Not long ago, the third graders of Emerson
Waldorf School
(EWS) in Chapel Hill, NC made a gift to our first grade. They
entered the first grade room early one Friday morning and, after a
short visit, left behind not only a lovely song, but the very flutes
that they had played.
Those flutes waited in a basket for a few weeks, all the while being
eyed with curiosity by Class One as they continued using their simple
one-hole flutes. Finally, the day arrived. The new
flutes
were handed out and their one-hole flutes were collected. The
children reverently cleaned and oiled their new instruments and
examined them with wonder- six holes! It was yet another week
before they began plying the first simple melodies on their new
instruments.
Meanwhile, the third grade students also had new flutes with nine
handsome holes. Over the past few weeks, they had gradually
become aware that their old flutes actually had large gaps and that
they seemed to skip completely over some notes that they now realized
should have been there. Their new instruments allow them to
play
up and down a full scale. This also brought to their
awareness
the tonic note, the “home tone” around which
Western music
revolves. Enter a third grade music lesson and you will now
find
students merrily singing up and down the scale, playing on their flutes
tunes that step up and down the scale or beginning to notate the music
that they play.
This careful progression in the early years is just one aspect of the
attention paid to the pedagogy of the Waldorf music
curriculum.
In 1919, Rudolf Steiner suggested that music instruction should begin
by working in conformity with the nature of the young child.
About third grade, however, he asks that teachers change the
instruction and begin to work in a way that compels the child to
conform to the music.
Thus, music lessons for the early grades are not didactic or
intellectual. Rather, the children experience simple, dreamy
and
uncomplicated melodies. In a playful, exploratory way, music
lessons bring to the children aspects of music such as rhythms based on
words, high and low sounds, fast and slow tempos, or loud and quiet
sounds. The focus of early music learning is on these inner,
experiential aspects of music.
The third grade year is the pivotal year in music instruction at a
Waldorf school. To begin, it is the year of naming
things.
Each note now has its own name, and all of the discoveries made in our
early music explorations begin to crystallize as, for example, we name
the types of notes that make up rhythms (quarter notes, eighth notes,
etc.) or name the ways in which a melody weaves between pitches (by
steps, skips or jumps). The music also has a new
quality.
We leave behind the dreamy five-note music of the early years and begin
working in earnest with the typical major scale. The children
must now “conform” to the standards of Western
music and,
by third grade, they love it!
The third grade year is the launching pad for the rest of their music
experiences at EWS. The work started in third grade deepens
the
strong intuitive sense for music that was developed in the early with a
new understanding of the inner workings of music. They
continue
this learning in the subsequent years, but they are also able to begin
applying what they’ve learned. By fourth grade,
they are
more than ready to begin their chosen string instrument, and in fifth
grade they become members of our choir. They are growing into
intelligent, sensitive and versatile musicians, and it all began with a
few simple melodies and a one-hole flute.
Jason
Child is the
Director of Music at Emerson Waldorf School in Chapel Hill,
NC.
He teaches music classes for grades 1—8 and directs three
choirs
grades 5—12. Mr. Child holds a Master’s
in Music
Education and has been teaching vocal and general music in public and
private schools since 1992.
