of traditional song
(microtypology) within any one culture group
• to apply, reflect on, critique, question, and broaden Kodály pedagogy and process
• to develop repertory of traditional musics through collection, analysis, classification, and publication, and to use this repertory for curriculum planning
• to begin to experience the desirability of becoming bimusical or polymusical—fluent in two or more traditional musics
• to seek meaning and feelingfulness in traditional arts
• to experience process in traditional musicing and to dissolve the barrier between that process and the proscenium arch
• to go beyond enclosure and to foster wonder in the teaching and learning of traditional arts
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ASSIGNMENTS
1. Each student will present her/his analysis of an Irish traditional song from the collection handed out the first day of the course —several students each day. Other students will compare their analyses with the presenter.
Presentations should be limited to three minutes. Students may also choose songs from other world musics.
NonWestern elements should be carefully presented.
2. Each student will transcribe one Irish songs chosen from the following:
• “Cé Hé an Leanbh a Rachaidh ar an Aonach?”
(Who Is the Child Who Will Go to the Fair with Me?) as sung by Mary Deady Langan
• “Tic Tac Taidil Dum” (Tick Tack Taddle Dum) as sung by Mary Deady Langan
• “Cearc agus Coileach” (A Cock and a Hen) as sung by Lillis Ó Laoire
• “The Rocks of Bawn” as sung by Bridget Fitzgerald
• “The Parting Glass” as sung by Karan Casey
Each student will receive a CD on which all five songs will be recorded. Each phrase will be shown in both a descriptive transcription of what is heard and a prescriptive transcription (reduction, “bare bones”, “abstract”) like those found in traditional song collections. Transcription assignments can be a challenge. However, they are a practical application of solfege skills. Students should know that grades in Traditional Materials and
Research are based on effort.
WHY STUDY MUSIC AS CULTURE?
The end of the twentieth century is an era of cultural pluralism, especially in North America, Australia, and the
United Kingdom, where dance, music, song, and other cultural expressions are mixed within social and political borders (Campbell, McCullough-Brabson, and Tucker 1994, 4). Research examining any cultural phenomenon in context can describe that phenomenon and how it is taught and learned. For musician-educators this research can generate curriculums that address problems of teaching and learning found in music classrooms in a pluralistic society in five ways:
1. It can help to sensitize the musician-educator to culture groups, especially to distinct groups that make up "the West" and have become lost in mass North American culture.
2. A rationale has been offered for teaching music from a multicultural perspective
(Anderson and Campbell 1996, 2 –4). Through experience of world musics students expand their worldviews of sonic events, come to respect musical systems as sophisticated as their own, learn musical terms and formal structures that are founded on a different logic, and develop a flexibility that allows them to approach any world music with curiosity and enthusiasm.
3. Understanding the transmission system of a specific phenomenon about and teach their own music, song, and dance —allows the musician-educator to design classroom presentation in a culture-specific way.
—how natives think
4. The interdependence of dance and music in Irish arts becomes a specific example of many cultures in which music and movement are one.
5. To best fulfill the need to bring world musics into the teaching and learning of dance and music in North America the musician-educator must be encouraged to become at least bimusical and bichoreutic —competent in one or more type of song, music, and dance other than her/his own. (Hood 1971, 230 –232; Keil 1985, 87).
Catherine Ellis (1985) spent her life researching the dance and music of the Aborigines of South Australia. She identified the highest level of music learning as being a wisdom about life that comes through the transmission
(teaching and learning) of dance and music. She calls this learning education through music , and compares it with
Hungarian music education:
The best documented program involving education through music is the work of the Hungarian
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school of music educators, particularly Kodály. He stresses the importance of music for the development of the whole personality, and deals sensitively with the development of contemporary education through the use of the traditional folk idioms of Hungary which he and
Bartók researched so thoroughly. He states in an article originally written in 1941 (Ellis 1985,
164 –165):
In music we possess a means not only for a general development of the human soul but also for an education towards becoming Hungarians, a means that cannot be replaced by any other subject … Taken separately, too, the elements of music are precious instruments in education. Rhythm develops attention, concentration, determination and the ability to condition oneself. Melody opens up the world of emotions. Dynamic variation and tone colour sharpen our hearing. (Bónis 1974, 130)
THE FUNCTION OF TRADITIONAL SONG FOR SINGER AND RESEARCHER
Zoltán Kodály: Traditional music is the mirror of the people's soul.
Traditional song is personal and communal. The outstanding function of a traditional song for the singer is to reflect the identity of the person singing it. A traditional song identifies the quality of a place and the nature of its people. A traditional song identifies patterns of life at home, at work, in love and conflict. It summarizes the character, personality and feelings of a community. This ability of a traditional song to identify and recapitulate personal history makes a human feel secure. Whatever distance separates us from our roots, a traditional song brings us home.
Traditional music has been defined as the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission (The International Folk Music Council, Sao Paulo, Brazil,
1954). The traditional singer shapes that tradition by first providing continuity. He/she links the present to the past. What happens in her/his contemporary life compares and contrasts with what happened in past society. The traditional singer can also provide variation. Being an active participant in the oral transmission of a traditional song, he/she does not feel urgent to repeat it exactly as heard. He/she can change a word or a pitch, add or subtract a verse, or in any way personalize a traditional song, just as he/she knows the person or printed source from which that song was taken had the same license. Here the traditional song allows the singer to be creative so that her/his grasp of that song may be only similar or even different from the version that was passed to her/him. Last, the traditional singer knows that her/his repertory of songs has been selected by her/his community over a period of time. A traditional song preserved in a community reflects certain values of that community. Over a period of time the melody and text of a traditional song have been relatively fixed. The people have selected the most singable melody with a text that is most relevant to their attitudes, values, and life style.
Researchers in ethnomusicology carry out the most sophisticated studies of traditional song.
Ethnomusicology, the anthropology of music, is about fifty years old as a science.
Ethnomusicologists have four basic tasks with the traditional songs they examine. First, they collect songs and variants of songs. For their sources they seek written or printed melodies and texts, traditional collections, or as a primary source, informers or people with a good memory of traditional songs. As their second task, ethnomusicologists must make sure they have a transcription of each song they have collected. This transcription is needed to analyze and compare with other traditional songs or variants of the same song. The third task is to systematize the traditional song collection. This task can often be difficult because the scientist must make subjective judgments about aspects of a song. The fourth task is to publish the annotated and analyzed traditional songs that have been collected. These publications become resources for traditional song enthusiasts and other ethnomusicologists.
One of the benefactors of the research of ethnomusicologists is the musician-educator who teaches traditional songs in the classroom and draws the elements of music from them. Many
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music teachers of today function as part-time ethnomusicologists. They collect traditional songs and add them to a retrieval system from which they can easily locate an appropriate song for performance and study.
The systematizing of traditional songs is one of the most important tasks of an ethnomusicologist and musician-educator. Every traditional song in a systematized collection must be analyzed for its musical categories and its textual categories. Musical categories include scale and tone, scale name, range, cadences, rhythm, syllables, podia, and form.
Analysis of a traditional song by its textual category is a complicated task for the researcher. The first category is theme and indicates what is the subject of the song. Some examples of theme are communications (good-by, hello, letters, etc.), love (courting, romance, marriage, absence from love) and transportation/migration (expansion, exploration, boats, trains, etc.). The next textual category, the role descriptor, indicates about whom the song tells, or by whom or for whom the song is written or sung. Cowboys, loggers, sailors and soldiers are examples of role descriptors. The ethnic descriptor, the next textual category, identifies who is believed to have composed the song and tells us the language and ethnic group from whom the song originates.
For example, French (Cajun Black) would mean the song is in French recorded from the Cajun
Black ethnic group (as in New Orleans). Geographic origin, the next textual category, identifies where the song is supposed to have originated--continent, country, state, and region. The date, the next textual category, tells when the song was supposedly composed; for example, the
1840s. The style textual category tells what kind of song is being analyzed and whether it falls under one of three major styles--ballad, lyric, or descriptive. Descriptors for these three styles can include such terms as bawdy songs, chanteys, and shouts. The type category identifies what kind of song by its structure. Types include cumulative texts, canons or rounds and call and response songs. Mood category tells us the mood or emotions expressed by the song and includes such descriptors as love, admiration, humor, and mockery. Tempo category includes such descriptors as moderate, lively, and quick. The category of movement/game/dance indicates why the song has the socializing activities of traditional or formalized dances, social games, and rituals. In this category there might be an agent ( it as a desirable role), an act (finger play), an agency
(equipment, such as a jump rope), time length, and space (shape of a formation and the appropriate place to form it). The category of readability would tell a teacher the level, appropriateness, value and controversy of a particular text or words within it. The category of verse (lines), syllables, and podia tell the ethnomusicologist how long and of what structure is a song text. This information always includes the number of verses, the number of lines for each verse, and the syllables for each line. The musician-educator/ethnomusicologist has one final category —that of classroom use. This category might tell what age group the song could be used with, whether certain sexist or racist verses need to be prepared, and whether the song has possibilities for improvisation.
Both singers and researchers perpetuate the art of traditional song. The singer carries traditional song from one generation to the next and the researcher chronicles that passage. Each can learn from the other, but both are aware that future generations will have their turn with the words and music of songs. From generation to generation the people compose and edit, recompose and re- edit their traditional songs. The magic and wonder of this process tells the singer and researcher that the art of traditional music is unique.
QUESTIONS
1. How does a traditional song create solidarity in a cultural group?
2. What is the definition of traditional music given by the International Folk Music Council, Sao
Paulo, Brazil, 1954?
3. What are three things a member of a culture does to shape a traditional song?
4. What are the four tasks in the ethnomusicological process of traditional song collecting?
5. What are the musical categories used in this system of traditional song analysis?
6. What are the textual categories used in this system of traditional song analysis?
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REFERENCES
Anderson, William, and Patricia Shehan Campbell
1996 Multicultural Perspectives in Music Education . 2nd ed. Reston, VA: Music
Educators National Conference. Interactive CD available.
Bónis, Ferenc, ed.
1974 The Selected Writings of Zoltán Kodály . London: Boosey and Hawkes. Currently out-of-print.
Ellis, Catherine
1985 Aboriginal Music, Education for Living: Cross-cultural Experiences from South
Australia . St. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press.
Hood, Mantle
1971 Field Methods and the Human Equation. In Mantle Hood (1971), The
Ethnomusicologist (pages 197 –246). New York: McGraw Hill Book Company.
Keil, Charles
1985 Paideia Con Salsa: Ancient Greek Education for Active Citizenship and the Role of Latin Dance-Music in Our Schools. In Paul R. Lehman, William E. English, and
Gerard L. Knieter, Symposium Leaders, Becoming Human Through Music: The
Wesleyan Symposium on the Perspectives of Social Anthropology in the
Teaching and Learning of Music . Reston, VA: Music Educators National
Conference.
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