Emile Jaques-Dalcroze

Emile Jaques-Dalcroze invented eurhythmics because his conservatory students could read rhythm on paper and not feel it in their bodies. He was born in Vienna to Swiss parents, studied with Bruckner and Delibes, and was teaching harmony at the Geneva Conservatory in the 1890s when he concluded that musical training began in the wrong place. His method has students walk, clap, swing and stop to metre - the body learns the beat before the mind analyses it - and it treats rhythm rather than pitch as the foundation. The conservatory disapproved and he left. From 1910 he ran a purpose-built institute at Hellerau outside Dresden, a garden-city experiment, with a hall designed for diffused light and no proscenium; Shaw, Diaghilev, Stanislavski, Claudel and Le Corbusier all came to look. Marie Rambert trained there, which is why Diaghilev hired her in 1913 to help Nijinsky and the dancers hold the changing metres of The Rite of Spring. The First World War closed Hellerau and he returned to Geneva. The method spread into music education, dance training, theatre and therapy, and is still taught worldwide under his name; most children who clap along to a beat in a music lesson are doing a version of it. He composed prolifically, including songs that became Swiss standards. Hellerau was used as a barracks and then a Soviet garrison and has since been restored as an arts centre. The Dalcroze Institute in Geneva still trains teachers and licenses them worldwide. He lost his Paris posts during the First World War after signing a protest against the German bombardment of Reims cathedral, and was not forgiven in Germany either.

• Lived: 1865 CE – 1950 CE
• Nationality: Swiss
• Roles: artist