What is Dalcroze?
Dalcroze Education is a joyful, experiential way of learning music through the body.
Dalcroze Education develops students’ musicality, builds trust in students' musical intuition and awakens the thrill and freedom of student’s unique musical inventions.
As a precursor to, or together with, private instrumental lessons, Dalcroze Education accelerates musical growth for beginners as well as professionals.
DSB offers a sequential seven-year dalcroze curriculum starting at age five.
gradutes Gain a musical competency equivalent to a college-level conservatory freshman.
Dalcroze Education is made of three components:
Eurhythmics engages the entire body, building a deeply personal knowledge of the way musical elements feel. Interactive games requiring rhythmic movement, active listening and creative problem solving make musical concepts vivid. As these elements come to life, it becomes easy to associate kinesthetic experience with musical notation. Eurhythmics awakens the imagination and nurtures confidence in students’ musical response.
Solfège trains the ears to navigate tonal landscapes and teaches the eyes to instantly “hear” musical notation. The ability to instantly respond to musical symbols unlocks possibilities for all musicians.
Improvisation sparks the thrill and freedom of students’ own creative invention. By improvising with their bodies, voices and on instruments, Dalcroze students learn to use the tools they explore, tapping into the imagination in the spirit of play.
The Dalcroze Music School of Boston offers Dalcroze Education for all ages, from young beginners through adult professionals.
For young beginners, our school offers group Dalcroze Eurhythmics classes that:
Cultivate musicality and knowledge through joyful, discovery-based experiences
Invigorate students’ imaginations
Increase students' capacity for independent and cooperative learning
Prepare the body as an instrument by increasing coordination, control, balance, attention, flexibility, focus, spatial awareness, emotional knowledge, and vocal precision
Typical Dalcroze Eurhythmics classes involve games in which students actively listen, process and physically respond to music improvised on a variety of instruments from piano to voice and percussion. Children’s ability to mirror the music they hear through coordinated movement, from walking and skipping to leaping and galloping, allows them to know the way musical concepts feel in their bodies, much like an athlete develops a sports technique. Their kinesthetic experience enables students to recognize these elements in music they hear, see and improvise.
As students graduate into the Rhythmic-Solfège program, their bodies become a means to understand more advanced musical principles of rhythm and melody. In these courses, students:
Improve their intonation
Develop finer listening capabilities, stronger ensemble skills
Energize their rhythmic and metric vitality
Deepen their understanding of musical analysis, nuance, and aesthetics as it relates to performance
Learn to “hear” with their eyes and “see” with their ears, listening internally and imagining how the notes and rhythms they hear look when written.
The complete progression of five Rhythmic-Solfège levels provides students a solid and comprehensive music education. Students who complete the entire sequence have a competency equivalent to a college-level freshman conservatory student.
Adult students learn how to make music come alive even more vividly in exciting Dalcroze courses that develop ways of knowing music through the body. Adult students explore essential musical building blocks, heighten listening skills, sharpen an intuitive response to music, and experience the thrill and freedom of their own improvisation through this social, interactive approach. Even though the body is the main learning tool in discovering how musical concepts work, no prior movement experience is necessary.