Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
1865 - 1950

"Music is you! Adapt this system to your music."

Born in the town of Sainte-Croix in the canton of Vaud, he was the brilliant inventor of a mode of artistic and musical instruction now recognized throughout the world.

While teaching at Geneva’s Conservatory of Music, he was faced with students who had been taught purely by theory and who lacked all sense of rhythm.

He thus decided to make his students move by means of dance, body exercises and song in order to inculcate them with a more vivid perception of music: thus "rhythmics" was born.

Today, this original method is taught in all of Switzerland, in most European countries, as well as in the United States, Japan, South America and Australia, carrying Geneva’s radiance far abroad.

And Geneva?

In 1910 he left Geneva, where his work was not duly appreciated, to continue his teaching and artistic research in the town of Hellerau, close to Dresden, where two patrons established an institution for him.

However, at the outbreak of World War I, being an earnest pacifist, he returned to Switzerland.

Thanks to a subscription initiated by a committee in Geneva concerned about retaining the creator of "rhyhmics" in the city, the Institut Jaques-Dalcroze opened its doors in 1915.

Awarded honorary citizenship, Jaques-Dalcroze carried out his work here until his death on July 1, 1950.

To see:

• He is buried in the Plainpalais Cemetery (tomb No. 344), rue des Rois.
• Institut Jaques-Dalcroze, rue de la Terrassière 44
• Boulevard Jaques-Dalcroze

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