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Featured Guest Writer is Mary Ellen Pinzino Mary Ellen Pinzino is the Founder/Director of the Come Children Sing Institute, a center for research and development in music learning. She is the composer of the Come Children Sing Institute Song Library, a full resource of songs for early childhood, elementary school, and children's chorus. She is the creator of the Come Children Sing Institute music curriculum and author of "Letters on Music Learning." Ms. Pinzino has served as clinician for the Music Educators National Conference, the American Orff-Schulwerk Association, the Organization of American Kodaly Educators, the American Choral Directors Association, and Suzuki Institutes. She has studied extensively with Edwin Gordon. A Conversation with Edwin Gordon By Mary Ellen Pinzino
Edwin Gordon is one of the great masters in the field of music
education. His lifetime of research has led to an extensive investigation of music
aptitude, an unprecedented music learning theory, a comprehensive analysis of rhythm,
and groundbreaking work in early childhood music. He is regularly placed alongside
Orff, Kodaly, Dalcroze, and Suzuki for his contributions to the field. As the only living
master among these giants, Edwin Gordon is presented here in conversation, reflecting on
his work and its place in the history of music education.
Ed, you have achieved a
formidable place in the field of music education. How does it feel to be placed alongside
Orff, Kodaly, Dalcroze, and Suzuki?
How do you see your work in
relation to Orff, Kodaly, Dalcroze, and Suzuki?
What would you most like to see the next
person do?
I have learned more from you about
movement than I have from any movement specialist. How did you become aware of the
importance of movement in relation to rhythm development?
The great majority of persons teaching music are
trying to teach children to be rhythmical through the brain by counting half notes, whole
notes, and beats in the measure. It's the body, it's movement that is most important. If
you can't move, you're not going to have rhythm. And, if you don't have rhythm, you
don't have anything, because musical expression is essentially rhythm.
You and I have
discussed early childhood music for a lot of years, with you primarily as theorist and me
as practitioner. How did the master researcher begin working with young children?
What parallels
do you find in your creative process as a wood sculptor and as a researcher?
Your research has evolved through the years. In our discussions many years ago,
your approach appeared more objective. How did your work with young children change
your approach to research?
My research has gone, not
from objective to subjective, but from objective to another type of objective. Rather than
testing for objectives and experimental treatment, I'm now doing the teaching and
observing children's responses in a very objective way, trying to find out how they learn.
I keep very accurate records for each individual student—what the aptitudes are, what the
individual needs are, what the musical characteristics are, and I compare my observations
on the individual.
As you look back at your life's work, what do you feel is your greatest
achievement?
What are you doing that you feel might surpass what you
have done?
I realized that there are many persons teaching
improvisation who may be able to improvise, but don't know how to teach it. Then there
are those who can't improvise but think they do know how to teach it. I decided about
six years ago that I had to develop a taxonomy of harmonic patterns [chord progressions].
I have recently completed the Harmonic Improvisation Readiness Record, which
evolved into the companion Rhythm Improvisation Readiness Record. Neither test
behaves like an aptitude test, nor like an achievement test. I have a feeling I might have
discovered a generic form of music aptitude. I can give that test to anybody from third
grade to high school, music student or not, and the mean score remains the same. This is
very unusual for any kind of test, because with chronological age, test scores increase. It
is really quite a mystery to me. Not only does the mean score remain the same, but there
is no correlation between musical background and scores on these tests. Further, there is
very little correlation between the scores on these tests and scores on a music aptitude
test.
There's another aspect that really fascinates me. I started to do validity studies with
persons who score high on this test of harmonic improvisation. Persons who score high
tend to improvise better than those who score low, however, the correlation is only
moderate. While that is encouraging, I wondered why the correlation wasn't higher. So I
started working with a lot of individual children. Guess what I came up with?
I found that
there are many, many children who hear chord changes, but they don't hear them at the
right time. Many persons who are teaching improvisation are teaching chord changes. I
doubt that it has ever occurred to them that you can hear the chord changes but hear them
at the wrong time. It's like the applied teachers who correct you by telling you that you
played the wrong pitch, but rarely do they tell you that you played the right pitch at the
wrong time.
I am still engaging in research, trying to understand more about all of this. I
have either found a generic form of aptitude, or I am just validating the fact that music
education is derelict in teaching improvisation. I really don't know if this is going to
become my most important achievement. Perhaps not the most important, but perhaps
the most compelling.
You have speared a lot of "sacred cows" in the field of music
education, challenging all of us to grow. How do you feel you will be viewed fifty years
from now?
The more I read history, the more I find that if anything is
going to have a lasting impact, it is going to take a minimum of three generations to grab
hold. It will be after the innovator's death. The tragedy is that once the innovator is
gone, what the innovator had in mind becomes modified. This is already happening
during my lifetime. What will it be like in fifty years? I'm not kidding myself. They
will probably know me. They're going to have bits and pieces of my work, but they're
going to use it to fit their own needs, personalities, and teaching styles. All I can do is
hope that after they get through mangling it, that music education will be better than
before.
I have never known you to be at a loss for ideas to improve music education, but if
you could make only one recommendation to music teachers of the next century, what
would it be?
Which aspect of your
work would you most like to be remembered for?
Here is a helpful, complementary link:
Gordon Institute for Music Learning
Resource Books:
Learning Sequences in Music, Skill, Content and Patterns, A Music Learning Theory by Edwin Gordon.
1997, GIA Publications, Inc. Chicago.
A Music Learning Theory for Newborn and Young Children by Edwin Gordon. 1997, GIA Publications, Inc. Chicago.
No portion of this article may be used or reproduced without express written agreement with author.
Next week's article is on: Teaching Private Piano by Verla Jones. |