Title:  Developing  Children’s  Artistic  Thinking  With  Images  in  Music  Lessons      Author(s):  L.  Goryunova  and  L.  Shkolar    Source:  Goryunova,  L.,  &  Shkolar,  L.  (1993,  Fall).  Developing  children’s  artistic  thinking  with  images  in  music  lessons.  The  Quarterly,  4(3),  pp.  30-­‐32.  (Reprinted  with  permission  in  Visions  of  Research  in  Music  Education,  16(4),  Autumn,  2010).  Retrieved  from  http://www-­usr.rider.edu/~vrme/    

It   is   with   pleasure   that   we   inaugurate   the   reprint   of   the   entire   seven   volumes   of   The  

Quarterly   Journal   of   Music   Teaching   and   Learning.     The   journal   began   in   1990   as   The  

Quarterly.     In   1992,  with   volume  3,   the  name   changed   to  The  Quarterly   Journal   of  Music  

Teaching  and  Learning  and  continued  until  1997.    The  journal  contained  articles  on  issues  

that  were  timely  when  they  appeared  and  are  now  important  for  their  historical  relevance.    

For   many   authors,   it   was   their   first   major   publication.     Visions   of   Research   in   Music  

Education  will  publish  facsimiles  of  each  issue  as  it  originally  appeared.    Each  article  will  be  

a  separate  pdf  file.    Jason  D.  Vodicka  has  accepted  my  invitation  to  serve  as  guest  editor  for  

the   reprint   project   and   will   compose   a   new   editorial   to   introduce   each   volume.     Chad  

Keilman  is  the  production  manager.    I  express  deepest  thanks  to  Richard  Colwell  for  granting  

VRME  permission  to  re-­publish  The  Quarterly  in  online  format.    He  has  graciously  prepared  

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Developing Children'sArtistic Thinking With

Ifll.ages In Music Lessons

By L. GoryunovaRussian Ministry of Education

L. ShkolarRussian Academy of Pedagogical Science

MUsiclessons in the general educationschools of our COUntlYare compul-sory for all students from the first

through the eighth grade Cages 6 to 14).School children have one or two music les-sons a week. Typically, the lessons consistof group musical activities such as singing orlearning to play instruments. Also includedare activities to encourage children's self-ex-pression, such as thinking about music andreflecting music in movement. This systemof general music education is based onKabalevsky's concepts of music pedagogy.

The music lesson must be consistent withthe principal goal of education: to promotethe child's discovery of life and an under-standing of his or her own position in theworld. That is, the music lesson should moldthe moral "kernel" of the student. In contrastto a narrow view of music behavior, we aremore interested in the child as an individualpersonality searching for and acquiring themeaning of life, striving for beauty, good, andtruth-all that elevates human beings.

Therefore, musical activity should not be-come an end in itself; instead, the content ofart should become the child's content."Spiritual work" must pervade the innermost

L. Goryunoua is the head of tbe Laboratory ofMusic Education at tbe Research Institute ofGeneral Education of the Russian Ministry ofEducation, Moscow. L. Sbleolyar is the head ofthe Laboratory of Music at tbe Research Insti-tute of Artistic Education, Russian Academy ofPedagogical Science, Moscow.

part of the child's thoughts and feelings.This is the only way for the teacher and thestudent to derive personal meaning from artstudies; thus art becomes fertile soil for one'sspiritual growth and for one's search for thebest possible ways to develop self-expression.

The changes brought about by the newschool music syllabus in Russia have chal-lenged our foundations of music education.The following are brief statements of earliertheoretical principles used in music class-rooms, with comparisons to Kabalevsky'smain ideas:

• Music education has moved from an areaof separate instruction to emphasizing edu-cation more broadly ("educating a humanbeing, not a musician");

• Music, rather than only an instructionalmatter, has become a source and subjectof spiritual intercourse;

• Music listening has been made broaderand deeper so that students' music per-ception becomes the basis of all musicalactivities. The process of perception ismore clearly understood as the spiritualmastering of works of art in relationshipwith spiritual values;

• The priority of students' accomplishingnarrow, specific tasks connected with lis-tening, Sight-reading, and choral singinghas been replaced with attention to theelements of personal development, cultiva-tion of the interest in life through interestin music, and forming creative artisticthinking in music and about music withmusic images;

• Music teaching at school, once defined asdeveloping students' knowledge, habits,

30 The Quarterly journal of Music Teaching and Learning

and skills, is increasingly seen now as alively and complex artistic process of jointteacher-and-pupil activities aimed at one'scognition of the world and oneself:

• Music educators who once chose class-room topics rather randomly and withoutconsidering the deeper nature of musicnow have access to a system of interre-lated musical and aesthetic topics that arearranged by complexity and reflect the na-ture of music and the nature of the child:

• general didactic principles formerly appliedto the artistic pedagogic process are nowreplaced by the prin-ciples of a specific peda-gogy of art informed bythe nature of music as asystem of sound imagesand its association withlife and the other arts.

Kabalevsky's concept ofmusic education remains freshin the pedagogy of the artsand in pedagogy in general.Elaborated in the 1970s, thisconcept emphasizes the pres-ervation and cultivation ofspiritual culture and the recognition of theimportance of human values. The new teach-ing and learning processes stimulated byKabalevsky's ideas are being used not only inthe study of the arts but in other segments ofsocial life as well.

How are these ideals revealed in actualpractice in school-music programs throughoutthe former Soviet Union? One example is amusic syllabus for 6-year-old students. Its aimis to give the children rich experiences in color,sound, words, and movement by creating con-ditions for children to perceive music in anatural way, through images of the musical art,and this curriculum lays the foundation forperceiving image content of music in the uppergrades. The syllabus is significant because therepertory of the music lessons includes genuinefolk music as the natural expression of art,sacred or church music as an important branchof Russian culture, and ancient and contempo-rary music by Soviet and foreign composers isincluded. Games, dramatizations, and improvi-sations abound in the lessons. Some specialmethods, derived from pedagogues such asOrff, Kodaly, Jaques-Dalcroze, Vanhoven, andSuzuki are used too.

Developing students' artistic thinking withimages in music is accomplished by using asystem of questions and assignments thathelp the teacher bring the content of music,music images, to the students. The dialogueform encourages students to express theirinterpretations of musical compositions. Aquestion may be raised comparing musicalcompositions or comparing musical workswith works in other art forms. The questionshould draw the child's attention not to sepa-rate means of expressiveness (loudly, softly,

slowly, quickly) but to thechild's own inner world offeelings, thoughts, reac-tions, and impressions thatmusic evokes in the heart.Here are examples of pos-sible questions:

• Do you remember theway this music impressedyou at our last session?

• What do you think tobe more important in thissong-music or lyrics?

• \'{!hat is more important in a human be-ing-the mind or the heart?

• What did you feel when you were listen-ing to this piece of music?

• Where could this music be played inyour life, and with whom would you like tolisten to it?

• What do you think were the composers'emotions when the music was composed?What feelings did the composer wish to con-vey to us?

• What events of your life could be linkedwith this music?

It is important that teachers not only askquestions of children, but that they hearchildren's original and unique answers, forthere is nothing richer in content thanchildren's utterances. Although children'sanswers may be contradictory or incompletesometimes, they are marked with individuality,with a personal attitude. This is what shouldbe heard and appreciated by teachers.

Another teaching technique used to orga-nize musical activity is a "polyphonic pro-cess." All the students in the classroomcould react to the same music image simulta-neously, each one proceeding from an indi-

The process ofperception ismore clearly

understood as thespiritual masteringof vvorks of art...

Volume IV, Number 3 31

We aim at encouraging multiple pictures of music perception inwhich each student has an individual and inimitable "voice" that

adds something unique and original to the experience of music.

vidual vision and emotional response to thesound of the music. Music evokes a movingresponse in children, which some can ex-press with rhythmic movements of hands orbody. Another child might express under-standing of music images with drawings em-phasizing color or line. The third one beginsto accompany the music by improvising onan instrument. Yet another child "does noth-ing" and simply listens to music most atten-tively. Actually, this might be the most seri-ous creative activity of all.

The wise teacher's task is not to give anappraisal of who is "better" and who is"worse," but to display the ability to preservethe diversity of creative manifestations and toencourage such diversity. The desired resultof the music lesson is not for each child tofeel, hear, or perform music identically. Weaim at encouraging multiple pictures of mu-sic perception in which each student has anindividual and inimitable "voice" that addssomething unique and original to the experi-ence of music.

These strategies aim to cultivate students'artistic thinking with images, their aptitudetoward aesthetic contemplation and observa-tion, and their ability to view phenomenaand processes of the surrounding world inindividual ways. All this helps students tofeel their own spiritual lives more deeply.

Another important stage is the elaborationof a new didactic that can be called the artis-tic didactic. It differs from the didactic usedin teaching natural and exact sciences be-cause it is based on the regularities of thearts. The new didactic has been influencedby B. Asafiev's theory of intonation in music;the original pedagogical legacy of a group ofoutstanding music educators that includedNeuhaus, Igumnov, Fienberg, Oistrach, andYampolsky; by K. Stanislavsky's theory ofeducating and training actors; and by thenew concept of teaching arts in school ascreated by Kabalevsky and B. emensky, aprominent Soviet painter. The elaboration ofan integrated artistic didactic theory appears

to be a task of the future. At present, Rus-sian music educators can formulate basicprinciples that determine the goals, tasks,content, and methods of the pedagogicalprocess in arts instruction.

Our view of artistic didactics is based onthe belief that the study of all the arts incor-porate uniform standards and methods ofteaching. We are primarily interested not somuch in the differences among literature,music, fine arts, dance, and so on as in theirdeep affinity with the whole spiritual culture.The art of music, despite its unique specific-ity, cannot therefore be fruitfully masteredwithout knowledge of other arts, because itis through the unity of the arts that one recog-nizes the corresponding integrity and unity ofthe world, with its diversity of sounds, colors,and movements, and thus comprehends theconcept of universal character and regularitiesof artistic expression and development.

Integrity of approach, association of ideasproceeding from music images and intona-tion, and improvising music-these are thepedagogical ideas that can shape the processof giving students access to music. Musiceducation based on these principles favorsthe development of the student's basic capa-bility to think in artistic images. This is par-ticularly important for very young students,who are generally predisposed to learn aboutthe world through various images.

The best way to understand any phenom-enon or process is to follow its logical, natu-ral development. Thus a music educationcurriculum that fosters students' musical andspiritual development while relying on teach-ing methods that stem from the very natureof music is very promising. ~

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32 The Quarterly Journal of Music Teaching and Learning