Abstract:

The connection between music and corporeity recurs with frequency in recent psycho-pedagogical reflection, and at times it has been the focus. The use of movement and of gesture together with listening to music indeed constitutes an essential resource in infant and primary education.
The intent of this paper is to offer the results of a pedagogical and research project conducted in the form of a workshop on the music of Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev, frequently use in current music education. I designed the learning activity, which was carried out in educational and scholastic contexts in Bologna and was aimed at teachers of infant and primary school. The activity is based on suggestions in the rhythmics of Jacques-Dalcroze and on up-to-date and innovative pedagogical and methodological premises. It is currently in press with the publishing house Aracne (Rome), and it will be adopted as a reference text by important Italian universities (Bologna, Modena-Reggio Emilia, Bressanone).
The work is based on a fundamental idea: corporeal movement spontaneously translates the structural characteristics of music heard and this in turn permits the refinement of comprehension. Guided listening by the teacher allows the children to gather elements of musical discourse. The movement originates, then, from carefully listening to the piece and from identifying its constitutional elements (expressive, structural, formal), and it aids music comprehension. From this perspective, corporeity thus constitutes a medium of listening.
Gestures and movements are selected through a process of exchange and negotiation in which the children are considered protagonists of their own proposals and choices. It is the teacher’s job to re-elaborate the children’s proposals and to filter them in light of the more general and methodological reflections inherent in the music-movement relationship.
The learning activity is thus a work of synthesis uniting two different fields: music education, and physical and motor education. In light of current pedagogical thought, it aims at joining the dimensions of listening and of body movement in an efficient relationship that is directed above all at music comprehension. From this perspective, the activity is oriented towards a conscious and controlled use of gesture, which is understood as a privileged didactic medium, and therefore gesturing is not left alone or abandoned to choices based on projective or unreflexive listening. At the same time, the activity is very useful for the development in children of an ever-increasing awareness of their own corporeity and of themselves, such that they may grow in their capacities of coordination, movement, action in the environment and in space, keeping in mind the context and the presence of others. The experience of listening thus becomes an experience of consciousness: of oneself, of one’s body, and of art music that, far from being a simple and banal escape, appeals to our sensitivity and intelligence.

Keywords:

research project.