Music e Learning: can one play in learning an instrument in the rigor of musical doctrine? Can scores and solfeggio become, from the very beginning of learning, an "instrument within the instrument", or a means of direct relationship with the world around us? The answer is not obvious. It is about reconciling the classical didactics with the sophisticated techniques of relational psychology. Quite a different thing from the school of thought, which true musicians abhor, of "playing right away" even before having taught to master music at least in its rudiments.
Emanuele Pappalardo (composer and teacher in the Department of Music Education at the Conservatory of Latina and who has always been involved in research in the pedagogical and didactic fields) offers us – with Composition and analysis in the early stages of studying the musical instrument. Cognitive, creative, affective and relational aspects (268 pages, Ets Editions) – a pedagogy and a didactic, i.e. practical way of doing, which demonstrates how many of the still current pedagogical-didactic beliefs are in reality pure acts of faith (a faith, after all, what is it if not a believe in something for which there is no reason to believe?) towards a custom now shared for at least a century in academic institutions and also fully shared by common sense.
Music and Didactics: what criteria does Pappalardo invite us to question?
First of all just the solfeggio, that is this practice which, in general, has the only effect of distancing any beginner student from the healthy motivation to undertake the study of an instrument. Before needing theoretical knowledge, music can be made right away, and it can be done by composing and analyzing and sharing the results with one's friends and with all the affective figures of reference (parents, grandparents, siblings…). The music thus maintains its connotation of Game and, we know it from Winnicott onwards, the game it's serious!
But in addition to strictly doing without solfeggio practices, Pappalardo shows us how children between the ages of ten and eleven who know nothing about music and who approach a musical instrument for the first time can immediately start composing and to analyze the music that they themselves have composed and to achieve, in just over 24 hours of lessons each, (if you think about it, it is just over a day) technical skills that allow them to deal with the traditional repertoire as well. Yes, because Pappalardo hasn't neglected tradition, far from it: the children have, together with the notebook with their own compositions, also a traditional textbook. Innovation and tradition enrich each other.
Another belief that is rarely questioned concerns the tuning of the instrument
The pages in which the children of this research discover that the instrument tunes itself are moving, that the tunings are not given once and for all (this is what usually happens when you go to instrument lessons: any conscientious teacher immediately tunes the instrument of the pupil-and, with honesty, Pappalardo confesses that this is what he too did before immersing himself in this research). The tunings can be many and each student can have their own.
This Research, of which the book constitutes the final report, was born from a collaboration between the Conservatory of Music of Latina, and a comprehensive Institute of the Latina area, the IC Giuseppe Giuliano. This collaboration already represents a rather extraordinary fact in itself: it is completely unusual for an institution that deals, by definition, with higher education to collaborate with an institution that deals with basic training.
The object of the research? A guitar
Indeed, many guitars, given that the method/methodology favors working together, the socialization of knowledge and learning. “But the Methodology can be applied to any other musical instrument” says Pappalardo. It is a text that can not only be read, but listened to and watched, because it is very rich in freely consultable and downloadable audio-video materials.
