It seems nobody is thinking about having children learn to play musical
instruments simply for the pleasure of being able to play rather than to
become a prodigy or even a moderately successful professional.
I doubt very much that I would have had the makings of either but I regret
very much that, as a child, I did not have the opportunity to learn to play
an instrument just for my own pleasure and maybe to entertain close
friends.
I think all of my parents' friends and relatives in their generation had
some familiarity w/ musical instruments, usually, the piano.
When I went to college, most of my friends there could summon forth
classical themes from a piano by ear and could play passages on one or
more instruments from a score. None of them were music majors, and I
don't believe any of them made a career out of music.
I'm not aware of this happening much anymore. Perhaps it's simply a case
of Northern Virginia being a milieu too different from that of NYC or
Ithaca NY.
Unfortunately, teaching music to a non-prodigy, does involve a degree
of compulsion (although D.P. Horn's account of children learning by the
Suzuki method suggests that this need not be the case). Learning scales,
finger positions, etc., etc., can be tedious. And the wise parent will
learn to let up when it becomes obvious that the seeds are not going to
take root. But I believe that initial tedium need not foreclose such
initial taking of root. The problem arises, apparently, when the "little
league" syndrome kicks in; when parents, possibly feeling guilty at
subjecting their children to this tedium, become obsessed that their little
daughters are all going to become Midoris (it's amazing and amusing how
many Asian parents and their little girls show up at the Kennedy Center
for her concerts, compared to their attendance for other performances)
and their sons, Yo-Yo Mas, virtually ensuring in most cases that the kids
will never touch a musical instrument again as soon as they've won their
emancipation.
Walter Meyer
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