Karl said,
>It is difficult for me to understand how children of today can be drawn to
>classical music with children's concerts that play things like Variations on
>Pop goes the Weasel...maybe that will work on the five year olds, but for
>those in high school...I don't think so.
Amen, but even for five year olds, I recommend the technique used on me
- brainwashing. In the first grade (so maybe I was 6), upon coming in
from "recess" at school, we sweaty kids took naps at our desks. Teacher
Peg (this was a Quaker school) played classical music of all sorts that
I only came to recognize many years later - Tchaikowsky's Nutcracker (of
course) and Piano Concerto 1 (how did we sleep?), Prokofiev (Peter & the
Wolf, naturally, but maybe also R & J), La Mer and many others.
Of course, later in life, Looney Tunes cartoons didn't hurt to train the
ear for future classical love.
I actually think that it was the beginning of Beethoven's Ninth, played
every night on the Huntley-Brinkley news when I was not yet a teenager,
that was one of the seeds that grew largest. When I finally heard the
whole magnificent beast when I was 19 (shows how deprived I was at a
critical time), I was blown away and finally knew what I had been missing.
Nowadays, I don't think it would hurt the little darlings to plop them
in front of the movie Amadeus. Small children will play videos over and
over, so make them good. (Hmm, maybe some DVD's of symphonies and other
performances? The good ones are great and there is some excellent camera
work showing the pertinent intstruments that might keep a child's eye
amused and ear educated.)
I think a child's ear is naturally drawn to classical music if it isn't
drowned out by the thumping bass coming through the walls from the car
driving past the house. (Or, God forbid, from the bedroom down the
hall.)
Teenagers do need something with more kick. So I first propose Prokofiev's
sonatas 2, 8, 7, 6. Eat your hearts out, punks and garage band rockers!
Taking a pause from lurking,
Rick Mabry
Shreveport, LA
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