Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2008
In this article, I discuss the importance of movement in music education and suggest an effective way to approach this particular area of music teaching for younger children. The most important characteristics of movement to music activity in musical experience would seem to be in the role of developing in the mind of the participants ‘music schemata’, an active, developing organization of past responses to music which play a vital role when we listen to music and comprehend its expressive character. This hypothesis was tested in the teaching-experiment which was carried out in an English primary school and a Japanese primary school with the children of 7 to 8 years of age.