Featured Author:

Sr. Lorna Zemke

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            SINGING: the Basis of Music Education

                       by Sr. Lorna Zemke, DMA
                 Silver Lake College, Manitowoc, WI
 

Zoltán Kodály, among other musicians, held that because the voice is the most natural instrument to man, the act of singing is logically the most natural musical activity of humans. Not only is singing a means of musical expression, it aids in emotional and intellectual development as well.
If we ourselves sing often, this provides a deep experience of happiness in music. Through our own musical activities, we learn to know the pulsation, rhythm, and shape of melody. The enjoyment given encourages the study of instruments and the listening to other pieces of music as well. (Kodály, Visszatekintes. P. 117)

Kodály believed all music education must be centered on singing and that the basic instrument for developing musical culture was the voice. From this stemmed his insistence that education develop human’s ability to read and write musical notation. This knowledge enables us to become musically literate and therefore gives us the power to participate more fully in the mainstream of culture. Kodály deplored the idea that only instrumentalists were thought to need notational skills, and that music culture could be acquired solely through instrumental performance.
A deeper musical culture developed only in those places where singing was the basis. An instrument is only for the privileged few. The human voice is the most accessible to everybody, and for nothing: it can be the only soil for general music culture applicable to great numbers of people. (Kodály Visszatekintes. P. 117)

It must not be thought that Kodály was adverse to instrumental training. He did not believe that singing should supplant instrumental instruction; he did insist that it should precede and accompany it.

In 1969, Laszlo Vikar recalled a Kodály lecture that had been presented in New York in 1945. In it Kodály commented on instrumental instruction in the United States. He stated that the United States has done more for popularizing instrumental music than any other country in the world and that if a careful balance can be achieved between instrumental music and singing, this country may possibly produce more concrete and valuable results than elsewhere in the world. Again he insisted that an instrumental student should first learn how to sing.

Free singing without an instrument is the most deeply effective way of training musical abilities. We have to educate musicians before bringing up instrumentalists. We should give an instrument to a child only when he can already sing. His ear develops only if his first notions of sound are formed from his own singing and not connected with any external visible (visual) or hand-movement (motoric) notions. (Vikar, Laszlo. “Folk Music and Music Education.”)

According to Kodály, the ability to understand music is through musical literacy transferred to the inner hearing faculty. The most effective manner in which this can be realized is through singing. In order to hear well, one must sing well. “Singing has to be the basis of a good musician” (Kodály, Zoltan. Ki a jo Zenesz? p.7) To this day, the Hungarian music education system is based on the principle that singing is the best means for introducing the young child to the world of music.