Fine Arts Friday: The Magic Flute (Mozart)

We've been studying Mozart as our term's composer. In particular, we've been focusing on one of Mozart's operas, The Magic Flute, for the past several weeks. The girls have not had much exposure to opera, so I took this fun storyline as a good introduction. After listening to the basic plot summary on Classics for Kids, we then watched this short excerpt from the opera. If you're interested, here's the famous duet sung by Papageno and his beloved Papagena :)

My Three Year Old Digs Mozart

I had the most frustrating telephone conversation today.

I called our local philharmonic orchestra to get information on a special "Concert for Young People" scheduled for next Tuesday. I knew I was late in trying to get tickets, but I thought I'd give it a shot. They were sold out of both performances. Phooey.

But, that wasn't the frustrating part.

I was speaking to the lady in charge of the educational programs associated with the philharmonic. I thought that was lovely to be able to speak to her in person. She was very kind and seemed supportive of homeschoolers in general. She was busy suggesting other performances that might be good alternatives since we could not buy tickets for the performance we had wanted to attend when (whew, catching her breath) she stopped for a moment, realizing she didn't really have all of the information she needed. "I'm sorry," she said, "I don't know the ages of your children". "No problem," I replied. "They are six and a half and five."

Dead silence.

Suddenly, she took on a rather uppity tone of voice and changed her demeanor entirely, saying things like "Oh, well, the concert you were asking about is for children older than third grade anyway" and "Oh no, that concert isn't very accessible for young children".

Accessible? What exactly did she mean by "accessible"?

After she had gone on and on... and on, I finally got a chance to ask a question. I asked her to please explain what she meant when she said that a concert wasn't "accessible" for children under the age of 9. She fumbled around a bit for her words and then blurted out something about not enough explanation and not enough talking through the music. And, besides, many of the groups attending these concerts have received teacher's packets preparing them to hear the music and blah, blah, blah.

"So", I continued, "are you saying that there really insn't anything available for children younger than third grade?" Well, there was the production of Peter and The Wolf in January. "But, what about the philharmonic?" Well, not really. There are not any philharmonic performances that are made accessible for children that young.

There was that word again.

I tried to sound polite, but I was getting annoyed. Here was the woman in charge of the educational programs for the philharmonic and she's telling me that you have to be nine to have a worthwhile experience at the philharmonic and, even then, you need several worksheets and quite a lot of talking to get anything out of it.

I started to get a little bold (but still polite). I admit, I started to sound a little impassioned, too. "I am not a professional, but don't you think wonderful music can, to a large extent, stand on its own as wonderful music? Don't you believe that it IS wonderful music because of its innate ability to affect people, to move them and incite them? Even if a child has no idea what a 'movement' is or which instrument is the viola and which is the violin, don't you think that there is quite a lot to be gained by merely listening to a great piece played by a full orchestra right before your very eyes? Doesn't great music do much of the teaching all on it's own?"

Apparently, she didn't think so.

After a little more blah from her, I finally told her that, since our children did not yet fit into the "accessible" age range, we would continue to do what we have done up to this point. We would take the children along with us to performances we would like to attend. Yes, full length performances. Yes, they really could sit that long. Yes, they really would be thrilled. Yes, I believe they really would get quite a lot from just listening, because...

...I believe truly great music is "accessible" to anyone.

Music Appreciation

With all of the material to cover each day, how can a family make time for the "extras" like art and music appreciation? It seems to me that the best way to make sure the children are regularly exposed to the arts is to find a way to seamlessly weave these subjects into the day. This is especially easy when it comes to music - just play it on a CD! If we can just remember to play the music, there are great gains in just listening to it. There may be occasional conversations about instruments, movements, etc., but they are not necessary for young children to genuinely benefit from the music. Simply enjoying Strauss while we do a few chores or eat breakfast is enough to introduce great music to our children.

It should come as no surprise that, as with the other subjects, Charlotte Mason urges the very best quality for our children. Our modern minds immediately jump to defend our preferences and we ask who can judge what is really quality. My reply would be that time is the best judge of quality. Music that has lasted the test of time and has been continually considered excellent most likely is excellent. With this view in mind, classical and folk music will take center stage in our listening choices for Year One. Hymns, of course, also qualify as quality music. We often listen to hymns in the van and Sam memorizes a new hymn each month with the children during bedtime devotions. I'd like to play hymns more regularly in the house during the day. I'll have to move some hymn CDs inside :)

Although I played around some with the idea of a "composer for each term" during this last year, I admit that it seemed more contrived than I liked for my everyone-six-and-under crew. I'm willing to give it a go, however. Above all, for this age group, the music is about beauty and big ideas. We may get to some of the details of the composer's lives, but if, at the end of the term, I can say that the children have grown to love classical music more, I will consider our term's "study" a success.

Keeping a regular time for this music seems to help me play it consistently. A habit of playing a CD every morning while I make breakfast, for instance, is an easy way to make sure that quality music is a part of each day. Even if we don't get around to it every day, though, a couple of days a week is better than none and probably enough to make a positive impression on the children. Beyond a regular listening time, we will also use our term's music for some of our drill & dance days (that's just fancy PNEU lingo for dancing up some exercise in the family room).

Beyond listening to CDs, we also hope to establish a bit of a family tradition by attending several philharmonic concerts together each year. The Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra has some great, informal "teaching" performances on Thursday and Friday nights that are reasonably priced and appropriate for preschool and up. Special nights like these can be a great way to show the children how much we enjoy beautiful music, besides just being a really nice way to spend an evening together. We have used the fall season's performance schedule to choose our composers for the term (we'll being focusing in on two composers from now until December). We plan to attend a concert in November with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major and Mahler's Symphony No. 7 in E Minor. So, Mozart and Mahler it is!

Apart from the set composer study schedule, Classics for Kids is a really neat radio program and website that offers a little more in-depth music study than just listening alone. There is a weekly show available as well as a backlist of previous airings. Worth looking into. Also, the Classical Kids Series of CDs has won award after award. We own the Vivaldi CD (purposefully a little spooky in parts - I could do without all that, but overall okay for children old enough to handle it) and hope to buy the Mozart disc soon. I haven't heard this one, yet, so I cannot vouch for it personally, but these CDs seem to be favorites with lots of homeschooling families. I didn't realize it before tonight, but apparently there are theatrical tours of these productions, too! That sounds like something I want to look into :)



*edited to say that Mozart's Magnificent Voyage wasn't really our cup of tea. We checked it out from the library, but we will not be buying it. Just wanted to say that ;)