When musical fragrance notes cause nausea

Passionata – Music lessons make all the difference

Next week, «Courage and Strength» will be coming to music class. That's the name of the fragrance I bought for the schoolchildren on the recommendation of my yoga teacher. It's supposed to help me finish an idea from my studies and cope with a disastrous teaching experience from my first internship. It has been many years since I tried to incorporate the sense of smell into music lessons.

This is because human senses are central to elementary music education. Hearing, seeing, touching, balance, feeling, spatial perception – we established a connection to all of these during our studies. But the sense of smell was never included. Yet scents, just like music, can move us deeply and evoke memories.

On the stairs leading to my grandparents' basement, there was a smell of DIY paint, washing powder and damp concrete. When I encounter this rare combination today, it is pure bliss for my brain. Places like this have what is known as an olfactory quality.

A renowned expert in this field is scientist and artist Sissel Tolaas. She chemically recreates smells reminiscent of Berlin neighbourhoods, the ocean or a First World War battlefield. The latter was a commissioned work for a museum exhibition, which Tolaas enriched with olfactory elements. The artist says that the sense of smell is the most direct route to the brain. Ikea commissioned her to create the «scent of Sweden».

The scent of music

This gave me the idea of searching for the scent of music. The play on words «scent note» alone was reason enough for me to incorporate the sense of smell into my lesson planning. When I was asked during my internship to perform Gerda Bächli's triad song «Schneeglöckchen» (Snowdrop) with a class, I saw it as an opportunity for an olfactory lesson.

A triad consists of three notes: Do, Mi and So, known from the Beatles song Ob-la-di Ob-la-da and from every other school bell.    

I enthusiastically explained my project to the chemist and sang the triad to her in the middle of the shop.

When children in first grade put together a triad, they encounter a basic building block of our music. For the lesson, I looked for an image that illustrates how the triad holds music together.

Bringing the scent of spring to life

In the book Die Wichtelkinder (The Elf Children), I found a beautiful old pine tree with a hollow root where a family of elves lives. The class was asked to recreate this tree using cloths and furniture and to place the chimes inside it: the C in the crown (where the elves play hide and seek with the squirrels), the E with the flowers and the G in the underground dwelling. I also rewrote the lyrics so that Tanne-Blume-Erde (fir tree-flower-earth) fell on the notes So-Mi-Do and the whole triad sounded together on the word «Früh-lings-duft» (spring scent). And I wanted to make this spring scent tangible through the sense of smell.

Listen to the song «Frühlingsduft» (Spring Fragrance), rewritten by Sibylle Dubs, here.

I decorated matchboxes, filled them with cotton balls and went to the chemist's to buy some suitable essential oils. An employee offered to help. Euphoric, I explained my project. «And the children are supposed to smell the notes?» she asked. «Three notes, three pitches, three scents,» I explained and sang the triad to her in the middle of the shop. She seemed sceptical, but cleared all the scent palettes from the shelves so she could test them.

Swiss stone pine was perfect for the highest note in the treetops – I could picture the Arvenstübli in my mind's eye. For the flowers, I chose jasmine.  And finally, I decided that the scent of ginger was earthy and suited the root note C. At home, I sprinkled four cotton balls with the same scent and closed the matchboxes.    

Headaches and tears

In phase one of my lesson, each child was given a box and asked to find their group members with the same scent.  

In no time at all, three teams of four were formed. However, this was not based on scent, but on affinity: the four boys and four girls who always hung out together and the four remaining children. I explained that they were wrong and asked them to check their scents.

For years, room fragrances and essential oils made me feel queasy because I kept seeing those pale children's faces from my internship.

The children smelled, compared and held the boxes under each other's noses. Two girls, one with a jasmine box and the other with ginger, swore they had the same scent. I got into a discussion with a boy because he thought his cotton ball didn't smell like fir at all, as I claimed.  

Then the children who had been sniffing the boxes particularly eagerly began to feel sick. One girl cried because of a headache. One boy lay down at the edge of the room. The others looked at me reproachfully, as if they were going to make sure their parents reported me for assault during the big break.        

For years, I felt uneasy around room fragrances and essential oils because I kept seeing the pale faces of the children from my internship. I didn't dare try the fragrance idea again. But the So-Mi-Do tree and the song «Frühlingsduft» (Spring Fragrance) are popular with the children, and my first graders will be building triad trees again next week.  

And somewhere I unpack the bottle labelled «Courage and Strength». Perhaps as a prelude to the lesson in an aroma lamp? Or as a kind of Pavlovian reward for every correct triad?  

I do feel a bit queasy when planning. I think I need the bottle for myself first.