94

Journal of Historical Research in Music Education 37(1)

While Others War” and the last piece included from 1920 is the “League of Nation
Blues.” Songs such as “Wake Up, America!,” “I’m Proud to be the Sweetheart of a
Soldier,” “Good-bye Broadway, Hello France!,” “The Rose of No Man’s Land,” and
“Mothers of America, You Have Done Your Share” are in between.
The anthology concludes with color plates of the cover art presented chronologi-
cally, plates of cover art from songs not included in the book, and indexes of titles,
songwriters, composers, performers, recording artists, artists, and publishers. The
indexes make it easy to find songs by notable artists of the period, such as well-known
songwriters Irving Berlin—with seven pieces included—and George M. Cohan with
three, influential recording artists such as Arthur Fields’ “Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in
the Morning” and Al Jolson’s “Hello Central! Give Me No Man’s Land,” and prolific
illustrators who produced cover art such as Norman Rockwell and Albert Barbelle.
Paas has created a unique, interesting, and valuable resource for scholars interested
in this period in general, in popular music’s portrayal of American society during
World War I, and for those particularly interested in music used for purposes of propa-
ganda. While much of the material in this book is now available digitally, Paas orga-
nizes and presents it in such a way that successfully outlines the movement from
neutrality to buildup, execution, and drawdown of America’s involvement in the war.

Edgard, Willems
Psychological Foundations of Music Education, translated and edited by Jerry Louis-Jaccard. Salt
Lake City, UT: BYU Creative Works, 217 pp. ISBN 978-0-8425-2827, $25.00 (paperback).

Reviewed by: Regina Carlow, Associate Professor, University of New Mexico, rcarlow@unm.edu
DOI: 10.1177/1536600615608470

Psychological Foundations of Musical Education is an English translation of Edgar

Willems’s (1890–1978), a Swiss composer, educator and philosopher, ideas regard-
ing musical education. The book, first published in Switzerland (1956), has since
been translated to Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. Jerry Louis-Jaccard, the translator
and editor of the English edition, is a contemporary American music educator with
deep ties to the foundational teaching philosophy of Pestalozzi and a recognized
scholar of Kodály pedagogy. In the translator’s foreword, Jaccard stated, “this edition
seeks to situate Edgar Willems in his rightful place among Pestalozzi’s other music
pedagogy descendants, namely Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Zoltan Kodály and Carl Orff”
(p vii). Jaccard also noted the use of fixed do. “The fixed-do framework of this book
does not deter me—the underlying principles are applicable to both systems.”
Jacques Chapuis, a pupil of Willems’s, and a well-known organist and theory peda-
gogue, wrote the preface to this edition as well as an article on Willems’s invention of
an Intratonal Metallophone used to teach intonation. Chapuis’s addition to the book is
Book Reviews 95

a bonus for those interested in the study of intratonal space (chapter 6). In the preface,
Chapuis suggested that real art was waning during the mid- to late twentieth century.
“Art seems to be at adventure’s end since 1968; noting contemporary titles such as, Art
without artists; The death or mutation of art? The end of the museum” (p. x). While
including other dire predictions about the state of artistic life, Chapuis challenged
readers to withdraw from the noisy atmosphere, omnipresent violence, current anguish,
and lexical plethora by which we are continually inundated The preface—a two-page
collection of inviting prose—piqued my curiosity and I was immediately captivated by
the writings of this important pedagogue, so well loved in Latin America, but scarcely
mentioned in the history of American music education.

Edgar Willems and His Ideas about Musical Education

Edgar Willems, born in Belgium in 1890, was influenced by the teachings of Émile
Jacques-Dalcroze. During his early years, Willems was a likely participant in what
Frega called the renewal of music teaching at the turn of the nineteenth century in
Geneva.1 Although Willems’s early studies in the arts centered on painting and
drawing, he began serious work in music in his late twenties at the Geneva
Conservatory, where he encountered the teachings of Jacques-Dalcroze. According
to Jaccard, Jaques-Dalcroze recognized and encouraged Willems’s inclination
toward intuitive rather than theoretical pedagogy. Willems, also interested in the
musical development of children, contacted and studied the work of neurologist
Édouard Claparède and developmental psychologist Jean Piaget. His understanding
of developmental psychology and neuroscience becomes especially clear in the
chapters that focus on instruction for young children (“Starting Point,” chapter 1)
and auditory development (“The Musical Ear,” chapter 5).
Readers will immediately note Willems’s reference to musical education as opposed
to music instruction. His differentiation of terms, involving what he calls his new
pedagogy, juxtaposes the idea of uniting artistic and scientific aspects of music while
harmonizing knowledge, sensitivity, and action (p. xviii). Willems’s ideas regarding
teaching music suggest a complementary balance between life, formal structure, cul-
ture, and musical education. His ideas about teaching music seem to counter mid-
twentieth century international conversation trends regarding the role of music and
music education.

Willems’s Ideas within the Scope of International Music

Education in the 1950s
Willems’s book was originally published in 1956—three years after the International
Conference on the Role and Place of Music in the Education of Youth and Adults

1A.Frega, “A Comparison of the Teaching Strategies of Maurice Martenot and Edgar Willems:
Conclusions and Implications for Future Research,” Bulletin for the Council for Research in
Music Education (Winter 1995/1996): 63–71.
96 Journal of Historical Research in Music Education 37(1)

presented by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

(UNESCO) in 1953.2 This conference was identified as an important bridge to the
development of the International Society on Music Education (ISME) and played an
important role in fostering a sense of international relations and developing intercul-
tural understanding.3 It is interesting to note that while the conference was held in
Brussels and McCarthy regarded it as the precursor to ISME, Willems’s work remains
notably absent.
Frega studied the influence of Jaques-Dalcroze in relation to the methods of teaching
suggested by two of his pupils Maurice Martenot and Edgar Willems.4 Jacques-Dalcroze
who began teaching at the Geneva Conservatory around the time Willems was born had
begun to hone in on the importance of the primacy of the individual response to music
and the right of all to develop individual musical experiences and understanding through
interpretive gesture and ultimately the development of the musical ear. This process,
developed in Switzerland during the first decades of the twentieth century, is present in
the writing and teaching of both Martenot and Willems.5

Willems and the Musical Ear

Willems, disheartened by the beginning attempts to quantify the effect of music on
development, noted that in its beginnings, scientific experimental psychology was
confined to the domain of numerically and quantitatively based exact science that gave
exaggerated importance to tests and statistics not significant within an art form such as
music. He wrote,

The first tendency of music psychology—centered too exclusively on analyzing material

aspects of fundamental gave rise to “totality” “complex forms” [Gestalttheorie], theories
which in their most recent iterations insist on the psychic structural unity of the life of the
soul. . . . But these theories do not sufficiently explain the nature of the different vital
forces specific to primary elements such as rhythm, melody and harmony. Therefore, the
nature of these fundamental elements comes under question. (p. xx)

Willems was also interested in musical intuition and auditory processing. He believed
there were three broad categories of auditory development—auditory sensiriality,
auditory affectivity, and auditory intelligence—and provided succinct arguments for
each in succeeding chapters. He situated auditory affectivity between sensoriality and
the intellect and the affective response generated by sounds. He noted that affectivity
presents subtle, complex psychological issues that elude quantitative scientific

2M. Martenot, “The Martenot Method,” in Music in Education: International Conference on

the Role and Place of Music in the Education of Youth and Adults (Brussels: UNESCO, 1953).
3M. McCarthy, “Canticle to Hope: Widening Horizons in International Music Education, 1939-

1953,” International Journal of Music Education 25 (1995): 38.

4Frega, “A Comparison of the Teaching Strategies.”
5Ibid., 66.
Book Reviews 97

analysis. Nearly two decades prior, Kodály wrote, “Music must not be approached
from its intellectual rational side, nor should it be conveyed to the child as a system of
algebraic symbols, or as the secret writing of a language with which he has no connec-
tion . . . the way should be paved for direct intuition.”6

Willems’s View of Early Childhood and the Importance of

Singing
Willems’s statement regarding the teaching of auditory intelligence supports many
twenty-first-century beliefs on aural skills training, especially his view of the impor-
tance of singing in early childhood, and that solfége and harmony should be practiced
auditorially and not just cerebrally (p. 54).
Willems’s belief that the central experience of music should begin with singing
aligns with the shaping of music education pedagogy in the United States during the
last decades of the nineteenth century highly influenced by educational psychologist
G. Stanley Hall. According to Tellstrom, Hall believed that because “of the primacy of
singing, it was rated as the most universal of languages which would awaken the soul
to a love of nature and to all sentiments both racial and domestic.”7 This assertion was
illustrated by the translator’s continual reference to Willems’s pedagogical notebooks
and later publications throughout the book.
In chapters 1 and 2, Willems presented an argument for the essential difference
between rudiments and bases. The rudiments of music—solfege, instrumental prac-
tice, basic harmony—should not be confused with what Willems refers to as funda-
mental principles of education or bases. These bases are a natural part of early
childhood development and afford an opportunity to awaken the auditory and rhyth-
mic sense of the infant through interactions with the primary caregiver (usually the
mother).
Willems insisted in the importance of children living musical events before
becoming conscious of them. He implied the significance of three evolutionary
stages—unconscious life, awareness, and conscious life—and stressed the major
difficulty of musical education is found in the passage from the natural, instinctive
life to that which is conscious and controlled. Willems regards songs as an “uncon-
scious synthesized music act” and asserts the vital importance of carefully selecting
song material for young children. Willems asserts that singing plays the most impor-
tant role in the musical education of beginners because it links rhythm and harmony
with melody and is the best means for developing inner hearing—the key to all
musicality (p. 26).

6Z. Kodály, “Children’s Choirs,” in The Selected Writings of Zoltan Kodály (London: Boosey
and Hawkes, 1964), 120.
7T. Tellstrom, Music in American Education: Past and Present (New York: Holt, Rinehart and

Winston, 1971), 120.

98 Journal of Historical Research in Music Education 37(1)

The Study of Rhythm and Sound

Willems expanded his ideas of rhythm and its relationship to sound in chapters 3 and
4. He referred to ancient philosophers such as Saint Augustine, “rhythm is a beautiful
movement,” and Plato, “rhythm is an ordered movement,” to present his philosophical
defining of the word rhythm. Willems wrote,

It is human movement—that which is made concrete in time and space and which has so
many plastic properties such as rigidity, elasticity, flexibility, weight and so forth that
must be made use in rhythmic education as in its creation. . . . A teacher will lead students
to call upon all real or imagined movement, instinctively or by imitation at first, more
consciously afterwards. It is then that a second important element intervenes; order and
ordering, consciously used to channel and measure rhythm in order to read and write it.
(pp. 34–35)

At first glance, one might be curious as to why Willems presented his chapter on rhythm
(chapter 4) before the chapter devoted to sound (chapter 5). Yet, after careful study, it is
clear that he considered both to be “pre musical elements” (p. 44). Willems defined
rhythm as having three indispensible components in what he calls motoric imagination:
duration, intensity, and plasticity. He argued that often the study of rhythm is confined
to only one component; in other words, successful musicians summon these images of
movement when they think about (conceive) rhythm, while students who lack rhythm
skills do not. He identified seven principal rhythm sources: sounds of nature, machine
noises, birdsong, language and poetry, human movement, other arts, and musical instru-
ments (pp. 40–41). Teachers of beginning musicians would do well to acquaint them-
selves with this list and Willems’s justification as to their usefulness in teaching rhythm.

The Willems “Method” Today

While Willems did not set out to create an instructional method, there is much evi-
dence that his work was widely re-created in South America in the 1960s and 1970s.
In this review, I have referred to Willems’s “work” and “ideas,” and these designations
seem to undersell the importance of what the author imparts. Frega wrote that Willems
presented his methods at the 1977 ISME conference and listed many translations of
books, articles, and essays published in Italian and Portuguese. In reference to both
Martenont and Willem, Frega offered:

Neither person expressed in his own works and explicit learning theory supporting the
musical process he advocated. However in comparing exercise books, this investigator
infers that both masters stated active strategies first later approaching aspects of music
theoretically.8

8Frega, “A Comparison of the Teaching Strategies,” 68.

Book Reviews 99

Throughout the book, Willems referred to his pedagogical notebooks. They are also
listed in the appendices in chronological order, and the titles seem to suggest an
ordered sequence of principles and ideas that would, in the twenty-first century, con-
stitute a “method” that could be utilized in the teaching of musicianship. Furthermore,
The Fédération Internationale Willems® Congress exists today as a vital organization
that works to create an international meeting between professional musicians and oth-
ers involved with the human and social contribution of music in their working lives.
The website (www.fi-willems.org) refers to an elaborate sequence and a “coherent and
continuous pedagogical progression from the first musical course to advanced solfège
and instrumental instruction. I purposely did not view the website or information
regarding the upcoming conference until after reading Willems’s book several times.
Once there, however, it became clear that the depth and breadth of Willems’s work is
being disseminated throughout Europe nearly forty years beyond his death. Jaccard’s
translation of this work is an important resource for English-speaking music educators
and their students of all ages.