Foundations of Music Education

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Pestalozzi

The Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi had a strong influence on the development of education in the United States. However, fewer educators might know that his work also had an impact on the inclusion of vocal music instruction in elementary schools.

Pestalozzi believed that active participation and engagement of the senses was the best way to educate children. As a result, he urged educators to include music instruction in their teaching. American proponents of the Pestalozzian method therefore had a philosophical basis for including music in basic instruction (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 10).

Joseph H. Naef, an immigrant to the United States and an early proponent of the Pestalozzian method in the U.S., presented the “Principles of the Pestalozzian System of Music” at an 1830 meeting of the American Institute of Instruction in Boston. The seven points outlining the method were:

1. To teach sounds before signs and to make the child learn to sing before he learns the written notes or their names;
2. To lead him to observe by hearing and imitating sounds, their resemblances and differences, their agreeable and disagreeable effect, instead of explaining these things to him—in a word, to make active instead of passive in learning;
3. To teach but one thing at a time—rhythm, melody, and expression, which are to be taught and practiced separately, before the child is called to the difficult task of attending to all at once;
4. To make him practice each step of these divisions, until he is master of it, before passing to the next;
5. To give the principles and theory after the practice, and as induction from it;
6. To analyze and practice the elements of articulate sound in order to apply them to music, and
7. To have the names of the notes correspond to those used in instrumental music. (Abeles, Hoffer, and Klotman 1995, 11).


Some of the basic principles Naef presented are still relevant to elementary music education in the United States today. The Orff Schulwerk method of music and movement education, developed in the 20th century by German composer Carl Orff, advocates that students should create music before learning to write it, similar to the way language is learned: “When the children want to write down what they have composed, reading and writing find their moment” (American Orff-Schulwerk Association 2009). Today, over 10,000 music educators in the United States adhere to an Orff Schulwerk philosophy in their classroom. Additionally, the Kodály philosophy of music education, the collection of ideas advocated by Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály, advocates singing as the “essence” of the concept and that vocal music instruction should precede instrumental. There is a strong Kodály following in the United States today by elementary and other music educators (Organization of American Kodály Educators 2004).

Although Abeles, Hoffer and Klotman (1995, 10) point out that Pestalozzi cannot be directly credited for incorporating music instruction in any schools but his own, his work in education laid the groundwork for elementary (and other) music education as we know it today.


Abeles, Harold F., Charles R. Hoffer, and Robert H. Klotman. Foundations of Music Education, 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Thomas Higher Education, 1995.

American Orff-Schulwerk Association. “What is Orff Schulwerk?” 2009. http://aosa.org/orff.html (accessed January 25, 2009).

Organization of American Kodály Educators. “Kodály Philosophy.” 2004. http://oake.org/php/kodalyphilosophy.php (accessed January 25, 2009).

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