The Music Belongs to Children

I recently read an excellent NPR article about introducing children to classical music. I have observed many of the same things as the author of the article – that young children love classical music! To them it is fun and exciting, not boring and stuffy like many people believe. When my oldest daughter was two years old her favorite song to listen to was the finale to Stravinsky’s Firebird. She used to wave her arms in the air to “conduct” it as we listened to it over and over and over in the car. Some other family favorites have been Hans Christian Lumbye’s Copenhagen Steam Railway Galop and Smetana’s Moldau.

As we guide our piano students in their musical education and their music appreciation journey, let us unabashedly introduce them to great classical music. Let us show them how wonderful and exciting it is, and show them how much joy it gives us in our lives, knowing that they are as capable as any adult in appreciating it.

“The music belongs to children just as much as it belongs to “us” — the ones with the years of listening experience, who have already absorbed current conventions of concert-going practice (don’t applaud between movements, obey the dress code, etc.), and who might well have had years of formal training. Classical music isn’t a museum piece to be looked at and not touched, as it were.”

Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR