Music and Children

(Lady at the Piano, Pierre-Auguste Renoir)

Apparently there are elements that symbolize the feelings of people -- people of any time and of any place. Great music ennobles and inspires and gives listeners a sense of the dignity of man. People feel a bond of understanding with the men who wrote it, regardless of how long ago this might have been. Children of all ages are capable of sensing the height of feeling to which great music can lend them. - Jane Reynolds

I feel we should play most music without comment, so that children may be free to have thoughts about it in their own way. They can have the creative experiences of discovering how it makes them feel rather than being told what they should feel. - Karen Andreola

Even in their short, young lives, children are preservers of music. They are song keepers, and they retain and maintain the music from their family and community experiences, rehearsing them from time to time, storing it for some future chance to share it. - Patricia Shehan Campbell

Children exposed to music without comment will automatically appraise it. - Jane Reynolds

The multiple effects of music are sometimes startling to realize, as it stimulates, sedates and motivates children. Music can settle down a child, as well as perk up another one. It can serve the timid and the thick-skinned, the serious and the happy-go-lucky and the restrained or repressed and the emotionally "unbridled." Through careful selection of music for playy, work and quiet times, we teachers can help empower children, instill in them a strength of spirit and prepare them to perform their waiting tasks with energy and even cheerful demeanors. - Patricia Shehan Campbell

Musical Appreciation, of course, has nothing to do with playing the piano. It used to be thought that 'learning music' must mean this, and it was supposed that children who had no talent for playing were unmusical and would not like concerts. But Musical Appreciation has no more to do with playing an instrument than acting has to do with an appreciation of Shakespeare, or painting with enjoyment of pictures. I think that all children should take Musical Appreciation and not only the musical ones. - Charlotte Mason