Émile Jaques-Dalcroze

Émile Henri Jaques was born in Vienna in 1865. He later adopted the name Émile Jaques-Dalcroze. His mother, Julie Jaques, was a music teacher, so he was in contact with music since his childhood; while his father was a salesman of Swiss clocks.[4] Influenced by his mother, Dalcroze formally began his musical studies in his early years. When he was 10 years old, his family moved to Geneva, Switzerland, and in 1877, Dalcroze joined the Conservatoire de Musique. He also studied at the College of Geneva, which he did not appreciate. Dalcroze considered the college as a "prison" where education was basically rules, which were not concerned about the students' interests.[5]

In 1881, he was part of the Belles-Lettres Literary Society, a student group dedicated to acting, writing, and performing music, theatre, and opera.[6] At that time, Dalcroze felt more interested in composing. In 1884, he studied composition with Léo Delibes and Gabriel Fauré. Around the same year, he was part of the Comedie Francaise. Further on, he studied composition with Mathis Lussy, which influenced him in the process of rhythmic development. By the year 1886, he was the assistant conductor in Argelia, where he discovered Arab folk music. In contact with this kind of music, Dalcroze noticed that there were different worlds of rhythmic expression, each of which would require a particular way of writing, as well as a unique performance style. Accordingly, he developed a new kind of music notation. In 1887, he went to the Conservatory of Vienna, where he studied with Anton Bruckner.

Dalcroze was appointed Professor of Harmony at the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève in 1892, at the age of 27, but in 1910, he left and established his own school in Hellerau, near Dresden. Many great exponents of modern dance in the twentieth century spent time at the school, including Kurt Jooss and Hanya Holm, Rudolf Laban, Maria Rambert, Uday Shankar, and Mary Wigman. In 1911, Dalcroze and his students were invited by Prince Sergei Volkonsky to show their work in St. Petersburg and Moscow, establishing eurhythmics at the Moscow Art Theatre and inspiring Stanislavski's "tempo-rhythm".[7] His work was part of the music event in the art competition at the 1912 Summer Olympics.[8]

Dalcroze came back to Geneva in 1914 to open a new institute and in 1920, the school was moved to Helleray Laxenburg, near Vienna. However, it was closed by the Nazis. Dalcroze died in Geneva on 1 July 1950.

In his search for a more intense rhythmic experience, Dalcroze posed some questions. First, he questioned why music theory and notation were taught as abstractions, dissociated from sound, movements, and feelings that they represented. Moreover, by taking the pianist as an example, he asked how the finger technique taught by professors could be considered a complete musical education. Finally, he was intrigued that the qualities that characterize a real musician were rarely experienced in a music class.

Dalcroze believed the first instrument that must be trained in music is the body.[1] He developed techniques that combined hearing with a physical response, transferring to a physical response in singing and reading music.[1][6] He did many experiments with his students, used to help in the process of learning and feeling music. His main goal was to develop the inner ear to facilitate musical thinking, reading, and writing music without the help of an instrument. While continuing to build his methodology, he observed his students and noticed that those who could not play in time in the music world were able to walk in time in the real world. The walking was completely spontaneous and easy.[9] He observed that some of his best students could tap the beat using their feet or shake their heads and bodies in response to music. This physical response was natural and common to all ages and cultures.

Moreover, he noticed that students would change their movements when following a crescendo, and would respond physically to the accents of the music. They also relaxed their muscles with the endings of phrases. As they seemed to hear the music, feeling its effects, he concluded that the students themselves were the instruments, not the piano.

Students of Jacques-Dalcroze at Le Grand-Saconnex in 1909, photographed by Frédéric Boissonnas

Dalcroze noticed that students had a mechanical understanding instead of a musical comprehension. They were not able to hear harmonies that they wrote in the music theory classes, and they could not create simple melodies and chord sequences. This resulted in a lack of musical sensitivity that caused problems in the performance. His aim was to find ways to help students to develop skills to feel, hear, create, imagine, connect, memorize, read, and write, as well as perform and interpret music. He worked in order to free his students from the conflicts between mind and body, feeling and expression.[10]

Dalcroze realized that the aspects of music that are more connected to the senses are rhythm and movement. Regarding the three elements of music, pitch, rhythm, and dynamic, he recognized that the last two were entirely dependent on movement. He also found their best models in the muscular system. For him, all degrees of time (tempi) can be experienced, understood, and expressed through the body. He felt that the enthusiasm of musical feelings depended on the sharpness of physical sensations. He was convinced that the combination of intense listening and the responses of the body would generate and release a powerful musical force.

Dalcroze needed a laboratory to test his theories. By working with students, he decided to hire his own workspace. He started to look for principles, teaching strategies, teaching styles, and methods that could convert music into a practical educational tool. The principles and methods which he developed were unique and new, so he gave them a special name: eurhythmics.[11]

In the beginning, Dalcroze thought that the solution to many problems would be teaching musicians to contract and relax in a specific time (the speed of sound or time), in a specific space (the duration of a sound), and with a particular force (energy dynamics of a sound). Thus, he worked on a new series of exercises designed to help students strengthen their perception by the metric and its instincts by many streams of the movement, called rhythm. Then, he began to propose exercises by playing music and suggesting that students walk as they would feel the pulse. Surprisingly, students acted differently and had difficulties in different tempos. Therefore, he deduced that people still had trouble reaching the goal of speed, accuracy, and performance by being rhythmically expressive. He realized that there could be some system of quick communication between the brain, which understands and analyzes, and the muscles that perform.

• Vorschläge zur Reform des musicalischen Schulunterrichts. Gealto Hugurich, 1905
• La Rythmique (2 volumes) (Lausanne: Foetisch, 1906 and 1918)
• La Portée musicale (Lausanne: Foetisch)
• Les Gammes et les tonalités, le phrasé et les nuances (3 volumes) (Lausanne: Foetisch, 1907)
• La Bonne Chanson, in: "Gazette Musicale de la Suisse Romande", 1 November 1894
• La Plastique animée (Lausanne: Foetisch)
• La Respiration et l'innervation musculaire (Lausanne: Foetisch, 1907)
• Le Rythme, la musique et l'éducation (Paris, 1920 and 1935); as Rhythmus, Musik et Erziehung (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1922)
• Souvenirs. Notes et critiques (Neuchâtel: Attinger, 1942)
• La Musique et nous. Notes de notre double vie (Geneva: Perret-Gentil, 1945)
• Notes bariolées (Geneva: Jeheber, 1948)

• Institut Jaques-Dalcroze Genève
• Institut Jaques-Dalcroze Belgique
• Dalcroze Australia
• Dalcroze biography
• Free scores by Émile Jaques-Dalcroze at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
• Works by Émile Jaques-Dalcroze at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Émile Jaques-Dalcroze at Internet Archive
• Dalcroze School of Music Collection