The Rusticucci Method
“When you teach, try to listen;
when you listen, try to understand;
when you understand, try to think;
when you think, try to give;
when you give… give yourself.”
Prof. Fulvio Rusticucci
The Cultural Association “Toscanini ’79 – Metodo Rusticucci” was founded in 1979-80 in Civitanova Marche. The main objective of the school is to bring together the vast world of music, allowing the students to discover their own creative abilities.
The Music is a basic educational instrument, that allows each person to express his own natural talent, to increase curiosity and creativity.
According to the basic project of the Rusticucci Method named “Grow up with music”, the music has to be considered as part of life and present in every action of the human being.
Encounters with music are through a completely revolutionary method, where
listening and understanding, spontaneity and the absence of textbooks allow the person to develop natural talents, facilitating the growth and the personality of each individual.
The Rusticucci Method states this principle: listening, comprehension, thinking and the gift of oneself as being unique and an inalienable way to approach the teaching of music.
In this context, listening means attention and propensity to the meeting with the other; it means identifying our fellow creatures as someone different from ourselves and as someone with unique qualities. The most important thing in listening is trying to understand.
Comprehension is the following step in knowing the other person as someone different from me and accepting what he can bring to me. The Rusticucci Method suggests a road to find our genuineness and the genuine nature of people too.
According to this dynamic, thinking means consciousness and deep respect of the uniqueness of our fellow creatures and it expresses the will of using this singleness to make ourselves more and more unique. The thinking states a further analysis. To think means to consider, to meditate and to stop in front of the individual. It also means to enrich myself with the news I have learned from you, to develop consciousness and deep respect of the uniqueness of our fellow creatures.
So, we can say that the route “from listening to giving” represents the natural continuation of every relationship. After having recognised the individual as being different from ourselves, after having listened, after having understood and thought on our fellow creatures’ characteristics, we are ready to hand ourselves back enriched by their peculiarity.
In 2001, Francesca De Biasi dedicated to this method a book, whose title is representative of the vocation and principles of the method itself: “The Rusticucci Method. The quality of life in the music of everyday”.
In addition, more and more college students organise their dissertations on specific aspects of the method.