Émile Jaques-Dalcroze (1865-1950)
The education of the sensitivity and personality, through rhythm, must precede the ear, because the rhythm is a primordial element of the music.
This education has given to the child a chance to become aware of itself. Educated to know the mechanism of this wonderfully built his body, the child will feel the birth and growth of the desire to fully use the powers at its disposal.
You will also develop the imagination, because his mind, free from all tension and all nervous resistance, will surrender to fantasy.
He will experience profound joy, higher order, because it is not based on special or external circumstances. What sets it apart from the pleasure is that becomes a permanent state of the individual. Do not depend either on time or by events that occur around us, it is an integral part of our body.
This joy does not manifest with bursts of laughter, like cheerfulness, can remaine hidden inside of us, flourishing in the privacy of our "I", whereas vibrate all the active forces of the individual, that must not be wasted, but oriented, without suffocating them.
The joy comes in the child when his faculties are freed from the inibitions.
This self-knowledge is the result of an education: it is up to the tenacious teachers turn a little flame of joy, shines timidly at the beginning and irregularly, then light up and feed into a source of light and heat that will continue to grow becoming brighter, warm and beneficial.
(1915)
