MUSIC FOR THE VERY YOUNG

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 738, 4 September 1953, Page 6

MUSIC FOR THE VERY YOUNG

AT what’ age are young children likely to respond to the music of a symphony orchestra? The National Orchestra of _ the NZBS has given free concerts for school children each season since its formation, but only to children of ten and over, When The Listener received from the United States Information Service a story about a "Tiny Tots’" concert given by the Washington National Symphony Orchestra-to children between the ages, of two and six--we asked the conductor of the National Orchestra, Warwick Braithwaite, and other local musicians for their opinions of the value such a concert might have for New Zealand children. Their replies, and the USIS story, are printéd here.

J THINK such a concert would. be a very good thing, although the schedule of National Orchestra concerts is so exacting that to put on another would be a major operation. The players would get a great kick out of it, I’m sure. Still, I sometimes doubt if things of this kind done especially for children are of any value at all. Out of a thousand

children ata concert like this’ only ten would be so impressed by it that they would bother their parents to take up their interest in some practical form. I got my interest in music by going to a real\ live opera with my family when I was four. It was all very, very serious, I wonder if the result would have been the same if I'd gone to a children’s concert? It connects their ideas not necessarily with music, but with the curious sounds made by the piccolo in

"Pop Goes the Weasel," and so on. But would love the joy of doing a conéert like this. -Warwick Braithwaite THINK it’s a very good idea to give con"certs of this kind, provided you play descriptive music which has been orchestrated in a way to appeal to children, and which tells a story. My own experience of playing music for very young children is that they wriggle about, don’t sit still, push ‘each other’s hats off and so on, but when you ask a question, they’ve heard everything. And their listening is quite untrammelled. I think that what you hear before you are five is very important; ‘after five your life is already set. New Zealand children today are growing up in a musical desert: In my childhood every house had a piano, but how many houses have one now? Children used

to be sung to sleep, but that practice is dying out nowadays, too. There is a complete change from conditions of 40 years ago, and I think that is one reason New Zealanders don’t have the deeper perception into Beethoven and Bach that people in other countries have. Concerts of this sort for very young children would be- invaluable for their musical life in later years. -Dorothy Davies Peery nae + F you want to guide children to better things in music you can’t start too young. Concerts for children as young as these would have to be frequent enough for the kiddies to accustom themselves to hearing and seeing an orchestra playing. Their parents wouid have to be with them, too. But if we did have more concerts for young children we might’ have decent audiences for symphony orchestras one day, Symphonies. all over the world are having trouble with audiences. There would be no educational value in a concert like this, but from the point of view of inculcating habit into the children it would be valuable? When parents. ask me at what age their chii‘dren should start learning the violin, I say about six. If a child grows up in a household which plays and listens to good music, then nine times out of ten he will grow up to have the same tastes as his parents. So it is a good idea to accustom children to hearing good: music ‘right from the cradle. A few concerts of this nature wouldn't mould them, but would influence their tastes to the extent that they would know in future what good music is. I think the kind of musical training given in schools, even music-making, has mostly condemned itself because we haven't yet got a discerning musical

public out of it. A few concerts like this would be of more value, in my opinion, in building up such a public. -Alex Lindsay "THIS concert seems to fulfil Aldous Huxley’s predictions in Brave New World, where he talks about indoctrinating infants by putting a microphone under their -pillows. In America they don’t seem to worry about going to all that trouble-they just haul them along to a concert. I should think that one child in ten thousand or more would have sufficient response to music at that age to get anything truly musical out of such a programme unless the music were reduced to the nursery level. Nevertheless, the basic rhythms and what might pass for melody would certainly have some sort. of effect-but then this could be obtained just as well and much more easily by singing a few nursery rhymes aad folk songs around the piano, and the psychological ‘effect would be much better. In fact, I would rather think the "Tiny Tots’" concert might -be a form of cruelty if the children were not allowed freedom to fidget and even to move about and talk when they felt like it-and certainly to go home when they’d had enough. But, after all, the Menuhins used to take their little boy, Yehudi, to concerts when he was no more than a babe in arms, and» he ‘doésn’t seem to have suffered from it. I wonder how much he

gained?

Owen

Jensen