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Type of Submission
Podium Presentation
Keywords
Music, Education, Music Education, Medieval, Guido, Classroom, Teaching, Western Music, Innovation, Children
Proposal
A number of contributors throughout history have played a part in developing the methods now used in education, but arguably none of them had as much widespread and lasting impact as the monk Guido D’Arrezzo. In this paper, I identify the ways in which the teaching methods traditionally attributed to Guido D’Arezzo have been built on and modified by music educators throughout the centuries. The musical staff, which has been recorded to be first used in its current form by Guido, has come to eradicate the need for rote memorization and has led to great and lasting contributions in music. Guido D’Arezzo also wrote extensively on the use of solfège and the Guidonian hand, and this method was adapted by Curwen (who added hand signs) and Kodály (who contributed the “movable do”). Guido also wrote on the use of composition to teach music, a method taken up and improved upon by John Feierabend, whose methods involve encouraging young singers to improvise melodies. Thus, the innovations in music education attributed to Guido have laid the foundation for music education for hundreds of years and will continue to guide music educators for years to come.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Medieval Methods: The Continued Use and Evolution of Guido D’Arezzo’s Approach to Music Education
A number of contributors throughout history have played a part in developing the methods now used in education, but arguably none of them had as much widespread and lasting impact as the monk Guido D’Arrezzo. In this paper, I identify the ways in which the teaching methods traditionally attributed to Guido D’Arezzo have been built on and modified by music educators throughout the centuries. The musical staff, which has been recorded to be first used in its current form by Guido, has come to eradicate the need for rote memorization and has led to great and lasting contributions in music. Guido D’Arezzo also wrote extensively on the use of solfège and the Guidonian hand, and this method was adapted by Curwen (who added hand signs) and Kodály (who contributed the “movable do”). Guido also wrote on the use of composition to teach music, a method taken up and improved upon by John Feierabend, whose methods involve encouraging young singers to improvise melodies. Thus, the innovations in music education attributed to Guido have laid the foundation for music education for hundreds of years and will continue to guide music educators for years to come.
