TEACHING DIRECTIONS

STRAD EDUCATION FOCUS

ALTERED
Using pictures of clouds and sheep to teach young children They listen to each other and play
to read music may seem a little left-field, but the Colourstrings responsively together. Eight-year-olds
argue over bowings and fingerings; six-year-
method is working wonders, as TIM HOMFRAY reports
olds learn pieces through singing and sol-fa.
They do of course benefit from having
music as part of their daily lives, with
lack of Helsinki Strings, which is recognised as ensembles every day and individual
communication can one of Finland’s leading music groups lessons at least twice a week. This
be a wonderful thing. (according to a Strad review in April 2004 model, of music integrated into the
In the mid-60s a Hungarian of a recent CD, ‘Few chamber orchestras school, is one Géza Szilvay wants to
violinist, Géza Szilvay can dream of the Helsinki Strings’ level of see replicated everywhere. It would
(b.1943), was invited to teach in Finland. precision and lyricism’). constitute, he believes, a musical renais-
He expected to be working with a small Seven years ago an entire primary sance. At the institute, music is a social
group of advanced musicians, but found school moved into the institute, fed from as well as an artistic experience, and
instead 68 very young beginners. And he a kindergarten where the musical founda- technical development is matched by
didn’t speak Finnish. His solution was to tions are laid, so that children could benefit intellectual understanding.
find visual and aural ways of introducing from daily tuition and ensemble playing in Finnish children leave primary school
music and the violin. addition to their normal lessons. The results at 12 or 13, so the older ones at the
He had a young daughter, who had are extraordinary. I heard an ensemble of institute have advanced technically
responded to hearing his violin even before 10- to 13-year-olds rehearsing Vaughan beyond Colourstrings. But, for Szilvay,
she was born, and for whom he had been Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas the principles it has instilled continue to
preparing little bits of material to introduce Tallis and bringing to it a richness and inform everything they do, and he can look
her to music. He started using these with depth of tone that would put many a more on even the Helsinki Strings as a continua-
his new pupils, adding to them lesson by supposedly advanced group to shame. tion of Colourstrings: ‘Strictly speaking
lesson. He was also imbued with his great Bowing was full and flowing, and overall Colourstrings is for the first five or six years
compatriot Kodály’s educational principles intonation impressive. It is a feature of of instrumental playing, and then you go
of music for all, and the values of sol-fa. all these young players that they know on to traditional material. But a child who
The materials he put together gradually what it’s meant to sound like, even if they goes through Colourstrings is already
developed into Colourstrings, a unique haven’t quite mastered all the notes. hooked. The child and the whole family
and fully fledged introduction to music Nobody plays by numbers. In smaller are involved. It is a virtuous circle, which
and string playing, and a philosophy that groups, musicality is always in evidence. radiates force into the whole of society.
carries far beyond the early years for which
it was designed.
Today Szilvay is still in Finland,
now head of the East Helsinki Music
Institute (and with a reasonable
command of Finnish).
As Colourstrings developed, and bore
spectacular results (many of those original
pupils are now professional musicians), it
caught the Finnish imagination. A series
of television programmes, Minifiddlers in
Musicland (1979), was produced, made
originally as a series of educational films
for kindergarten children; however, it
became popular among all ages, and
ANNIE MOORE

prompted such an interest that Finland

virtually sold out of violins. For players
in their teens, Szilvay, with his cellist
Violinists from the Helsinki Children’s Strings in rehearsal
brother Csaba (b.1941), formed the

78 THE STRAD SEPTEMBER 2006

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That is what I call the Colourstrings

philosophy. These children bring into all
the new places they go – the academies,
the orchestras – a new spirit of playing.’
Colourstrings begins, in an ideal world
at least, with stories for the very young.
The first Colourstrings book, Little Rascals,
explains Szilvay, contains bedtime stories
frequently used in Finland. ‘Into these
I smuggle musical ideas, of pitch, length,
dynamic and tempo, but [the children]
don’t realise they are there.’ ‘Smuggle’ is
a word he uses a lot to describe the way
Colourstrings works: children learn things
without realising they are doing so.
They move on to little music books, with
simple songs using minor thirds (the most
commonly used interval in anything from
nursery rhymes to football chants), gradu-
VEIKKO HIIRI

ally building up to pentatonic and later

complete major and minor scales. Along
As part of the Colourstrings method, children learn pieces through singing and sol-fa
the way sol-fa is taught, complete with its
hand symbols. But there is no immediate
introduction to musical notation; this too clouds, and the images transform into move up and down the instrument –
is smuggled in. ‘I looked at all the other music notation. and they can’t play out of tune.’
music instruction books,’ says Szilvay. On the introduction of the instrument When they do come to stop the strings,
‘Even the easiest has on the first page itself, Colourstrings has two central they know what it should sound like,
more than 50 bits of information – time features: left-hand pizzicato and because they will be playing tunes they
signature, stave, bars, clefs. When the harmonics. ‘When we teach a string instru- have already learnt. They know them
child asks what they are, the teacher just ment in the usual way, there is a stopping through sol-fa and, through the concept
says he will explain later.’ movement,’ says Szilvay. ‘The first finger of movable Doh, they can play them
Szilvay, teaching without the benefit of goes down, and the second finger. This is anywhere on any string. ‘Once they know
knowing the Finnish language, decided to all movement downwards, thus contra- a tune they can start transposing it,
combine as many senses as possible in dicting the nature of other movements on perhaps starting with a different finger,
teaching music to the young beginner; the fingerboard. Normally when children up and down the fingerboard. This opens
he began to teach children to read music start like this they use too much pressure. up the whole fingerboard for a child.
using colours and images. A preliminary Therefore, changes of position will not The traditional way of teaching always
Colourstrings book will have melodies come easily, nor will vibrato and lightness starts with the first position, and this can
represented by pictures – of animals, of hand – because the beginning was too go on for years. It gets too rigid for the chil-
perhaps, or clouds. When these are in rigid. I use left-hand pizzicato before dren, and first position becomes the home
a straight line, they all represent the same learning to stop on the strings, because to which it is always safe to come back.’
note; but if they move up and down, that way they learn to use all their fingers A further fundamental part of Szilvay’s
so does the tune. Smaller pictures independently. And they can move up and teaching is chamber music. ‘This is a social
represent shorter notes than larger ones: down the instrument. That way, the whole way of working, always involving more
effectively they are quavers and crotchets. violin is being played, without concern for and more people. Otherwise children feel
The sol-fa equivalents, with their hand intonation. And when the left hand is light alone and different from their friends.’
shapes, are shown underneath. Later, it gives a message to the right hand, so
horizontal lines are introduced, one at both hands are light. When we start to
a time, until there are five. Add some play notes we use natural harmonics.
vertical lines to the pictures of sheep or So again there is no pressure, they can

IMAGES SEPTEMBER 2006 THE STRAD 79

 TEACHING DIRECTIONS
STRAD EDUCATION FOCUS
PHOTOS VEIKKO HIIRI

A young violin pupil at last year’s International Colourstrings Symposium, which took place at the East Helsinki Music Institute

‘Because of how Colourstrings works,

At the institute, music is a social as well as an the children always really understand
what they are doing,’ says Simojoki.
artistic experience, and technical development is ‘I have other advanced students who

matched by intellectual understanding did not go through Colourstrings, and

I can see the difference. Even very
young children here have a real
intellectual understanding. They ask
Repertory and points of departure Colourstrings’ strengths. ‘That is something intelligent questions.’
aside, however, Colourstrings is not a I particularly like – that it is very free,’ When Szilvay first went to Finland,
conventional method. The 40-odd books says Pirkko Simojoki, a viola teacher at the he expected to return to Hungary in a year.
now available do not constitute a teacher’s institute and herself an ex-pupil of Szilvay. But when all his original pupils wanted
guide to what to do next. Teachers must ‘We all have our own ways of teaching, but to carry on, he began a process of continuous
find their own way of ensuring good bow all within the Colourstrings’ philosophy.’ negotiation with the Hungarian authorities
hold, good posture and the myriad other Lauri Karkuvräki, a violin teacher there, to remain; this went on until the Finnish
requirements of an advanced technique. agrees: ‘As every child is different you have president intervened personally
But this, for those who use it, is one of to teach them differently.’ on his behalf. And after years of further
negotiation, and encouragement
from the likes of Menuhin and Rostal,
Szilvay finally achieved his ambition
PRINCIPLES OF of an integrated primary school at the
institute, with a kindergarten to feed it.
COLOURSTRINGS It is in such schemes that he believes
Preliminary use of sol-fa and singing
Elements of musical grammar and notation, rhythm, melody and form
introduced pictorially
Use of left-hand pizzicato and natural harmonics to develop fundamentals
of technique
Integrated aural, emotional and theoretical development
Use of relative sol-fa
Development of creativity through colouring, copying, composing, transposing,
performing and improvising
Individual teaching supplemented by group tuition
Chamber music
Csaba and Géza Szilvay with Christopher Bunting

SEPTEMBER 2006 THE STRAD 81

 TEACHING DIRECTIONS
STRAD EDUCATION FOCUS

VEIKKO HIIRI
TO FIND OUT MORE

Finland
East Helsinki Music Institute
Kreijarinkuja 4
00820 Helsinki
Finland
contact Minna Launonen
tel +358 9 755 25831
fax +358 9 755 3159
email minna.launonen@ihmo.fi
website www.ihmo.fi/strings/
sivutenglanniksi/colourstrings.htm

UK
The Szilvay Foundation
1 The Tatt
Yalding
Kent ME18 6HT, UK
contact Tony Di Marco (administrator)
tel/fax +44 1622 815578
email colourstrings@aol.com
A young Colourstrings pupil learns sol-fa – musical notation is introduced later using images and colours
website www.colourstrings.co.uk

Preliminary Colourstrings books have melodies

These children bring a new spirit of playing into represented by pictures such as these

all the new places they go

GÉZA SZILVAY

the future should lie elsewhere, too: schools the teaching is done mostly in groups, and there’s a very low drop-out rate among
‘This can be done in every European city.’ so progress is slower. But Colourstrings the children. We get feedback from
It has indeed spread to other parts of works by going from the known to the teachers who say it’s changed their lives.’
Europe, as well as to Australia. In Britain unknown and doesn’t skip anything, With Colourstrings, says Szilvay, the
there are a number of centres around the so everybody gets there in the end.’ child is always at the centre: ‘There are
country in both private and state sectors. The method is becoming increasingly different models around the world. In
Deborah Harris runs a Colourstrings school popular with both parents and teachers: Russia and Asia the instrument is in the
in north London that caters for around 600 ‘Colourstrings is the place where a lot of middle, and you bring the child to the
children from about six months old up to people want to send their children now,’ instrument. In western Europe the music
18. She too sees Colourstrings, with Kodály’s says Harris, ‘and a lot of teachers want to is in the middle, and you bring the child to
principles underpinning it, as something do it. Someone called it the holy grail of the music. But with Colourstrings, the child
that reaches far beyond the early stages of instrumental teaching. It’s very rewarding, is always in the middle.’
learning a string instrument. ‘The young
children all seem innately musical,’ she
says. ‘A five-year-old will have a firm
WIN COLOURSTRINGS BOOKS
understanding of what he is doing and WE HAVE THREE SETS OF COLOURSTRINGS VIOLIN
have good pitch. When you see the same BOOKS TO GIVE AWAY. For a chance to win, send an
child at twelve you see a whole, well- email or postcard marked ‘Colourstrings’, with your
developed musician.’ name, address and telephone number, to
The London school can’t, however, thestrad@orpheuspublications.com or to the
match the resources available in Helsinki: address shown on page 3. The first three entries picked
‘We can give them only one lesson a week, out of the hat will win a set. To receive a 15% discount on any order from
plus one of musicianship and one of ensemble. Colourstrings International, contact colourstringssudbury@fsbdial.co.uk,
The days of having lessons twice or even quoting ‘The Strad’. Closing date for both offers: 31 October 2006
six times a week are a long way off. In state

82 THE STRAD SEPTEMBER 2006