Das Schulwerk a Foundation for the Cognitive, Musical, and Artistic Development of Children
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DAS SCHULWERK A FOUNDATION FOR THE COGNITIVE, MUSICAL, AND ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN LORI-ANNE DOLLOFF Monograph Number 1 RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES IN MUSIC EDUCATION Edited by Lee R. Bartel DAS SCHULWERK A FOUNDATION FOR THE COGNITIVE, MUSICAL, AND ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN LORI-ANNE DOLLOFF Monograph Number 1 RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES IN MUSIC EDUCATION Edited by Lee R. Bartel Canadian Music Education Research Centre UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO 1993 Published by Canadian Music Education Research Centre as part of the monograph series, RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES IN MUSIC EDUCATION Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Dolloff, Lori-Anne, 1958 Das Schulwerk: a foundation for the cognitive, musical, and artistic development of children (Research perspectives in music education) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-895570-02-6 1. orff, Carl, 1895-1982. Orff-Schulwerk. 2. Music Instruction and study - Juvenile. 3. Constructivism (Education). I. Canadian Music Education Research Centre. II. Title. III. Series. MTl. D65 1993 780' .7 C93-094304-X ISBN 1-895570-02-6 Copyright It> 1993 by the Canadian Music Education Research Centre All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permisSion of the publisher. Printed in Canada PREFACE ~EARCH PERSPECTIVES IN MUSIC EDUCATION is a new series of monographs published by Canadian Music Education Research Centre (CMERC). It features a wide range of topics related to the practice of music education and is unified by the emphasis on research in each work. The research methodology included in the series may span all traditional quantitative social science methodologies as well as theoretical, philosophical, historical, or descriptive methods. The focus on the practice of music education makes each monograph valuable to practitioners as well as scholars. The first monograph in this series is, Das Schulwerk: A foundation for the cognitive, musical, and artistic development ofchildren by Lori-Anne Dolloff. This monograph traces the historical influences on Orf£' s ideas, discusses the nature of music in Orf£' s approach, realistically points out weaknesses in this popular method, and analyzes the potential of the Orff method to address the cognitive development of children in light of theories by such prominent thinkers as Gjerdingen, Piaget, Gardner, and Serafine. This monograph provides a thoroughly reasoned foundation for an intensive application of music education in childhood. Lori-Anne Dolloff has done a masterful job of strengthening the theoretical rationale for Orff methodology. Monograph two by Alan Stellings, Musical referentialism: A discussion of its aspects, provides an outstanding example of philosophical research--the analysis of existing thought and the synthesis into a clearer statement than previously in existence. iii In addition to the monograph series, RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES IN MUSIC EDUCATION, the Canadian Music Education Research Centre publishes technical research reports and books. The first pUblication of this type is the Guide to Provincial Music Curriculwn Docwnents Since 1980. This Guide represents several of the major objectives of the Centre: (1) to conduct research studies related to music education in Canada; (2) to create and disseminate research tools and findings to researchers and users of research; and (3) to establish an outstanding Canadian collection of research documents and reports, survey research databases, and music education documents to facilitate the conduct of music education research. The Guide accomplishes all three of these objectives. Itis a great pleasure to introduce this new publication venture. It is especially so because it offers a valuable service to the music education profession in Canada. Lee R. Bartel, Series Editor Director of CMERC iv CONTEI'JTS PREFACE ................................................ iii CONTENTS ............................................... v INTRODUCTION . .. 1 THE ORFF APPROACH TO MUSIC EDUCATION ...................... 3 Characteristics of the Approach ............................... 3 Historical Influences . .. 6 Herder and the Ages of Language ......................... 6 Goethe and the Role of Experience ........................ 8 Pestalozzi and Education von Kinder aus ..................... 10 The nature of music in Orffs approach .......................... 14 Weaknesses in practice .................................... 17 Summary ............................................. 18 Conclusions ........................................... 18 ORFF AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE ................................ 21 Schema theory . 22 Orff and Play .......................................... 25 Gardner's Theory of Artistic Development ........................ 27 Music as Intelligence . 31 Serafine and Music as Cognition .............................. 33 Orff and the Development of Cognitive Processes ...................................... 37 Successive Temporal Processes: .......................... 39 Phrasing .................................... 39 Patterning ................................... 40 Motivic Chaining ............................... 41 Idiomatic Construction . 41 v Simultaneous Temporal Processes ......................... 42 Textural abstraction ............................. 42 Motivic Synthesis . 43 Timbre synthesis ............................... 43 Non-temporal Processes ............................... 44 Closure ..................................... 44 Transformation ................................ 44 Abstrdction . 46 Hierarchic structuring ............................ 47 Summary ............................................. 49 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ................................ 51 EN'DNOTES ............................................... 53 REFERENCES ............................................. 57 vi INTRODUCTION T he approach to music education developed by Carl Orff enjoys widespread use by contemporary music educators. The approach is recognized as a valued method of music education by many writers addressing contemporary music education in North America. Michael Mark (1986) includes a description of Orff methodology in COnJemporary Music Education, an exploration of current themes and practices in music education. l Lois Harrison (1983), in her book Getting Started in Elementary Music Education, considers the Orff approach a major method in elementary music education. Other authors have shown how the Orff approach, which was originally conceived in the context of German culture, may be adapted to a North American educational context. 2 In fact, published versions of Orff-Schulwerk have also appeared in over twenty languages, suggesting world-wide application of the principles of Carl Orff (Frazee, 1987, p. 5). A review of the literature indicates that the emphasis in research on the Orff approach has been on the history of the approach, teaching techniques and implementation. There is little research, especially in English, on the theoretical foundation of the Orff approach. Orffs work is encapsulized in the five volumes of Das Schulwerk--a collection of sequenced materials for voice, "Orff' instruments and recorders. Orff has stated that the materials reflect the historical evolution of music (1962, p. 3). There is no explicit discussion of the musical development of the child. What theory has determined the sequencing of these 1 materials? Is Dos Schulwerk merely a collection of historical models? Or is there a developmental theory implicit in the prescribed activities and sequence of materials employed in the Orff approach? The purpose of this paper is: (1) to determine the extent to which a developmental theory is implicit or explicit in the Orff approach; and (2), to explore any congruencies between Orff's concept of musical development and current theories of the development of music cognition. The first part of this paper explores the background of the Orff approach to determine the existence and nature of Orff's concept of musical development. The second part, "Orff and Cognitive Science," makes comparisons between the theory discovered in Part One and current research in cognitive science. 2 THE ORFF APPROACH TO MUSIC EDUCATIOI\J T he literature published by Orff and his colleagues reveals evidence of considerably more developmental theory behind the selection and sequencing of repertoire than is commonly acknowledged. In his writings concerning the approach, Orff (1962, 1963, 1976) concentrated on the choice of repertoire and the nature of music as an elemental human endeavour. His assistant, Gunild Keetman, wrote a manual on the teaching methods used in the Orff approach (Keetman, 1970). Other German pedagogues sought a place for Orff's work within the context of educational theory. Eberhard Preussner, director of the Mozarteum in Salzburg, posited a connection between the educational theories of Pestalozzi and those of Orff. Werner Thomas, who worked closely with Orff in Germany and Austria, found evidence of links between Orff and the work of Herder and Goethe. Preussner and Thomas presented a foundation for the Orff approach which is rooted in the artistic spirit of the German poets, represented by Goethe, Schiller and Herder, and in a German pedagogical reform which extended from the nineteenth into the early twentieth century. They saw the Orff approach as the embodiment of the ideals