Music Should Belong to Everyone p.

Veblen, K. K. (2005). “Music should belong to everyone”: Re-imagining

Kodály’s grand vision. Alla Breve. 29 (2): 8-16.

“Music Should Belong To Everyone": Re-Imagining

Kodály’s Grand Vision

Kari Veblen, University of Western Ontario

“Music should belong to everyone” Kodály 1941/1964

Music educators in Canada and the United States grapple with numerous
challenges as they seek to engage students in vital learning experiences. While some
teachers lobby for basic funding, others puzzle through the logistics of reaching students
from diverse backgrounds in a constantly moving terrain. Practitioners sympathetic to
the Kodály philosophy may be especially aware of the discrepancies between what they
believe can be attained and what seems possible at a given time. These issues are not
unique to the North American context (Sinor, 1997). Colleagues in Denmark, Australia
and elsewhere (Holgersen, 1997; DeVries, 2001) report similar challenges.
This piece reflects on the changing world of music education in North America
and possibilities for re-imagining Kodály’s expansive vision of a musically alive society.

Grand Vision
There are many, many expansive notions embedded in the Kodály approach to
music education. One core philosophical concept sounds a clarion call: “Music belongs
to everyone” (1941/1964). Kodály’s grand plan was to create a richly musical nation: his
time frame was at least a century. And in the years since the work began in Hungary,
this country has come close enough to the vision to serve as a model for others
worldwide. As Ponter (1999) notes:
In Hungary, the land of Bela Bartok and Franz Liszt, with its number one ranking
in science achievement for eighth and ninth graders, music education has long
been an essential and developmental program implemented nationally by the
composer, Zoltan Kodály. Both voice and instrumental training twice a week are
compulsory throughout the first eight years of schooling. P.110.
His fieldwork with Hungarian traditional music and his creativity as a composer
allowed Zoltan Kodály insights into the real meaning of music in daily life – or what it
 Music Should Belong to Everyone p. 2

could be. Kodály envisioned a Hungary in which everyone could make music at a high
level. He strongly believed that all should share music. This belief was further fueled by
a love of country, an admiration for Hungarian folk music, and a sense of the need to
protect vulnerable traditions.
Thus, the music to be taught would be “music of the highest quality.” That is,
traditional children’s songs or their mother tongue came first and gradually excellent
classical music would be introduced. To this end the composer created pedagogical
pieces, and choral works.
Music education was to begin with the youngest child, developing cognitive
abilities, physical skills, as well as things of the spirit. The curriculum was to be child
centered, always mindful of developmental stages. Since everyone has a voice, acapella
singing is foundational. While musical literacy is considered an essential part of
becoming a musician, in Kodály’s system this skill must be full bodied, developing the
inner ear and abilities to think musically as well as read and write notation. The scope
embraces the whole of a student’s education, crafted carefully for sequencing. For
fullest realization, music instruction happens daily and of course only qualified musician
educators teach.
This expansive approach finds a receptive audience among North American
music educators. Teachers may be all too aware of the difficulties in implementing
Kodály instruction in North America. Likewise, many perceive the limitations of overly
literal interpretation of materials or strategies. Nonetheless these ideas continue to
resonate a half-century and a continent away.

Kodály’s Context
In 1950 the first Kodály “music primary” school was established in Kecskemet,
Hungary. Instruction consisted of singing lessons twice a week. Within a decade, music
curricula developed from Kodály’s approach were being implemented throughout the
country (Jet, n.d.).
 Music Should Belong to Everyone p. 3

Flashback in time: a classroom in Hungary in 1955. Picture an old photograph of

children, boys and girls in kindergarten playing a singing game. Or perhaps they are an
older age, sitting in straight rows, earnestly reading music using solfege. These children
speak Hungarian, hear Hungarian traditional, Classical art and some popular music in
their homes, schools and perhaps churches. Consider their world.
The country of Hungary after WWII experienced profound socio-political changes
including a radical re-structuring of education. The totalitarian regime now in control
sought to standardize culture, bringing all aspects of life under central regulation.
(Varuch 2001, p.1) Brauns and Steinman (1997) write:
The [Hungarian educational] reform was directed to improve the level of mass
education as well as to eliminate the former highly selective dual system of primary
education. . . With the communist turnover the educational system was nationalized
and rigidly standardized in terms of the curriculum and the organization . . .
Standardization and centralization was understood in the way that every child of a
certain education type and grade had to learn the same lessons in a certain day
anywhere in Hungary. p. 21.
In short, this moment – as the regime sought to standardize culture --was the
ideal moment for a singular vision of music education. Notions of mother tongue were
perfectly aligned with official views of nationalist art. Thus, Kodály received the full
support of the state in developing and implementing his sequenced and comprehensive
music programs.

Reality of North American Classrooms

How do the realities of North American classrooms relate to Kodály’s context?
Picture an elementary classroom in Toronto, Ontario, or maybe Lincoln,
Nebraska. It’s 2006 and the third graders are eager, and fidgety. The class is composed
of 25 students representing a mixture of ethnicities – some visible minorities, others
seemingly from the dominant culture. There are boys and girls, each an individual, each
with many interests and abilities.
 Music Should Belong to Everyone p. 4

These nine year olds have much in common with their Hungarian counterparts of
1950. They are eager, curious, and ready for action. And yet, there are many
differences between Kodály’s time and the circumstances of today. Consider that these
children live in a different political and social climate. More of them will be likely to go
on to attend university. Most likely both parents work. There is technology, a level of
prosperity, AIDs, many more people, more ease in travel, greater access to information,
a different world.
Musically speaking, these children live in a very different sonic environment. At
home, their grandmother might sing them songs in Spanish, Korean, Iranian, French, or
Russian. These children might play “Chopsticks” on the piano, or air guitar ala Bon Jovi.
Others live in an “institutionally complete community” as sociologists term it where
their friends speak to them in Punjabi or whatever their mother tongue is, they shop at
stores specializing in Indian foods, attend community events with other people from the
same part of the world, listen to Indian language radio programs and so forth.
Given these factors, what should be the musical menu at school? How do
teachers provide for diversity as well as skill building? Since music learning can never be
neutral and since these are children are children of the world as well as children of a
nation or an ethnicity, contemporary music educators need to think beyond replicating
the status quo.

Reimagining the Vision

Clearly the Kodály philosophy was shaped and developed in a particular time and
place. But suppose Kodály was born and raised in St. John’s, Miami, Detroit, Lubuk,
Quebec City or Vancouver today. How might the following core principles translate to a
contemporary setting?

* Music for All

* Highest Quality Music, Mother Tongue
* Active music making, singing as foundational
 Music Should Belong to Everyone p. 5

* Child developmental, not subject developmental

* Musical literacy through comprehensive training in rhythm, solfege, sight
singing, listening, writing, performing and creating

Music for All

"Music is not a toy for a very few selected people . . .
music is spiritual food for everybody."

Kodály believed that everyone should have opportunity to learn, appreciate and
make music. The goal of music education should not be the development of a few lush
hothouse orchid professional players nor should it be a sweetmeat for the privileged.
There are several things bundled within this core principle: desire for the standard of
amateur music making to rise, reaction against a class system, as well as a desire to
bring vulnerable folk music to generations of children.
Upon first blush, this foundational principal squares with the democratic ideas of
North America. Most music educators endorse universal access! However, the political
and economic realities of Canada and the United States are in conflict with this ideal.
The reality is that some students have access and some do not due to funding, school
boards, facilities, teacher training, timetables, priorities and other excuses. This is a
deplorable fact and one that needs to change.
Perhaps the most critical element towards realizing this goal of universal access
originates with music at the primary level. Every elementary school needs a music
teacher who is a musician, who wants to work with children and who is qualified to
teach this subject. Although there are some states and some provinces where this is the
situation, many places have no such mandate. The generalist classroom teacher must
take on music as part of his or her duties, regardless of training or gifts. To my mind,
this single factor of professional music educators at the elementary level is the most
significant piece in realizing a fully musical society.
 Music Should Belong to Everyone p. 6

How can the teacher, school, parents and community align to work together?
How may we proceed with this goal? It would appear that answers rest with public
awareness and political action. Many individuals and groups currently advocate for just
this goal and literature is replete with reasons why music is essential to a balanced life.

Highest Quality Music and the Mother Tongue

“Let us take our children seriously! Everything else follows from this . . .
only the best is good enough for a child.” Kodály 1941/1974, p. 148

The core belief – the music taught to children should be of the “highest quality”
– would seem to be self evident. However, as Sinor (1997) noted, “highest quality”
music may be somewhat in conflict with the “Music for All” dictum:
The most basic of Kodály's ideas, that good music is necessary to enrich the life
of every human being, is certainly indispensable. While on first reading this
statement is in perfect accord with the philosophy of American music education
as expressed by MENC and the great majority of writers on the subject, several
serious implications are contained in it. The concept of "good" music that Kodály
used so frequently and with such assurance is far from an easy matter to define,
as anyone who ever emerged from an aesthetics class with a headache could
easily testify. P. 39
The term highest quality music in this case signified Western classical art and
traditional musics with a leaning towards Modern, Renaissance, and Baroque genres.
Kodály was a composer and academic who lived in the world of conservatory training
and university courses where Classical music was the music. As for the choice of
traditional or mother tongue music, folk songs have long been an inspiration for classical
compositions.
Kodály’s pioneering collaborations with Bartok allowed him a glimpse of a
vibrant living music that might fade, just as the peasant life was giving way to
modernism. Kodály became convinced that it was essential to breathe new life into
Hungarian traditional music because of its importance to collective identity and because
 Music Should Belong to Everyone p. 7

of “an ancient pentatony that he appears to have considered inherently more beautiful
than the tonic-dominant-based folk music of Germanic peoples.” Sinor (1997, p.39).
As for jazz and the popular music of the time, the composer had little use for
anything coming out of the gramophone or radio.i He wrote with strong imagery
(popular music as vermin) on several occasions.ii
While Classical Western and traditional Hungarian music are beautiful and worth
learning, few North Americans would consider using them exclusively for music
instruction. Talking about music of the “highest quality” is bound to spark debate as
factors such as large mobile democracies and pluralistic populations figure in curricular
mandates. At this time a wide spectrum of repertoire is favored. Many school programs
weigh the merits of continuing standard band ensembles in favor of steel pan, taiko
drumming, jazz, or mariachi ensembles.
Although some educators favor expanding the range of musics used with this
approach, others strongly oppose this notion. For example, some suggest
that the common tongue in North America (if there is a mother tongue in North
America) may well be popular music. Bondurant-Koehler (1995) recommends expanded
offerings that will fit student musical preferences. They suggest that jazz, popular
music, ethnic and art musics will work most comfortably with this approach (Volk 1998,
p. 10). Many English language folk songs of North America have already been pressed
into pedagogical service, as featured in professional conferences. However, music from
other immigrants is less represented. Nonetheless, there is an encouraging trend
towards embracing musical diversity, as evidenced in the offerings of professional
conferences (Campbell 2002, p. 30).

Active music making and singing as foundational

If one were to attempt to express the essence of this education in one word, it could only be – singing . . .
Our age of mechanization leads along a road ending with man himself as a machine; only the spirit of
singing can save us from this fate. . . . It is our firm conviction that mankind will live the happier when it
has learnt to live with music more worthily. Whoever works to promote this end, in one way or another,
has not lived in vain. Kodály 1966, p. 206
 Music Should Belong to Everyone p. 8

Kodály educators agree that active music making is foundational to music

education. Nonetheless, some of the most pitched battles in the field have focused
around praxial vs. aesthetic philosophies.
And should singing continue to be the central musical activity in modern
schools? DeVries (2001) comments:
I have found this to be taken “too literally by some teachers and music teacher
educators (i.e., music lessons consist entirely of unaccompanied singing). Body
percussion, simple percussion instruments, and recorder-all of which are ideally
suited to a Kodály-based music program-are not used. In an article about the
benefits of a Kodály-based music program, Louise Ban warns that, although the
system is vocally based, it should not be to the detriment of instrumental music
but should facilitate the transition to playing musical instruments. p. 25.
Some educators feel that it may be appropriate to supplement vocal activities with
technology and instrumental mediums (Beckstead 2001, Howard 1996).

Child Development Centered

The Kodály approach recognizes the importance of linking children’s
developmental stages with instruction. How might recent educational theories and
research inform practice? What do emerging neurobiological findings, notions of
multiple intelligences, ideas of learning styles and modalities and various constructivist,
instructional and socialization theories have to offer?

Musical Literacy
The goal of total musical literacy is a lofty one, particularly since the original
vision embraced a full-bodied understanding of literacy – that is, the child would learn
to read, write, hear and sing with understanding.
However, realizing universal musical literacy in North America poses both
philosophical and logistical issues. The philosophical concerns relate back to the
 Music Should Belong to Everyone p. 9

“highest quality music” issue. What is music? What does it mean to people now? In
particular, what does music mean to our children? Much of the world’s music is
learned and taught by ear. What does it mean when orally transmitted becomes
visually transmitted? Does the emphasis on sight rather than sound convey all that the
music carries?
Sinor (1997) weights merits of teaching notation:
The old rationale given to us for teaching note reading, that notation is used to
preserve musical ideas and to communicate them to others, is rendered
somehow suspect by the nearly universal availability of cassette recorders and
other reproduction devices. Some of the most respected thinkers in our field
have indicated that because most people interact with music during their lives
almost exclusively as listeners, efforts to teach them to read notation are
pointless and a waste of time better spent on learning to be more discriminating
consumers. P.40
Logistically – and I pose these questions as devil’s advocate, not that I don’t
endorse learning to read music – is musical literacy really possible without professional
elementary music educators? Is this goal attainable in the time allotted in a school day?
How may professionals achieve this aim without drill and skilling to the neglect of other
activities? Can musical literacy be taught without simplifying what is complex, taking
songs out of context or favoring one kind of music over others?
Dobszay writing in 1972 warned against the dangers of leaning too heavily upon
one way of teaching literacy:
In this relative solmization system, however, lies the danger of mechanical
application, the danger of the supremacy of routine, and if this happens then the
ends cannot be achieved. . the vitality of discovery and contact is lost, the area
of inner hearing and the operation of musical imagination disappear. p. 20
Another point to be considered lies in solfege training as it is taught in Kodály
classes today. Contemporary children routinely absorb chromatic sequences, harmonic
underpinnings, intervals, and rhythms not encountered in Hungary 50 years ago. And
 Music Should Belong to Everyone p. 10

yet many pedagogical materials developed by Kodály teachers are based on the
paradigm of Hungarian folk tonalities. Are these the most suitable? It could be
valuable to examine familiar musics to see where the original sequence of intervals to
be learned still holds. For example Bennett (2005, p. 44) questions the use of sol-mi as
the universal interval. She notes that English-langue folk songs infrequently feature sol-
mi as a fundamental motive and wonders whether this interval requires prolonged
repetition. Others such as Brown 2003 and McGuire 2003 suggest ways to expand the
orientation of solfege and rhythmic training.
Several researchers are working to understand literacy from the child’s
perspective and their findings might inform current practice. Uptitis 1992, Domer &
Gromko 1996 and Poorman 1996 provide insights into young children’s invented
notation of their own compositions. Klinger, Campbell & Goolsby (1998) study the ways
that youngsters learn songs, finding that immersion may be preferred to phrase by
phrase. This could have implications for the ways in which students learn rhythms and
melodies, i.e. in the context of a song instead of short atomistic patterns favored by
many Kodály teaching materials.
In Closing
The question then is can we affect a renaissance in music teaching
and learning in the 21st century? Is the Kodály method something that
could only be successful in a homogenous, centralized political controlled situation,
rather than in a free, democratic, locally controlled society? Are we the humanist music
educators who believe that we are obligated to share our talents with others?
Message from the President: Kathy Hickey

The Kodály approach faces a number of challenges as practitioners work to keep

their work fresh and relevant. One of the most salient is the persistent misconception
that this is a method, or rather, only a method (Hanley & Montgomery 2002, p.120).iii
Although a codified curriculum and materials soon emerged for use in Hungarian
schools and later exported internationally, there is much more to this way of teaching
 Music Should Belong to Everyone p. 11

than any one collection of pedagogical materials or sequences. The grand philosophy
that Kodály envisioned were based in a particular time and place, but are surely grander
than their realizations.
Consider the foundational goals in light of the next hundred years:
* Music for All
* Highest Quality Music
* Child’s mother tongue, singing as foundational
* Active music making
* Child developmental, not subject developmental
* Musical literacy through comprehensive training in rhythm, solfege, sight
singing, listening, writing, performing and creating

How may these be reframed for our times? The vision is a compelling and beautiful one
– one worth examining, working with, re-shaping and re-affirming for our context in
North America.
 Music Should Belong to Everyone p. 12

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i
“Village children are closest to art. What they hear outside their schools comes mostly from the old and
noble material of folk music. What is bad is driven towards them by the gramophone and radio from
cities.” Kodály 1929/1974, p.120.

ii
In 1932 the few people singing traditional songs were compared with “a thousand tiny rodents are
industriously gnawing away at the surviving ruins of the Hungarian song. I am thinking here of so-called
light music, which contains at least one offence against Hungarian intonation in every line.” (1932, p. 214).

iii
Hanley and Montgomery in their survey of research in contemporary curriculum practices cite six
researchers who are not convinced about philosophical foundations of this and other popular approaches to
music teaching.