Jaques-Dalcroze, Emile

(b Vienna, 6 July 1865; d Geneva, 1 July 1950). Swiss music educationist and composer. His early musical studies were pursued first at the Geneva Conservatoire, where he received a first prize for music and poetry, and later in Paris under Fauré, Delibes and Lussy and in Vienna under Bruckner and Fuchs. In 1886, for one season, he was assistant director of the Algiers Théâtre Municipal, where his interest in Middle Eastern rhythms was awakened. This had an enormous influence on his later conception of teaching musical experiences using polyrhythms and irregular rhythms. In 1892 he became professor of harmony at the Geneva Conservatoire, where to replace the traditional teaching method, which failed to give students a real experience of music, he gradually developed his system of co-ordinating music with body movements. He adopted some ideas of his teacher Lussy, who in turn drew on Momigny's theory of rhythm. Lussy's influence can be felt mainly in three areas: the physical manifestation of rhythm, the differentiation between various accent types (in addition to metrical and rhythmical accentuation, Jaques-Dalcroze also worked with the ‘pathetic accent’), and the adoption in music of terms derived from the metrical theories of classical poetry.

Working experimentally and unofficially with volunteer classes, Jaques-Dalcroze first gained public recognition for his method at a conference of the Swiss Musicians Association in 1905; in the following year he held the first training course for teachers. In 1910 he was invited by Wolf Dohrn, the patron of the garden suburb Hellerau, near Dresden, to organize an institute for teaching rhythmical training. In a building specially constructed for his work he continued to develop his method and, with the help of the stage designer Appia and the light artist Salzmann, created the ‘Hellerauer Schulfeste’, a special theatrical performance combining art and pedagogical improvisation, which gained a worldwide reputation. After the war broke out in 1914 he returned to his own country and founded the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze in Geneva. He had visited England with a group of pupils in 1912 giving lecture-demonstrations; in 1913 the London School of Dalcroze Eurhythmics was founded under the direction of Percy B. Ingham. Similar schools were started in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, Moscow, New York and elsewhere, and in 1926 a congress of rhythm was held at the Institute in Geneva.

The method itself, originally intended to develop the sense of rhythm in music students, provides a general training in music theory, improvisation and rhythmic movement and is also used in the education of children, inasmuch as it quickens mental responsiveness and the powers of self-expression. An important element of the method is Jaques-Dalcroze's theory of arrhythmia, in which a conscious and unconscious bodily sense is brought into play, with the feet making automatic patterns while the arms and the voice respond to improvised music. After this training to obtain the pupil's rapid physical reaction to changing rhythms, which are supplied by the teacher improvising at the piano, whole musical compositions are translated into a language of bodily movement. Bach's fugues, Gluck's Orfeo and other works have in this way been given plastic expression by the Jaques-Dalcroze schools, and the principles underlying the method have been applied in varying degrees to theatrical and operatic productions. Among many distinguished students who evolved his method further are the composer Frank Martin, the dancer Mary Wigman, and Elfriede Feudel, Juan Llongueras and Mimi Scheiblauer, who adapted it to both general and special education purposes.

Besides having written books, pamphlets and articles in periodicals about his method, Jaques-Dalcroze wrote a large number of musical compositions, some in popular folk style, some for teaching purposes. (A complete catalogue of his works has been published by the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze, Geneva, 1995–9.) Although his compositions are rarely played today, his significance for the field of musical education has remained, with over 30 institutes worldwide offering a professional education in the tradition of his method.

WORKS

(selective list)

dramatic

other works

WRITINGS

Le coeur chante: sensations d'un musicien (Geneva, 1900)

‘La réforme de l'enseignement musical à l'école’, Congrès de l'enseignement musical: Soleure 1905

Méthode Jaques-Dalcroze, pt i: Gymnastique rythmique (Paris, 1906; suppl., La respiration et l'innervation musculaire planches anatomiques, 1906); replaced by La rythmique (Lausanne, 1916–17; Eng. trans., 1920); pt ii: Etude de la portée musicale (Paris, 1907); pt iii: Les gammes et les tonalités, le phrasé et les nuances (Paris, 1906–7); pt vi: Exercices de plastique animée (Paris, 1917) [pts iv–v unpubd]

ed. P. Boepple: Der Rhythmus als Erziehungsmittel für das Leben und die Kunst: sechs Vorträge zur Begründung seiner Methode der rhythmischen Gymnastik (Basle, 1907)

Introduction à l'étude de l'harmonie (Geneva, n.d.)

La rythme, la musique et l'éducation (Paris and Lausanne, 1920, 2/1965; Eng. trans., 1921/R, 2/1967)

ed. C. Cox: Eurhythmics, Art and Education (London, 1930/R) [essays written 1922–5; trans. by F. Rothwell]

Solfège rythmique vocal (Lausanne, 1925; Eng. trans., 1994)

Métrique et rythmique (Paris, 1937–8)

La jolie musique (Le Locle, 1939)

Souvenirs: notes et critiques (Neuchâtel, 1942)

La musique et nous: notes sur notre double vie (Geneva, 1945/R)

Notes bariolées (Geneva, 1948)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Der Rhythmus: Ein Jahrbuch, ed. Bildungsanstalt Jaques-Dalcroze (Jena, 1911–12)

J.W. Harvey, ed.: The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze (London, 1912, 3/1920) [incl. introduction by M.E. Sadler]

K. Storck: E. Jaques-Dalcroze: seine Stellung und Aufgabe in unserer Zeit (Stuttgart, 1912)

Congrès du rythme I: Geneva 1926

H. Brunet-Lecomte: Jaques-Dalcroze: sa vie, son oeuvre (Geneva, 1950) [incl. list of compositions]

Congrès du rythme et de la rythmique: Genève 1965 [Jaques-Dalcroze centenary]

F. Martin and others: Emile Jaques-Dalcroze: l'homme, le compositeur, le créateur de la rythmique (Neuchâtel, 1965)

G. Giertz: Kultus ohne Götter: Emile Jaques-Dalcroze und Adolphe Appia: der Versuch einer Theaterreform auf der Grundlage der rhythmischen Gymnastik (Munich, 1975)

J. Dobbs: ‘Emile Jaques-Dalcroze’, Some Great Music Educators, ed. K. Simpson (Borough Green, Kent, 1976), 50–59

M.-L. Bachmann: La rythmique Jaques-Dalcroze: une éducation par la musique et pour la musique (Neuchâtel, 1984; Eng. trans., 1991)

E. Vanderspar: A Dalcroze Handbook: Principles and Guidelines for Teaching Eurhythmics (London, 1984)

H. Tervooren: Die rhythmisch-musikalische Erziehung im ersten Drittel unseres Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt, 1987)

T. Steinitz: Teaching Music: Theory and Practice of the Dalcroze Method (Tel-Aviv, 1988)

I. Spector: Rhythm and Life: the Work of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze (Stuyvesant, NY, 1990)

J. Tchamkerten: ‘Emile Jaques-Dalcroze: le compositeur et son action à Genève jusqu'en 1896’, Revue musicale de Suisse romande, xliv/4 (1991), 267–77

W. Dohrn: Die Gartenstadt Hellerau und weitere Schriften (Dresden, 1992) [reprint of articles written 1908–13]

S.F. Moore: The Writings of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze: Toward a Theory for the Performance of Musical Rhythm (diss., Indiana U., 1992)

J.T. Caldwell: Expressive Singing: Dalcroze Eurhythmics for Voice (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1995)

J.-C. Mayor: Rythme et Joie avec E. Jaques-Dalcroze (Chapelle-sur-Moudon, 1996)

LAWRENCE W. HAWARD/R/REINHARD RING