Music and Movement
- Author:
Ann Driver. With
illustrations by Molly MacArthur and a Preface by Dr L. P. Jacks. Oxford University Press. Humphrey Milford. 5/-.
Miss Ann Driver, whose broadcasted lessons have made her known to a wide public, has now put her ideas on rhythmic work into book form. In ” Music and Movement ” she gives a detailed and practical account of her system.
Her prime concern is to make music itself a lived experience, by a bodily response to its many sides. Like that great pioneer and musical genius, Dalcroze, she has ” discovered ” that the way to teach music and all it meanj to the child, is to let him enact it with his own body. So too, like Dalcroze, she has found that lived music has a psychological value?”… that children ” (to quote Dr Jacks) “whose habit of movement is thus established in the rhythm and harmony for which their bodies are designed by nature, at once begin to develop mental and character qualities to correspond, such as poise, balance, self-control, evenness of temper, and power of concentration.”
The book begins with many free exercises in rhythmic movement, and emphasis is laid on the importance of allowing the child to express his own rhythm ” with or without music” undominated by the Teacher’s rhythm, ” till his own rhythm has been released and expressed.” In this connection, the child is encouraged to express imaginatively his kinship with all created things?rhythms of Nature, the Elements, domestic life, machinery, work-rhythms, etc.
Miss Driver urges the need for Tension to be balanced by Relaxation; the law of rhythmic health is ebb and flow, systole and diastole, the right balance of the opposites; children must learn to lie in a completely relaxed condition; their frequent inability to do so, is an indication of the wrong nervous tensity many children exhibit.
The book is written, as Miss Driver herself says, ” with special reference to music”. It deals with musical interpretations through bodily movement which are too advanced for sub-normal children. Considerable musicianship is also demanded from the Teacher.
The drawings by Miss Molly MacArthur are vital and explanatory and the preface by Dr L. P. Jacks is instructive. L.F.C.
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