The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze | Page 4

when marching, another always ahead;
another takes unequal steps, another on the contrary lacks balance. All
these faults, if not corrected in the first years, will reappear later in the
musical technique of the individual.
Unsteady time when singing or playing, confusion in playing, inability
to follow when accompanying, accentuating too roughly or with lack of
precision, all these faults have their origin in the child's muscular and
nervous control, in lack of co-ordination between the mind which
conceives, the brain which orders, the nerve which transmits and the
muscle which executes. And still more, the power of phrasing and
shading music with feeling depends equally upon the training of the
nerve-centres, upon the co-ordination of the muscular system, upon
rapid communication between brain and limbs--in a word, upon the
health of the whole organism; and it is by trying to discover the
individual cause of each musical defect, and to find a means of
correcting it, that I have gradually built up my method of eurhythmics.
This method is entirely based upon experiments many times repeated,
and not one of the exercises has been adopted until it has been applied
under different forms and under different conditions and its usefulness
definitely proved. Many people have a completely false idea of my
system, and consider it is a simple variant on the methods of physical
training at present in fashion, whose inventors have undoubtedly
rendered great service to humanity.

I cannot help smiling when I read in certain papers, over names which
carry weight, articles in which my method is compared to other
gymnastic systems. The fact is, my book is simply a register of the
different exercises which I have invented, and says nothing of my ideas
in general, for it is written for those who have learnt to interpret my
meaning under my personal tuition at Geneva and Hellerau.
Quite naturally, half the critics who have done me the honour of
discussing the book, have only glanced through it and looked at the
photographs. Not one of them has undergone the special training upon
which I lay stress and without which I deny absolutely that any one has
the right to pass a definite judgment on my meaning; for one does not
learn to ride by reading a book on horsemanship, and eurhythmics are
above all a matter of personal experience.
The object of the method is, in the first instance, to create by the help
of rhythm a rapid and regular current of communication between brain
and body; and what differentiates my physical exercises from those of
present-day methods of muscular development is that each of them is
conceived in the form which can most quickly establish in the brain the
image of the movement studied.
It is a question of eliminating in every muscular movement, by the help
of will, the untimely intervention of muscles useless for the movement
in question, and thus developing attention, consciousness and
will-power. Next must be created an automatic technique for all those
muscular movements which do not need the help of the consciousness,
so that the latter may be reserved for those forms of expression which
are purely intelligent. Thanks to the co-ordination of the nerve-centres,
to the formation and development of the greatest possible number of
motor habits, my method assures the freest possible play to
subconscious expression. The creation in the organism of a rapid and
easy means of communication between thought and its means of
expression by movements allows the personality free play, giving it
character, strength and life to an extraordinary degree.
Neurasthenia is often nothing else than intellectual confusion produced
by the inability of the nervous system to obtain from the muscular

system regular obedience to the order from the brain. Training the
nerve centres, establishing order in the organism, is the only remedy for
intellectual perversion produced by lack of will power and by the
incomplete subjection of body to mind. Unable to obtain physical
realization of its ideas, the brain amuses itself in forming images
without hope of realizing them, drops the real for the unreal, and
substitutes vain and vague speculation for the free and healthy union of
mind and body.
The first result of a thorough rhythmic training is that the pupil sees
clearly in himself what he really is, and obtains from his powers all the
advantage possible. This result seems to me one which should attract
the attention of all educationalists and assure to education by and for
rhythm an important place in general culture.
But, as an artist, I wish to add, that the second result of this education
ought to be to put the completely developed faculties of the individual
at the service of art and to give the latter the most subtle and complete
of interpreters--the human body.