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THE KODÁLY APPROACH

Kodály Philosophy
The Kodály philosophy of music education is based upon a vision of the role of music in the intellectual,
emotional, physical, social, and spiritual development of every child. A central tenet of the Kodály
approach is that music belongs to everyone - that an education in music is the right of every human being
and cannot be left to chance.

Kodály believed that music is meant to develop one’s entire being – personality, intellect, and emotions.
“. . . music is a spiritual food for everybody. So, I studied how to make more people accessible to good
music.” (Kodály , in The Kodály Concept, 1966, p. 2) Indeed, the Kodály approach integrates many of the
best principles and techniques in music education history, drawing from Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Hans
George Nägeli, Hermann Kretsxhmar, Leo Kestenberg, and Robert Schumann. Jenö Adám, an early and
prominent colleague of Kodály stated, “The most important thing is to actualize the instinctive love of the
child for singing and playing, to realize the changing of his moods through the songs, his feelings, his
experiences. . . in other words, to bring about the miracle of music.” (Adám, in The Kodály Concept,
1966, p. 2)

Kodály believed that the future of a nation’s music is determined in their schools. Consequently, the
Kodály approach places music as a core curriculum subject in the school setting.

Main Goals of the Kodály Approach

Fundamentally, a main goal of this approach is to develop, to the fullest extent possible, the innate
musicality present in all human beings. Thus, music experience and instruction must begin in a child’s life
as early as possible. In fact, Kodály advocated that a child’s musical education should begin nine months
before the birth of his mother.

Further, the aim is to instill within each child a love of music based on knowledge and understanding,
stemming from first-hand, active music-making experiences, beginning with lullabies, childhood chants,
folk songs, and singing games.

Kodály insisted that the musical materials to be used must be of the highest artistic caliber. Therefore,
only the most musically valuable and attractive material is good enough in music education. Children
should be led to masterpieces by means of masterpieces. In the grand scheme, Kodály hoped to use
schools to change society and transform culture by concentrating on the individual, providing the
humanizing emphasis in an increasingly technological society that, for many pupils, may not be
experienced elsewhere.

Principles of the Kodály Approach

In a word, the essence of the Kodály approach is singing. The human voice, the most accessible musical
instrument, is the foundation of musical development. “A deeper musical education can at all times
develop only where singing forms its basis. Instruments are for the privileged few. Only the human voice
– canaccessible to all, free of charge, yet the most beautiful of all instruments be the fertile soil of a
musical culture extending to all.” (Kodály, in Eosze, 1982, p. 19)

Kodály believed that the folk music of a people contains all of the basic characteristics needed to teach
the foundations of music and to develop a love of music to last a lifetime. Accordingly, the daily singing of
folk songs of the students’ own musical heritage is the bedrock from which music of other ethnic
backgrounds and art musics of the world are introduced, compared, and contrasted.

Inherent in the Kodály approach is Kodály’s belief that the path from musical illiteracy to musical culture is
through writing and reading music, and that acquisition of musical culture by the masses is possible only
through the use of moveable - do tonic solfa. Specific musical content and experiences are arranged
according to developmentally appropriate practices, and much experience with music with music -- at the
subliminal level -- precedes naming and symbolization. In general, “doing” (experiencing) leads to
thinking, which leads to understanding.

Materials of the Kodály Approach

The musical materials of the Kodály approach are:

• Authentic children’s musical literature: nursery rhymes and songs; counting out rhymes; jump-
rope game songs and chants; ring games; and singing games.
• Authentic music of the child’s culture (reflecting the ethnic backgrounds in a given community),
e.g., folk songs; singing games; play parties; ballads; lullabies and folk dances.
• Authentic folk music of other cultures.
• Reading examples and exercises based on music of oral/aural traditions.
• The best art music written by master composers.

Methodological Tools
Methodological tools employed in the Kodály approach are:

• Moveable-do tonic solfa. Originating in the eleventh century, based on Latin chant, the syllables
(do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti) are more easily and reliably memorized than letters and numbers,
especially at an early age. Through aural memorization of intervals, the sense of tonal function is
developed.
• Curwen/Glover Handsigns. Drawn from the tradition of chironomy (100-600 B.C. Vedas, ancient
Hindu sacred books; 8th-c. Byzantine sources; and 10th-c. Gregorian Chant manuscripts), and
developed by John Curwen (19th-c. England) as an augmentation of Sara Glover’s work, the
handsigns are a tool for individualizing, visualizing, and physically representing solfa syllables,
giving each tone a distinct personality in relation to the tonic. By providing a visualization of
relative spatial relationships of pitches, the handsigns aid aural memory of pitch patterns and
interval relationships while allowing for music making without the encumbrances of standard
notation. HANDSIGNS CHART.
• Rhythm syllables. Adapted from Emile-Joseph Chevés’ rhythmic syllables (mid 19th-c. France), a
set of verbal syllables are used during initial stages of rhythmic training. The syllables – meant to
be voiced and not written as words -- are used as a tool for reading and writing rhythms.
Typically, “ta” is used to indicate a quarter note; “ti-ti” paired eighths; “ti-bi-ti-bi” for four sixteenths,
etc.
• “Stick” or Solfa Notation. Used as a short cut to standard staff notation, solfa notation (a
combination of rhythmic stick figures and solfa) enables children to read and write music using a
relative, rather than fixed system of notation, thus developing in their ears a firm grasp of intervals
and tonal and rhythmic patterns.

Kodály Pedagogy
Instruction progresses from sound to sight, from the known to the unknown, from the simple to the more
complex, and from the concrete to the abstract. Learning occurs through problem-solving, comparison,
and guided question-and-answer. The general order of instruction is hearing, singing, showing,
verbalizing, deriving, writing, reading, and creating.

More specifically, musical elements and concepts are taught in a sequence based on the most prominent
musical idioms of a culture’s song repertoire. Musical content domains are: rhythm, melody, form,
harmony, expression, style (historical and emergent), and terminology and symbols. Musical skill
domains to be developed are singing and vocal development, listening, movement, memory, inner
hearing, writing/dictation, reading/sight-reading, part-work, improvisation, composition, conducting, and
instrumental work.

The teacher leads students to discover musical elements (content domains) and develop their musical
skills (skill domains) through a five-phase instructional sequence: Prepare, Make Conscious, Reinforce,
Practice, and Create. Assessment of student achievement is embedded within the activities present in
each phase.

• Prepare phase: Students experience the new element or concept mainly through listening,
moving, singing by ear, inner hearing, and part work. The teacher then uses group aural analysis
to guide students to identify the presence of a new element and articulate its critical attributes.
• Make Conscious phase: Students name the element, revisit its aural context, and show its visual
representation.
• Reinforcement phase: Students write and read the specific pattern used to name the new
element, and then explore -- through listening, singing, moving, inner hearing, writing and
reading, etc.,-- the new element as it exists in very familiar patterns extracted from song
repertoire presented in the Prepare phase.
• Practice phase: Students explore the new element or concept in familiar and unfamiliar patterns
in unfamiliar materials such as songs, exercises, reading pieces, and listening examples. All skill
domains are then plumbed, relative to the new element, in myriad musical settings. Additionally,
the new element is applied in familiar settings to instruments such as the recorder, barred
instruments, rhythm sticks, etc.
• Create phase: Students apply their knowledge by engaging in higher level improvisation,
composition, and performance on instruments, thereby demonstrating mastery of the musical
element or concept.

Finally, music instruction in the Kodály-based music classroom is based on Kodály’s guiding principle: “A
thorough knowledge of the material must precede everything, for anything else can be built only upon this
knowledge. Any efforts to achieve aesthetic results which either precede or discard knowledge are
equivalent to building castles in Spain.” (Kodály, in Eösze, p. 18)