The Lyre in Education

From observations and suggestions by a teacher

Aufbauend auf den spiele- rischen Umgang mit dem Instrument, ist das ge- meinsame konzertante Musizieren auch schon für die "Kleinen" ein großes Erlebnis.	Starting school and music ,,.... I wish to indicate from my teaching experience what rhythmic-musical instruc- tions offer to the learning process. In a lesson all aspects of a child's being need to be addressed and engaged, singing and musicmaking express feeling, and so both have a place in the daily lesson. They deepen and more firmly establish the im- pressions which have been conveyed earlier in the lesson. The music teacher may indeed have a full range of in- struments at his disposal, but the classteacher working with musical interludes	in the normal course of the day achieves at least as good an effect and may even work therapeutically by daily repetition. Magical music - a first teaching project My first music project starts by telling the story of the goblin with the net from the childrens book ,,Liputto" by Jacob Streit (Urachhaus 1988). A goblin who lives in a cave dose to a pond asks a spider to weave him a net and then looks out for what he may catch. First he catches a small Goldfish which he keeps in a jar in his cave, luckily a raven can free the poor fish. The next victim is a butterfly and after that he catches a frog with a lasso made with hair from his beard. In my version of the story granny Morla lives dose to the pond and has watched all this mischief and resolves to get the goblin to change his wicked ways. With a sack on her back she creeps round the pond and hides behind a bush, out of her sack she takes her magic instrument and begins to play - here I take the Lyre out of its cover and start to sing and play. The gentle sound of the instrument is almost magical.	Comments made at the end of the week indicated that the sound of the Lyre had made a lasting impression: an overactive child says it liked the magic music best, another child who finds it difficult to concentrate brings a picture he has drawn in which the Lyre has pride of place. Children blossom in experiences and in this context experiences are things which children can feel, get to know and can.talk about. One must hope that more teacher s will find the courage to sing and play, making music in ordinary class lessons so that a far greater range and variety of sounds, moods, vibrations and movements flow into the formative educational processes with children than is usually envisaged or prescribed." (Extract from a teaching unit by Astrid Fries, a teacher for lower schools, available from Bochinsky Publishers, Frankfurt a..M. or Gärtner Lyre Workshop)	Whether in California, Sao Paub or Milan or as here in Berlin, joy of music making radiates from playing the Lyre.


	An experience in the classroom with the large Kantele ,,One of those sultry days before full moon, the children came back from break wild, noisy and quarrelsome. Making matters worse the teachers had still concluded a discussion before coming late, after the children to their classrooms. The noisy goings- on in there could already be heard some way off. How to settle these boisterous chil- dren ? With a few unmistak- able gestures I directed them to return to their desks, one child still sat under my desk while I gently removed the Käntele from its case, sat on a chair and began to play. Straightway peace and harmony and a more reflective mood seemed to establish itself , even the girl hiding under my desk, feared and known for hitting other children, returned quietly to her own place. This order and inner peace lasted almost half an hour, while the children drew pictures with their crayons of a king who in the still hours of the evening wandered over the mysterious bridge, playing and singing to his Kantele, while the dragon slept below it	............ Whenever I myself battle with lack of inner equilibrium, this instrument helps me to regain inner harmony. Bach Inventions can be played on it quite weil. For contemporary man, so often under stress, this instrument has a definite therapeutic effect, bringing harmony to heart and circulation, calming us down (Extract from a text by Thomas Koller, teacher, Winterthur, Switzerland) The value of theLyre in Antroposophical work ,,Wherever one visits a Rudolf Steiner Waldorf School, whether in Sao Paulo or Milan, California or New Zealand one will meet the Gärtner Lyres and the enlivening effect which seems to originate from these instruments. lt proves to be an equally suitable instrument in the education of young as well as older children, making a formative contribution to festivals or concerts whether of a serious or joyful nature. lt is also suitable for the treatment of mentally handicapped or ill children and adults. Rudolf Steiner has given us the important indication that for the child from Kindergarten up to nine years, that is the beginning of class Three, we should not yet use the major or minor scales, but emphasise the mood of fifths which lives in the pentatonic tone sequence of d-e-g-a-b-d-e and so on. To this end Lothar Gärtner developed the ten-stringed Kantele or Wingkantele which can be tuned to that scale. (In subsequent years, exchanging only three strings, this instrument can be re-tuned to a ten-tone major scale)	To encourage the children to tuneful playing and more important still to encourage them to listen to it, I begin music lessons often by saying: , The instrument you hold in your hands is called Wingkantele. And do you know why ? Because not only does it look like a wing but the tones you play on it will have wings and can fly far away.' The special charm of this pentatonic instrument is that it can never sound wrong because the five tone sequence has no semi-tones wich can produce disharmony. One can play arpeggio-style by running ones fingers over the strings and they will always produce harmony." (Extract from a text by Helmut v. Wartburg, at the occasion of the fiftieth anniversa of the Gärtner Lyre Workshop) (Extract from a text by Helmut v. Wartburg, at the occasion of the fiftieth anniversa of the Gärtner Lyre Workshop)
				back