Emile Jaques-Dalcroze

	Portrait of Jaques-Dalcroze

Jaques-Dalcroze was born in Vienna in 1865, and died in Geneva in 1950. It was his conviction that the arts and education were closely inter-related. While working at the Conservatory of Music in Geneva, he developed a system of rhythmic exercises that he devised and taught, called eurhythmics. He had discovered in his pupils difficulties "which result from insufficient co-ordination between the mental picture of a movement and its performance by the body". He gradually composed first "gesture songs", which used physical movement to accompany short pieces of music, and later an entire set of exercises designed to create simultaneously greater muscular and nervous co-ordination and a keener sensitivity to musical rhythm and tempo. To do this, it was necessary to enhance not only his pupils’ perception of musical nuance, but their awareness of the responsive movement of the body in space as well.

In effect, he taught his pupils to translate musical composition directly into space through the reactive medium of their own bodies. Bodily movement and mental perception had to be integrated and harmonised to respond to music, and the exercises trained students until this occurred almost automatically.

Following his work with Appia at Hellerau, he established an Institute in Geneva in 1915, and this continues his work to this day. Eurhythmics became well established internationally under the direction of Dalcroze and teachers trained by him, and is widely taught to musicians, actors, dancers, and as part of general programmes of education. The system seeks to encourage the vital enjoyment of rhythmic movement and the confidence that it gives; the ability to hear, understand and express music in movement; and the expectation that the pupils will improvise and develop freely their own ideas.