Music is a spiritual substance and when we take it into our souls we can experience its harmonizing, ordering effect.
—Maria Schueppel
More than ever, the human soul is under attack today by unseen forces that hinder its natural unfolding and undermine a healthy development. Powerful impressions of the physical world and the sensory influx from the media, the lack of rhythm and protection in a world that moves too fast and unpredictably, place a tremendous burden especially on the child’s vulnerable and delicate organism. Music, understood in the light of Anthroposophy, is a bridge to the spirit that can offer strength and substance to the soul who stands in this battle today. By creating a listening space we can become receptive and hear again what resounds from the cosmic realms. Through engagement with music, a deeper source can become accessible from which we receive nourishment and find moral strength to meet the demands of life. Our course is for teachers, parents, and those who have an interest in exploring this aspect of music more deeply. Through toning, listening, and improvisation with voice and instruments, we will get to know the different elements of music and come to see how melody, harmony, and rhythm are musical expressions of our threefold nature as thinking, feeling, and willing human beings. We will work with the intervals artistically and learn how they are connected to our own evolutionary path and correspond with the developmental stages of the child. By understanding the indications of Rudolf Steiner concerning the curriculum for music, we will recognize its therapeutic value in the classroom and at home. Following the journey from the stars down to the earth with images and tones, we can experience (through the mood of the fifth) musically the path of the young child. We will bring songs from the pentatonic and the diatonic realms that lead us through the elementary school years to grade five.
Every afternoon we will set aside time for playing the pentatonic flute and lyre, singing and improvisation, according to the wishes of the participants. Our striving will be to create a space that allows deep listening, creative musical expression, and playful interaction to permeate the whole course. No previous knowledge or instrumental skills are required.
JULIANE WEEKS has been a public school teacher and a Waldorf teacher for special needs children in Germany. She trained as a music therapist and CMP in the US. She has worked with patients at the RSHC in Ann Arbor, MI and at the Husemann Klinik in Freiburg, Germany, and works presently with children individually at the Pine Hill Waldorf School, as well as with adults in life sharing communities and privately.
MONICA AMSTUTZ is an anthroposophically trained music therapist (Dorion School) and certified music practitioner. She has worked as a music therapist in the Ita Wegman Klinik, Switzerland, and now works therapeutically with special needs individuals and groups and teaches music (pentatonic and chromatic lyres and recorders) in Waldorf kindergartens, home school settings, Camphill homes, and privately.
