MUSIC FOR THE

The history of music education for

the deaf extends at least 136 years,
yet the very idea of music and the
deaf continues to meet with sur-
prise, if not suspicion. In an 1848
issue of the American Annals of
the Deaf and Dumb (now the
American Annals of the Deaf)
there appeared an article, "Music
Among the Deaf and Dumb" (pp. 1-
6), in which William Wolcott Turner
and David Ely Bartlett advocated
music instruction for the hearing
impaired, illustrating their argu-
ment with the case study of a young
deaf woman who had learned to
play the piano. This article is proba-
bly the earliest case study report on
music for the deaf.
Despite its substantial history,
'Ai nn music
Darrow instruction for the deaf still
o
otAicA seems impractical to many people.
courtesy
rts
P
P,,,0ographs This may be due to misconceptions
regarding the hearing-impaired
community's capacity to hear and
appreciate music. In the past we
.... ~.~:'-~-~- ~referred to all individuals with a
hearing loss as deaf. The meaning
of the word deaf is generally ac-
cepted as "without hearing." A
more appropriate term is hearing
impaired. Only a small percentage
of hearing-impaired individuals do
not hear at all. Their greatest diffi-
culty is in hearing well enough to
develop speech and language.
Many people believe that to be
musical one must have a good ear,
yet a hearing-impaired child can be
musical. The hearing loss may limit
the child's musical capacities; how-
ever, hearing impairment does not
vitiate music responsiveness. Many
hearing-impaired children will nev-
er hear the music of Ludwig van
Beethoven as we hear it, but learn-

by A /lice-Ann D rr\A/ ice-AnnDarrowis an assistant professor

of music educationand music therapyat the
Universityof Kansas, Lawrence.

MEJ/February 33

Downloaded from mej.sagepub.com at CARLETON UNIV on June 22, 2015

ing about music and great compos- auditory perception of speech and
ers should be a part of their cultural music involves the ability to distin-
education. The music classroom guish between different sounds,
serves as an excellent vehicle for their pitches, durations, intensities,
the integration of hearing-impaired timbres, and the way in which these
and hearing children. Specialized sounds change over time. Even the
assistance may be needed, but hear- simplest kinds of sound in speech
ing-impaired children using their re- and music contain many common
sidual hearing can participate in properties, though perhaps identi-
singing, playing, listening, moving, fied by different names. In music,
and creating experiences with oth- reference is made to intonation,
er hearing children. tempo, accent, and rhythm. Speech
counterparts are inflection or into-
Perceiving instruments nation, rate, stress, and rhythm or
As hearing-impaired children be- the temporal organization of
come acquainted with different in- speech sounds.
struments, they develop a concept In speech, these nonlinguistic el-
of tone color and sound production. ements are referred to as the pro-
Even a child with very little hearing sodic features of speech. These pro-
is able to perceive vibrations from sodic features convey distinctive in-
many types of musical instruments. formation to the listener. The
The cymbals, for example, provide importance of rhythm to the intelli-
a strong vibratory stimulus, making gibility of speech was recognized
them ideal for a child learning to by Alexander Graham Bell:
read music notation. The chromatic
bells possess a range of pitches Ordinarypeople who know nothing of
phoneticsor elocutionhave difficultyin
wide enough for hearing-impaired understandingslow speech composed
children to find those tones they of perfect elementary sounds, while
are able to hear. Children unable to they have no difficultyin comprehend-
hear the autoharp can gain sensory ing an imperfect gobble if only the
satisfaction by placing it on their accent and rhythmare natural.1
lap as they play. The drum, one of Unable to hear others speak, the
the most popular instruments
hearing-impaired child has difficul-
among hearing-impaired children, ty in developing the prosodic fea-
provides an excellent tool for tures of speech such as speech
teaching rhythmic patterns. Even rhythm. Certain music activities aid
children with profound hearing in the development of these speech
losses can experience and discrimi-
nate the varying durations of components. Body movement, an
sounds as they rub the sand blocks integral part of Dalcroze euryth-
mics and Orff, is also an important
together. part of speech therapy. It is impera-
Singing or song signing is an ac- tive that hearing-impaired children
tivity enjoyed by hearing-impaired use their entire bodies in many
as well as hearing children. Song
rhythmic experiences before they
signing serves as a useful activity are expected to use a more highly
for developing vocabulary and im- refined rhythmic response in their
proved language skills. Setting speech. Accents in rhythmic pat-
words to motion and rhythm is as terns aid in developing the concept
enjoyable for the child signing as it of stress in speech.
is for the child who sings these The goal of auditory,training is to
words. teach the complex task of listening,
a much more involved task than the
Music and speech
Music can enrich the lives of physical act of hearing. The hear-
ing-impaired child must learn to
hearing-impaired children through interpret sounds and attach mean-
participation in traditional music
education activities. It can also be ing to them. We all know how diffi-
cult it is to pay attention when we
used as a teaching tool for other hear someone speaking in a foreign
disciplines such as speech therapy
and auditory training. The percep- language; so it is for the hearing-
tion, interpretation, and perfor-
1. Alexander Graham Bell, The Mechanism of
mance of sound serve as the basis Speech (New York:Funkand Wagnalls,1916) p.
for both speech and music. The 15.

34 MEJ/February '85
impaired child for whom speech mation in our memories in the
has no meaning. When speech proper sequence. Various musical
serves no purpose, the child doesn't activities such as vocal imitation,
listen or attend to the environment. singing the words to simple songs,
Few of us with normal hearing at- or recalling instruments heard in
tend to all the sounds around us. succession help to develop sequen-
We have learned to shut out those tial memory.
sounds that are not of particular Speech is very musical in nature.
importance. Hearing-impaired chil- Initially in auditory management,
dren must learn to use all of the concentration is placed upon these
auditory information available to prosodic features. The melodic as-
them in order to put them in closer pects of language contain a great
contact with the world around deal of information, making musi-
them. cal instruments ideal in nonlinguis-
tic auditory management.
Listening practice
In most cases we cannot change Why?
the hearing-impaired child's physi- Music is a language that speaks
cal capacity to hear; but we can to all people. It can express emo-
help him or her develop good listen- tional experiences and mirror cul-
ing habits. Music offers a medium tural heritage regardless of handi-
through which listening can be capping conditions. Melody and
practiced. It is important to concen- rhythm can be internalized by
trate initially on the awareness of means other than the sense of hear-
sound in order to obtain informa- ing. What David Ely Bartlett wrote
tion from the environment. Hear- in 1848 holds true today:
ing-impaired children, who will not In estimating the pleasure that is de-
naturally attend to sound as we do, rivedfrommusic, it must not be forgot-
are motivated to a high degree by ten that the sensation or perception of
the use of musical stimuli. Auditory sound is not the whole of the pleasure
training can become rigid and high- producedby music.A considerablepart
ly structured, and in order to enliv- of this pleasureresults from the under-
en the sessions, music is extremely lying rhythmiccharacter of the move-
useful. ment which can be perceived by the
Various musical instruments can sense of sight alone to a considerable
be used to develop auditory skills extent, and yet more perfectly by sight
and feeling together.... If the question
such as timbre recognition. The be raised, "Cui bono?"-what possible
speech code is composed of low-, benefit can result from teaching music
mid-, and high-pitched sounds. The to the deaf... it maybe answered:What
hearing-impaired child must attend benefit is ever derived from teaching
to and recognize low-, mid-, and music? It is a means of intellectual
high-pitched acoustical informa- cultivation.2
tion. Interpreting the speech code
also requires the ability to discrimi- Hearing-impaired children, who
are often excluded from their peers
nate between the varying durations
because of their unique language,
of sound or rhythmic patterns.
need not be excluded from the mu-
When we listen to speech in its
sic classroom. It is likely the hard-
natural setting, we must attend to
one sound or the figure and ignore of-hearing child will more quickly
and easily achieve the objectives of
all the ambient noise in our envi-
the music teacher; however, even
ronment or the ground. Attending
the severely hearing-impaired child
to a single instrument as others
can receive sensory satisfaction
play or recognizing the entrance and valuable auditory training from
and exit of selected instruments in
a composition can aid in the devel- experiences with music. Only when
we begin to educate all handi-
opment of figure-ground discrimi-
nation. capped children will we realize the
goal of music for every child. II
The linguistic code is strung out
over time. Because of the structure
of language and the meanings we 2. WilliamWolcottand David Ely Bartlett."Music
can perceive from the structure, we Amongthe Deaf and Dumb. AmericanAnnalsof
the Deaf and Dumb(now the AmericanAnnalsof
have to hold that acoustical infor- the Deaf) 2 (October 1848) 6

MEJ/February '85 35