Emma Malera’s castanet method ‘El Método’ is recognised worldwide as the best structured castanet teaching method. Emma Maleras ( 1919 – 2017 ) has developed and constantly perfected this method for learning to play the castanet during her many years of intensive teaching. She has constantly integrated new insights from her teaching experience and her know-how as a castanet virtuoso.
During her own dance training, like all dance students, she had to learn to play the castanet without any guidance or teaching method. It was customary to give the student the castanets, at most there was a short explanation of how to put them on (the castanets are pulled over the thumb with the cord). The teacher would play along with the typical onomatopoeia as a sort of verbal assistance and then they tried to play along. Many dance students still learn to play the castanets in this way.
However, as a trained musician – she had already completed her piano studies at the age of 14 – she was reluctant to do it that way and initially tried to transfer piano practice methods to castanet playing for her own use of this small instrument. She thus developed a technique that allowed a wonderful sound and a new rhythmic precision. But it was not until later, when she was a teacher of Spanish dance and castanets at the Institute of Theatre in Barcelona, that she began to develop her own castanet method, which made it possible to learn this instrument in a structured way with a sophisticated technique, so that many students could learn to play at a high level.
Until her retirement, Emma Maleras taught Spanish dance and castanets not only at the Institute of the Theatre in Barcelona, but also in her own dance school. She studied in Madrid with Enrique el Cojo and the Pericet brothers. Most of the important teachers of Spanish dance in Barcelona were her students, such as José de la Vega and Rosa García. Famous castanet virtuosos such as José de Udaeta, Consol Grau, Montserrat Carles, Belén Cabanes, Inma González, Mar Bezana and Montse Sánchez emerged from her school.
Emma Maleras received her first recognition when her method was published in the seventies by the Barcelona publishing house Boileau: four books with accompanying booklets for piano. Emma Maleras also had a decisive influence on the notation of the castanet exercises. As already mentioned, Emma Maleras continued to refine her approach and technical training over the years. Since 2003, Boileau Publishing has gradually been publishing revised editions of these workbooks in Spanish, Catalan, German and English. An accompanying CD with all the pieces in several tempi is included with the books. So far, 9 out of 10 books have been published. Consol Grau, her assistant of many years and an absolute connoisseur of the method, is working on the last volumes, which are to be published posthumously.
