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85 Amazing Music Games And Activities For Kids

Help your child boost their creative interests by indulging in music activities.

Active engagement in learning music is an important part of any child’s education curriculum. Musical activities and experiences improve different areas of children’s intellectual and social development and help form important skills including literacy, language, motor coordination, and comprehension of emotions.

String & Keyboard Musik Program®️ is a registered inclusive learning program created with this in mind. Bespoke colored-coded instruments, Workbooks, Instructional Videos, and Apps are all designed for aspiring young musicians aged 2 and ups.

•85 Music Activities available for Printable or Download from E-Lesson App/ Smart-board

•Available in London United Kingdom. Check out:

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Late in the afternoon of 19 November, 1965 – a Friday – the Hungarian conductor Georg Solti steered the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra through the placid concluding measures of Wagner’s Die Walküre, the final downbeat landing at precisely 5.30pm. It was the end of an epic journey to make the first complete studio recording of Wagner's Ring cycle, a cycle of four operas lasting 15 hours in total.

Who was Georg Solti?

Georg Solti was a Hungarian-British conductor of both orchestral and operatic music, best known both for his opera conducting with orchestras in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and for his long and highly successful spell as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The complete Wagner Ring cycle still stands as one of his greatest achievements, alongside complete Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler symphony cycles in Chicago.

That journey had started seven years earlier on 24 September, 1958, when sessions to record Das Rheingold – the curtain-raiser to Wagner’s tetralogy – began in the Sofiensaal, Vienna, a converted 19th-century steam bath known for excellent acoustics. The road to that opening session had, however, itself been difficult. Decca, the company making the recording, needed considerable persuasion that a complete Ring cycle made sense commercially. Would enough copies ever be sold, they wondered, to cover the enormous financial investment required to complete the project?

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Wagner: why the music of the brilliant German composer is often misunderstood and considered difficult

When Das Rheingold was eventually released as a three-LP boxed set in March 1959 (price £6), Decca executives got their answer. The critics raved about the new recording and, crucially, it began selling in substantial numbers globally, even becoming a popular hit in the US. ‘There it was in the Billboard charts of the best-selling LP albums,’ reported Rheingold’s producer John Culshaw, ‘surrounded by Elvis Presley and Pat Boone, and without another classical recording in sight.’

Who was John Culshaw?

Culshaw himself was a major reason why Das Rheingold was so stunningly triumphant. Seeing exciting possibilities in the new technology of twin-channel, stereophonic recording, he totally rethought how opera should be presented to the armchair listener. Culshaw’s ‘theatre of the mind’ involved careful placement of singers across the stereo spectrum, mimicking stage positions and movements.

Decca to release new high-definition transfer of George Solti's 'Ring Cycle' recordings

Wagner’s own directions were a crucial point of departure in Culshaw’s calculations. The score of Das Rheingold requires 18 tuned anvils for the Nibelheim episode, a stipulation usually ignored in the theatre. Culshaw took it seriously: 18 anvils were duly found, and 18 players hired to hit them. The thunderclap heralding Rheingold’s final scene also got the Culshaw treatment, and was one of several ‘sound effects’ rendered with unprecedented fidelity on the finished recording.

Decca producer John Culshaw played a key role in the recordings

Decca producer John Culshaw played a key role in the recordings. Pic: Evening Standard / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

What is the best 'Ring' cycle?

The recordings from Solti and the VPO are good candidates for a 'Ring' cycle best recording. Das Rheingold’s commercial success induced Decca to sanction a continuation of the Ring project, and recordings of Siegfried (1962), Götterdämmerung (1964) and Die Walküre (1965) followed. Acclaim for each instalment was again virtually universal, many commentators acknowledging that entirely new standards were being set both artistically and sonically in the presentation of opera on record.

One critic hailed Siegfried as ‘the finest recording, as such, of opera that we have had so far’. In Götterdämmerung, Culshaw had special steerhorns made for Act Two, adding to what one reviewer called ‘the alchemy of Decca's magnificent, stunning, overwhelming new recording’.

Which singers performed in the Solti / Vienna Phil 'Ring' cycle?

Perhaps the biggest factor of all in the Decca Ring’s success was the outstanding quality of the singers. Kirsten Flagstad, Hans Hotter, Gustav Neidlinger, Wolfgang Windgassen, Birgit Nilsson, Christa Ludwig, Régine Crespin, Gottlob Frick – all featured prominently, drawn from a classic generation of post-war Wagner performers. Culshaw’s ‘incomparable engineers’ (as The Times called them), led by Gordon Parry, also played a crucial role in capturing performances which, in their extremes of dynamic and expression, often severely stretched the analogue tape technology of the period

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Who is Joshua Bell?

American violinist Joshua Bell has been an enduring presence on the concert stage and in the recording studio. But just exactly who is he, and why is he one of the world’s great players? Here’s a brief guide to the man and his music-making.

How old is Joshua Bell?

At the time of writing Joshua Bell is 53 years old. He was born in December 1967 in the town of Bloomington, Indiana.

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How long has Joshua Bell been playing the violin?

Bell was just four years old when he first picked up a violin. Ten years later he made his concert debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Riccardo Muti. That means Bell will soon celebrate four decades on the concert stage.

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Does Joshua Bell play a Stradivarius violin?


Yes he does! It’s a ‘Gibson, Huberman’ Stradivarius, made in 1713 by the great violin maker. Bell has been playing it since 2001 and before him it was played by Norbert Brainin (of the Amadeus Quartet) and the Israeli violinist Bronislaw Huberman. Poor Huberman lost the instrument twice, firstly (and briefly) in 1916 in Vienna, and a second time in 1936. The second time, it was stolen from his Carnegie Hall dressing room and didn’t resurface for 50 years! Suffice to say it was a bit grubby and in need of attention

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Joshua Bell performs Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto Op. 35

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* Which performers currently own Stradivarius violins and how much are they worth?

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Does Joshua Bell conduct?

Yes he does. He’s a multi-talented chap is Joshua Bell. Aside from playing the violin rather brilliantly, he is also the music director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, one of London’s top ensembles. He took on the role in 2011 from Neville Mariner, who had founded the ensemble. Bell recorded with them earlier in his career.

Has Joshua Bell played on any film scores?


He has, and a few times. He performed on John Corigliano’s 1998 Oscar-winning score for The Red Violin (indeed, he reunited with the film in 2018 for live performances). In 2002 he worked with the late composer James Horner on the score for Iris, shortly followed by a very memorable turn in Nigel Hess’s 2004 score for Ladies in Lavender. Then in 2008 Bell worked with James Newton Howard on his score for Defiance, swiftly followed by Angels & Demons with Hans Zimmer in 2009.

Didn’t Joshua Bell once pretend to be a busker or something?

Right again! Bell went undercover on the Washington DC Metro, performing dazzling solos to passers by. It was a fascinating experiment in public perceptions of classical music, performance, and how context really matters. The experiment formed the basis of a Pulitzer Prize-winning article in the Washington Post.

What are some of Joshua Bell’s best recordings?

Bell has a huge catalogue of recordings. And it’s no wonder, since he signed his first recording contract – with Decca – aged 18. Here are some highlights

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Víkingur Ólafsson: the brilliance of the Icelandic pianist's Bach interpretations

Víkingur Ólafsson won the BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Year in 2019 with his recording of Bach piano transcriptions. We reflect on these fresh, exciting interpretations and explain what it was that made our jury fall in love with Ólafsson's album

Like a perfect, crisp autumn leaf, Víkingur Ólafsson’s disc of JS Bach dropped onto our desks in September 2018. From its opening seconds, it was clear that this was something exceptional: the programme both familiar yet unexpected, Ólafsson’s performance style delicately balancing fashions old and new, the recorded sound intimate and warm. Everything just so. In the BBC Music Magazine Awards jury meeting, it was the only disc we barely talked about. Because all eight of the jury were in agreement – Johann Sebastian Bach should go straight through to the next round, to be voted on by the public.

Of the words we did use to describe the album, however, ‘fresh’ and ‘exciting’ were among them, so impressed were we that what, on the surface, seemed like just another disc of Bach keyboard music should be so utterly distinguished.

The Icelandic pianist, however, knew only too well the risks involved in releasing material already recorded by the likes of Glenn Gould, Murray Perahia, The best recordings of JS Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier and many more eminent Bachians. ‘People are so specific about what they want in Bach, and often they’ve already formed very strong opinions,’ he admits. ‘I thought that I’d get a little bit more hate because , you know, my Bach is my Bach…’.

From the first track, listeners will be struck by the evenness of Ólafsson’s touch, the immediacy of his articulation and, particularly in the slower tracks, a rich, almost organ-like depth of tone. ‘I really spent many years forming my own ideas about Bach,’ he says, ‘trying to make sense out of his structures and finding the right balance between freedom and discipline, between rubato and strict rhythm. And I tried, too, to play him in a three-dimensional way, giving life to the polyphony, like a theatre director controlling three or four characters at the same time. You have to make sure that they’re all alive, even when they have different roles.’

But it’s Ólafsson’s programme of ‘Best of’ Bach, lesser-known works and fascinating transcriptions that captivates as much as his interpretations. If it comes across as an album concept rather than a recording of a recital programme, then that’s exactly what it is. ‘I don’t want my albums to be merely an extension of my performing activity,’ he insists. ‘I’m not one of those pianists who plays whatever they want to play in concerts for two years and then they record just because they’ve been playing it so much and want to document it.’ Albums should, he explains, consider the listener rather than glorify the artist.

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Ólafsson eventually hit on the idea of focusing on Bach as a master of short narrative. ‘Recently I’d been thinking about Bach on colossal terms so much, playing the Goldbergs and the Partitas and those kinds of works,’ he says. ‘I wanted instead to return to my roots and to pieces I learnt for study purposes, like some of the preludes and fugues, sinfonias and inventions, and smaller items. I wanted to redefine them for myself and not think of them in an academic sense, but to find the poetic cell in each one and get to the essence of each piece.’ Part of that thinking meant banishing the idea of recording complete collections or cycles – the idea was to let each miniature piece stand on its own, helping it to reveal its uniqueness.

But why the transcriptions, in that case? Johann Sebastian Bach includes seven of them – arrangements of chorale preludes, a solo violin movement and a prelude and fugue from the ‘48’ – by Sergei Rachmaninov, Alexander Siloti, Wilhelm Kempff, Ferruccio Busoni and Ólafsson himself. And August Stradal, whose version for piano of the slow movement from Bach’s Trio Sonata No. 4 seems to have somehow emerged as the album’s defining track. Ólafsson talks about Bach being a ‘mirror for each generation’, his album reflecting performance approaches of a more modern era. But the transcriptions are also used as programmatic glue, as part of the album’s pacing. ‘If you look at the opening half of the programme, you’ll see that there’s a prelude and fugue, then a transcription, then a second prelude and fugue and another transcription and so on. At the album’s exact centre I play the Aria Variata and then launch into the longer pieces as the album progresses. It ends with the magisterial, expansive eight-minute A minor Fantasia and Fugue BWV 904

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Why should composers write for amateur musicians?

Composers used to write routinely for amateur groups, but much music today is too technically challenging and best left to the professionals, says Tom Service. Have you ever been part of a concert in which all of the music was written by living composers? OK, if not a whole concert, maybe a first half? All right, maybe not a whole first half, but a significant piece in the programme? Or if not, how about a sliver of a work by a contemporary composer?

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I’m guessing that the answer to at least the last of those questions is ‘yes’ if you’re a member of an amateur or professional orchestra, ensemble, choir, or chamber group, or if you’re part of the musical life of your community at school or university. But I’m pretty sure that it’s less likely that the answer to all of my first three questions is in the affirmative.

If so, that makes you part of a majority of music-makers in the country, for whom there is often an association between ‘contemporary music’ and ‘that’s not for me’ or ‘it’s too difficult to play’. Why has that happened? Why is there a gap between today’s composers and the repertoires of most of the musical ensembles in the country – which are not the professionals, but the amateur groups of all kinds who are the fabric of our musical life? It’s a situation that’s a historical anomaly in the wider course of the story of music. The clichés about the 18th and 19th centuries are largely true: markets for domestic and amateur music-making were driven by a desire for the new, in terms of what people wanted to play, with hundreds of composers only too happy to write for them.

Music was new music, in other words, and it was a culture of participation, from the piano in the parlour to the organ at church, from the choral society in the assembly room to the orchestra in the concert hall. The newest symphonies, operas and chamber music by composers from Brahms to Tchaikovsky, Gounod to Wagner were performed by thousands of amateur music-makers who played and sang arrangements of operatic showstoppers and busked through symphonies from Haydn to Schumann.

That meant that composers were used to thinking of their audiences not as passive recipients of their music but as potential performers of their works – and that’s exactly what they were. Without the existence of countless amateur pianists who could play their music, there would not be much point in composers writing it or publishers printing it. Composers like Mozart or Brahms, Schumann or Schubert were not compromising their artistic standards in order to write music that people could play, or which they could aspire to play. There was a continuum of participation that connected composers with musicians of all levels, so there was no separation between the producers of musical works and their participative, engaged recipients, who weren’t so much an ‘audience’ as a community of music-makers.

Fast forward to today. Where has that connection gone? In certain contexts, there are ties that still bind composers to amateur performers – especially, perhaps, in choral music, where contemporary composers remain part of the lives of singers up and down the country. But in many situations, those threads have become gossamer-thin, if they exist at all. It’s the flip-side of the specialisation which has produced such brilliant composers and performers in our musical culture, in which professional composers are often trained to think that music that stretches the abilities of the finest virtuosos is what matters the most for their lives, their reputation, and for the art-form. In terms of not diluting their artistic vision, it’s not hard to see how this way of thinking has become the norm. But it is possible – and even more compositionally challenging – for composers to achieve a wider community of music-makers with their works: as Judith Weir has said, it’s one of her missions as the Master of the Queen’s Music that composers should be trained to write music that amateurs have access to as performers and participants, but which remains true to their essential creative voice.

And yet, in Britain especially, there is another history of music in the 20th and 21st centuries. In different but equally profound ways, our major composers – from Vaughan Williams to Holst, Tippett to Cornelius Cardew, Jonathan Dove to Judith Weir herself – have always reached out to communities of participants, writing music to engage amateurs as well as professionals, composing music designed to be ‘ours’, rather than ‘theirs’. Most powerfully, think of Britten in Aldeburgh, or Peter Maxwell Davies in Orkney, and their career-long catalogues of music for young people and whole communities. And thanks to another of the other great British contributions of the last few decades – the growth of education and outreach projects, and their symbiotic connection to our classical music institutions, as well as the place of composition and creativity on the National Curriculum – there is a wider movement to return our new musical culture to its fundamentally participative state. It’s that ethos that needs celebrating and putting back at the centre stage of our musical lives

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Music effects the brain

Editor:Helan Wheel

Music effects the brain When we listen to music we are using our whole entire brain. Scientists are still trying to figure out how exactly music effects us as much as it does, but what they do know is that music has a very beneficial effect on the brain. One of the biggest effects music has on our brain is health benefit. Daniel Levitin, is a psychologist at McGill University in Montreal, who studies the neuroscience of music. Levinitin along with associates put together three experiments to help figure out what exactly is going on in our brain when we listen to our music. Levintin published a 400 study meta- analysis. One study was done with people that were about to have surgery done. As one would think, people are very anxious before getting surgery. One group listened to music before going in and the other was given drugs to help calm them. The studies showed that the people who listened to music were actually the group there were calmer before going into the room for surgery. This is great because music is much cheaper then drugs. Not only does music help with anxiety it also helps with pain. Studies show that since it helps relax people it is great for people who are giving birth or can even be given for anesthesia while in the room getting the surgery preformed. Another reason for this is became music releases endorphins, which makes people happy. These endorphins help counter act and distract people from the pain. Karen Karana Tse moved to Vancouver in her early years, where she studied and majored in music therapy. She studied music for an unusual reason, having her first brain surgery at the age of nine to remove blood clots and a second brain operation at the age of twelve. At the time, doctors were worried that the operation would affect her brain development at her age, so she was encouraged to learn music to stimulate brain development, and by learning the piano, she developed perseverance and physical coordination, so that she could slowly recover from the operation.“Music changed my life. After the whole trauma, I began to believe in the power of music, and believed that proper music training could improve children's brain development and help them develop physically and mentally. “Tse explains. Karen's experience as a child inspired her to start a music career. She has been a music teacher in Hong Kong for more than a decade, providing basic courses in piano, violin and harp for children aged two to eight. Combining years of teaching children to learn music, she set up String & Keyboard Musik Program four years ago and created her own series of coloured mini-instruments. In 2018 String & Keyboard Musik Program for school Program has been operated in 48 cities in 11 countries around the world .This children's musical instrument Program had been in the UK and US music course Music Education School in 2018/2019 awards.

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Who is Martha Argerich? All you need to know about the brilliant pianist

Here is our guide to the life and work of the superb Argentine classical pianist, widely regarded as one of the finest pianists of all time

Martha Argerich is known as one of the finest pianists in the history of classical music, with her performances – in particular – of Schumann, Prokofiev, Chopin, Ravel and Rachmaninov commonly topping the 'best ever performance' lists. But who is Martha Argerich? Where was she born, and whom did she study under?

Read on for our guide to this revered performer.

When and where was Martha Argerich born?

Martha Argerich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1941. Her family on her father's side were from Catalonia, in north-eastern Spain: however, they had settled in Argentina in the 18th century. Martha's maternal grandparents, meanwhile, were Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, who had settled in Argentina at the end of the 19th century.

Did Martha Argerich have a musical upbringing?

Yes: in fact, Argerich showed great promise from a very early age. She began piano lessons at the age of three: two years later, she started learning with the Italian pianist and teacher Vincenzo Scaramuzza, who stressed to her the importance of lyricism and feeling.Five music teachers who changed the face of western classical music

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Who taught Martha Argerich?

The young Martha Argerich performed her first piano concert in 1949, at the age of eight. She performed Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor and Beethoven's First Piano Concerto in C major. A little later, in 1955, Martha's family moved to Europe, allowing Martha to study piano in Austria with the great classical and jazz pianist Friedrich Gulda. She also had lessons with pianists Abbey Simon and Nikita Magaloff, as well as Madeleine Lipatti (widow of the pianist Dinu Lipatti). The year 1957 was a red-letter one for the young pianist: aged just 16, Argerich won both the Geneva International Music Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition within three weeks of each other. Not everything was plain sailing during this time, however. Argerich had a frustrating time trying to study with the great, but reclusive and enigmatic pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, who gave her only four lessons over the course of a year and a half. After that, the young Argerich was off to New York, hoping to study with her pianistic hero Vladimir Horowitz - but this did not bear fruit either. Discouraged, Argerich abandoned the piano for three years and toyed with giving up altogether. However, she did eventually return - and in some style, winning the VII International Chopin Piano Competition in 1965 at the age of 24. When did Martha Argerich make her first recording? TThe pianist made her first recording in 1960, aged just 19. The recording featured works by Chopin, Brahms, Ravel, Prokofiev, and Liszt, and was a critical success. Over the decades since, Martha Argerich has recorded works by a wide range of composers, with the Romantic era a speciality. Indeed, her recordings of the piano works of Robert Schumann, such as the Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana and Fantasia, arguably represent the pianist at her expressive, emotional and virtuosic peak. Where can I read a Martha Argerich interview? This may not be that easy. Argerich has chosen to stay out of the limelight for much of her career. That hasn't, though, stopped her from being recognised as one of the greatest pianists of all time. Has Martha Argerich appeared at the Proms? Yes, on various occasions. Famously, there was the Proms performance in 2016 when, at the age of 75, Argerich played Liszt's First Piano Concerto in a performance conducted by her friend (and fellow Argentine-born musician) Daniel Barenboim. Exclusive interview Daniel Barenboim talks about his new recording and bringing people together Who is Daniel Barenboim? Everything you need to know about the legendary pianist and conductor 'It was an unforgettable performance,' said The Guardian. 'Her playing is still as dazzling, as frighteningly precise, as it has always been; her ability to spin gossamer threads of melody as matchless as ever.' Since then Argerich has also appeared at the 2019 Proms, at the age of 78, to perform Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, once again with Barenboim on the podium. The Guardian labelled this performance 'mesmerising': 'it bristled with intensity and intent from the first bar, so often propelled by the crystal-clear precision that still comes so naturally to her, and the lines of the slow movement floated with weightless ease.'

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Ukrainian pianist triumphs at Honens International

Illia Ovcharenko has been named Prize Laureate of the 2022 Honens International Piano Competition

Ukrainian pianist Illia Ovcharenko (21) has been named Prize Laureate of the 2022 Honens International Piano Competition. He wins one of the world’s largest prizes for piano: 100,000 Canadian Dollars (CAD) and an artist development programme valued at $500,000.

Finalists Rachel Breen (United States, 26) and Sasha Kasman Laude (United States, 27) each received Finalist Prizes of $10,000.

This year's Honens Piano jury included Michel Béroff (our choice for a best Prokofiev piano concertos set), Stewart Goodyear and recent BBC Music Magazine interviewee Imogen Cooper. Other jury members included Earl Blackburn, Katherine Chi, Ick-Choo Moon and Orli Shaham. Over the past two weeks, our jury and devoted audiences have experienced world-class pianism of the highest possible level,' adds Jon Kimura Parker, Honens’ artistic director. 'The Honens International Piano Competition has brought artistry, emotion, virtuosity, and creativity to Calgary and to the world. We offer our warmest congratulations to all of the pianists and special congratulations to the 2022 Honens Prize Laureate, Illia Ovcharenko.'

Currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music in Tel Aviv under the tutelage of Arie Vardie, Illia Ovcharenko has already performed with leading orchestras including the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Pomeranian Philharmonic Orchestra (Poland), National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, National Radio of Ukraine, and the Versailles Conservatory String Orchestra.

Illia's development programme will include debut recitals in some of the world’s leading concert houses, plus concert opportunities with leading orchestras, professional management, residencies, and recordings.

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The scariest operas: how the supernatural world has inspired opera composers

Ashutosh Khandekar explores how the supernatural in opera has served to express both our deepest fears and darkest desires.

From its very beginnings in the Italian Renaissance, opera was an attempt to recreate a form of Classical theatre that might help us, through storytelling and music, to understand the nature of our existence in a terrifying and limitless universe.

Mythical gods, sorcerers, ghosts, monsters, things that go bump in the night: the world of the supernatural is woven into the fabric of opera, heightened by music that colours and guides our emotional and psychic response.

The operatic voice itself is, in a sense, ‘super-natural’ – an extreme form of expression that projects the inner lives of characters onto a vast canvas, providing a perfect vehicle for inspiring awe and terror. In many Romance languages, the word for singing is derived from the Latin ‘cantare’, whose origins lie in casting of spells, or incantations. Some of the earliest examples of the supernatural in opera revolve around the subversive qualities of witchcraft and sorcery.

In Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, the witches who lure Aeneas away from Carthage represent what was regarded in 17th-century England as the pernicious, destabilising influence of Roman Catholicism. Handel’s opera Alcina warns of the malignant effects of the supernatural on Enlightenment ideals: luring men to her island, the eponymous sorceress turns them into beasts. Witches and sorcerers continued to fascinate composers into the 19th century. In Rossini’s Armida, the protagonist is an infidel temptress who uses magic to try to steer the knight Rinaldo away from his Christian mission in the Crusades.

Who are opera's greatest witches?

Perhaps the most famous of all operatic witches are those that appear in Verdi’s Macbeth. In a departure from Shakespeare’s Three Weird Sisters, Verdi has a large female chorus of witches divided into three parts, singing music that veers from the grotesque to the ribald. Verdi himself wanted the Witches to appear ‘trivial, yet extravagant and original,’ but many commentators have regarded them as a failure to capture the fantastical and fatalistic atmosphere of Shakespeare’s apparitions.

The late Verdi scholar Julian Budden wrote that the jaunty music in the first Witches’ Chorus ‘does not add up to anything very terrifying’ though it ‘at least captures the essentially childish malice of the witches in the play’. For modern stage directors, Verdi’s witches have provided fodder for ironic commentaries on what constitutes the notion of terror among an opera-loving public. In his 2007 production of Macbeth, Richard Jones memorably portrayed them as working-class single mothers living in a trailer park, bursting out of their caravans to scare the living daylights out of a mild-mannered Glyndebourne audience.

How did the supernatural world influence opera?

For Enlightenment thinkers in the 18th century, the supernatural world was full of irrational elements that held humanity back in the pursuit of a progressive, morally driven world. In Mozart’s The Magic Flute, opposing forces of darkness and light are expressed in the musical extremes of the writing for voice. The Queen of the Night’s stratospheric, otherworldly coloratura sets the heart racing with alarm; in contrast, Zorastro’s deep, calm, almost soporific arias draw us back into a world of order and reason. Music’s role in a world of discord is to restore a sense of harmony. Hence Tamino’s flute and Papageno’s bells, which can banish evil spirits, tame wild beasts and overcome terrifying ordeals.

So much of Mozart’s music embodies the ideals of the Enlightenment – a world of reason and order in which man is at peace with his gods. So whenever supernatural forces intrude into his operas, Mozart is prompted to explore extraordinary soundworlds that shake us to the core.

The ominous chords that reverberate from the orchestra at the start of Don Giovanni come back to haunt us, quite literally, as the plot unfolds. Mozart’s rare use of trombones in each of Don Giovanni’s terrifying encounters with the Commendatore’s statue are instances in which the composer conjures a supernatural world through cataclysmic shifts in harmony and strange, jangling orchestral textures and colours.

The influence of the supernatural on the development of orchestral and choral colour is at its most remarkable in Weber’s Der Freischütz, premiered two centuries ago this year and considered to be the first Romantic opera. At the end of Act II, we are plunged into one of the most celebrated scenes of supernatural horror in all opera. Lured into the Wolf’s Glen at night, our hunting hero Max enters into a Faustian pact with the evil Kaspar who is in league with devilish Samiel as they forge magic bullets that never miss their mark.

Weber sets the scene with tremulous strings underpinned by chromatic chords descending as if into the depths of hell. Forbidding incantations from the male chorus are punctuated with horrifying shrieks from the women. This dark, turbulent sound world is familiar to modern audiences by way of a thousand spooky scenes on TV and in horror films; but to audiences in 1821, this was a highly original and quite terrifying theatrical musical account of supernatural forces in action.

Both Mozart and Weber supplied musical templates for supernatural scenes in operas throughout the 19th century. In Verdi’s Don Carlos, sombre trombone-heavy brass chords, shifting uneasily from major to minor, evoke an atmosphere of fear in the haunted monastery where the hapless Carlos is dragged to his death by the ghost of Charles V.

The netherworld of Don Giovanni is palpable in Verdi’s orchestral writing in this terrifying scene. Tchaikovsky, meanwhile, spoke of both Don Giovanni and Der Freischütz as being among his favourite operas, models for the eerie, fatalistic scenes featuring the Old Countess in The Queen of Spades. In his review of the Russian premiere of Der Freischütz, Tchaikovsky recognised a ‘mighty creative force’ in Weber’s depiction of ‘The Fantastic’.

Meyerbeer, one of the most popular opera composers of the 19th century, was a close friend of Weber – the two had studied composition together in Darmstadt. His opera Robert le Diable was premiered in 1831, a decade after Der Freischütz. A massive hit with the public of the day, it took the theatrical staging of the supernatural to a new level.

Establishing the tradition of ‘Grand Opera’ in France, Meyerbeer’s opera includes a ballet in which a group of deceased nymphomaniac nuns rise from their tomb to perform an infernal dance. The scene caused a sensation at its Paris Opera premiere, not least because it showed off the theatre’s new gas lighting– a technological innovation that transformed the way the supernatural could be presented on the stage. Edgar Degas, for one, was transfixed by the haunting quality of light in the scene, painting it several times.

Der Freischütz, meanwhile, made a profound impact on Wagner, who saw the opera as a nine year-old in Dresden, conducted by Weber himself. You can hear Weber’s influence throughout Wagner’s works, and especially in his evocation of otherworldly terror when he deploys deep brass and woodwind resonances together with chilling vocal ‘sound effects’ such as the shrieking of the Valkyries in the Ring cycle or the haunting wailings of dead sailors on the ghost ship in The Flying Dutchman.

Terror doesn’t always, of course, come in noisy blasts. The supernatural world can be as seductive as it is frightening, and music’s devilish power to seduce is a frequent theme in opera. In Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, a catalogue of strange and sinister supernatural events, Antonia (a singer) is lured by the voice of her mother’s ghost to sing herself to death

[childrenfuturemind]

Carwithen, Doreen

She put her career aside to promote that of her husband, William Alwyn - but Doreen Carwithen was a composer with an utterly captivating style all her own. When visitors came to see the composer William Alwyn at his home in Blythburgh in Suffolk, they were always greeted by his wife, Mary. Their house was silent, almost eerily so. Mary kept it that way so nothing would disturb William as he composed. She was completely dedicated to William and his work – guests remembered her as quiet and unassuming, and terrible at making tea. Few realised that Mary Alwyn had once been a famous composer herself, and a quite different woman altogether. Born Doreen Mary Carwithen, she changed her name after she and William eloped to Suffolk in 1961, eventually becoming his wife in 1975. It’s at least partly because of this relationship that Carwithen’s name is still relatively unfamiliar today. She put her career aside to promote his.

Doreen Carwithen lived much of her life in the shadow of her husband, fellow composer William Alwyn

Doreen Carwithen lived much of her life in the shadow of her husband, fellow composer William Alwyn

It was only after William died in 1985 that she allowed herself a small re-emergence as a composer, and in the 1990s oversaw the recording of her string quartets, Violin Sonata and some of her orchestral works. Carwithen’s fame has been slowly growing since then, and her centenary this year has been celebrated with the first ever festival dedicated to her, and country-wide performances including at the BBC Proms.

It’s unsurprising that Carwithen’s music is enjoying a renaissance. Her style is utterly captivating. She can just as easily write energetic, rhythmically driven music as she can intimate, introspective pieces built on luminous harmonies and lingering chords. And shining through in all her works is a pure, unadulterated love of melody. She never embraced atonality or experimentalism – she belongs to the same brand of 20th-century British composition as William Walton, Grace Williams and Benjamin Britten.

[childrenfuturemind]

New study investigates impacts of ‘little and often’ music training for non-specialists

Harriet Clifford

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

The researchers at Durham University believe that this is the first ever study to explore teacher perceptions of a Kodály approach for training non-specialist teachers. A recently published study has found that non-specialist primary teachers report ‘lasting improvements’ in pupil behaviour and increased teacher confidence after receiving basic Kodály-inspired music training.

As fears rise over lack of subject-specific development in teacher training, the study evaluated the results of a collaboration between music specialists and general primary teachers with the aim of developing their music skills, subject knowledge and confidence.

Teachers in 55 primary schools in the North East of England took part in First Thing Music training, delivered by tutors from the British Kodály Academy in partnership with Tees Valley Music Service.

Daily music

The programme provides ‘a structured, sequential music curriculum of increasing progression’ and sees teachers delivering 15-minutes of music at the start of each day to Year 1 pupils for one academic year. Training covers three key stages of learning: beat; beat and rhythm; and beat, rhythm and pitch.

Schools participating in this research were also taking part in a separate study, jointly funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and the Royal Society for the Arts (RSA). Results of this study showed that pupils in the First Thing Music intervention group made the equivalent of one month’s additional progress in reading, on average, compared to pupils in the control group.

Changes ahead

The paper comes in the wake of the Initial Teacher Training (ITT) market review and concerns that proposed changes to teacher training will lead to a lack of subject-specific development and an ‘acute’ shortage of music teachers.

Project lead, Lindsay Ibbotson, a music specialist and honorary fellow at Durham University Department of Education, said: ‘These are simple rhymes and musical games which any teacher can learn, and they just find them so useful and enjoyable in the classroom, especially “first thing” each day.

‘The great thing is you don’t need anything other than you and the children for this practical, “little and often” training course. It is important to stress that all this is about nothing more than the basics - a “starter kit” for generalist primary school teachers, so that all children have access to these all-important foundations for learning.

‘Thereafter, we need music specialists more than ever, but the difference is that everyone begins to really understand the value of what these specialists can do.’

Collaborative approach

The study aimed to evaluate teacher’s experiences of a collaborative partnership with music specialists.

It found that the programme is 'an example of the potential of such collaboration in providing diverse opportunities for professional musicians, music education organisations and schools to work together to support teachers in music education.’

Co-authors Ibbotson and professor Beng-Huat See are working on expanding the programme, and, in a pilot project, Ibbotson is currently delivering weekly music training via Zoom to a small group of primary PGCE students at Durham University.

The 2019 Music Education: State of the Nation report from the Incorporated Society of Musicians (ISM), the All-Parliamentary Group for Music Education, and the University of Sussex found that students on a general postgraduate primary course currently receive between two and eight hours of music training in total.

The paper is open access, and can be read in full here.

[childrenfuturemind]

Benefits of Music for ADHD Brains

Children Future Mind | Kyle Marcus | October 14th, 2021 | 12:23

The benefits of music for the mind, body, and overall health are well-known and well documented. Music strikes a chord with the brain — regulating mood and stress, improving memory and cognition, and even adding structure to daily life — in a way few other therapies can. Children with ADHD experience out-sized benefits from music. The rhythm, melody, tempo, and lyrics of music may be harnessed to help them activate focus, boost organizational skills, incentivize desired behaviors, improve ADHD symptoms, and more. Whether it’s Mozart or Metallica, music benefits kids with ADHD, even if they’re not musicians. Here, learn creative activities your family can incorporate into daily life that turn up the volume on music’s healing powers.

We have invited Children's music educator Karen Karana Tse (MA) to share 7 different Benefits of Music for Kids with ADHD.

1. Music improves attention and focus

The temporal and rhythmic properties of music are thought to modulate some symptoms of inattentiveness. Playing, or learning to play an instrument, can also help develop skills needed for sustaining attention, alternating attention, impulse control, and decision-making. One study found that children who studied a musical instrument showed better auditory connectivity in the brain, which is often diminished in ADHD brains.Music lessons also increase your child’s ability to work in a noisy environment, which is useful for coping with distractions.

2. Music reinforces memory

Attaching information to lyrics and melody helps children — with and without ADHD — remember important items. Try teaching phone numbers, addresses, chores, and procedures (like washing hands or tying shoes) to the tune of your child’s favorite songs.

3. Music acts as a study aid

For some students, listening to music while studying works well because it keeps the brain activated, focused, and less prone to distractions. There is no single musical genre that is best for studying – it is entirely individual. Whether the lyrics in your child’s preferred music are appropriate is another discussion, but don’t automatically rule out hip-hop or heavy metal; it might work to focus your child.Encourage your child to explore genres, and to use headphones with comfortable volume levels.

4. Music helps keep track of time

Time blindness is common with ADHD, and music helps build time perception and awareness skills. Rather than have your child do homework or chores to the beat of a timer, try playing a song or timed playlist. It may be easier for your child to keep pace with a favorite soundtrack rather than an unstimulating timer or clock. Music also teaches predictability – a certain point in a song or playlist can act as a marker, letting your child know that it’s time to move to the next step or wrap up.

5. Music boosts energy

A good tune can pump up the brain and body, upping dopamine levels and increasing your child’s motivation to tackle even the least desirable of tasks. As with study music, have your child listen to different genres to see what works best. Ask them how they feel listening to each type of music – Are they more anxious? More in the zone? Perhaps too amped up and energized?If your child has excess energy, music and movement are great ways to channel it. Try enrolling your young child into a developmental music program (such as Music Together, Kindermusik, Musikgarten), which helps build a variety of skills through the experience of music. Older children may benefit from dance classes or other group music experiences.

6. Music promotes calm.

Just as music can boost our energy, it can also calm and soothe us, making it an effective tool for emotional regulation. Again, the choice in music is personal. Some children relax to an audio track of nature or a composition without lyrics. Others feel calm and happy while listening to an upbeat pop song.

7. Music improves self-esteem.

Too many children with ADHD experience low self-esteem. Creating music and learning to play an instrument can build self-confidence and a skill in which they can take pride. It can also teach children about the importance of practice and persistence in the process of crafting something special and enjoyable.Music is also quite normalizing – your child can bond with peers by talking about music, the instruments they play, and their favorite bands. Joining an orchestra or band at school is great for building social skills while pursuing musical interests. As music and movement are joined at the hip, many children benefit from dance, or another movement experience that works with music.If your child wants to learn how to play an instrument, make sure to explore a variety of them – piano, drums, guitar, cello, etc. – to find the one that truly sings.

[childrenfuturemind]

Children Future Mind >> Music

Musical Developmental Milestones In Young Children

July 21st 2021 Emily Claris 11:30

Although we might not have thought of it, children’s linguistic development is related to their musical development. Research shows a direct correlation between the development of children’s speech and their musical/singing ability, with music skills correlating significantly with both phonological awareness and reading development.

While teachers of preschool children may have a sense of the linguistic milestones for children, they are less aware of the musical milestones. Since music and language development have a high correlation in terms of development, it is helpful to know what activities children are developmentally ready for musically, and when are they ready for them. For example, most four- and even five-year-olds are not yet able to play a steady beat on an instrument. Expecting them to will only frustrate both the children and yourself. Karen Karana Tse Children Music Educator will indicates musical developmental ability by age, and will introducing musical skills and material that children are developmentally ready for.

Age

0–1 year old (Infants)

Musical Behaviors

Enjoy hearing:Melodic contour in voice

Being sung to Hearing a variety of styles of music

Appropriate Activities

Being rocked, patted, and stroked to music

Responding to rhythmic play and body touch songs

Bouncing or jumping to music

Experimenting with gestures, clapping, and pointing.

Playing with rattles and bells

Limitations

Cannot use language or sing

Age

1–2 years old (Toddlers)

Musical Behaviors

Are aware of musical sounds

Demand repetition

Delayed response during music time

Appropriate Activities

Create their own made-up songs

Sing simple 1–2 word songs

Enjoy voice inflection games

Enjoy making random sounds on instruments

Improvise their own lyrics to traditional songs

Respond to musical stimuli

Perform rhythmic movement and movement patterns

Clap to music, steady beat

Move and respond to signals and sound and silence games

Limitations

Cannot sing “in tune” but can maintain melodic contour

Age

3-year-olds

Musical Behaviors

Prefer to sing beginning on their own pitch

Increasing ability to match pitches

Sense of musical phrasing

Increasing expressiveness in voice

Find it easier to pat thighs rather than clap

Manipulating objects while creating songs

Repeated songs

Having their own movements/ideas copied by others

Appropriate Activities

Reproduce recognizable songs

Explore musical sounds with their voices and instruments

Random exploration of xylophones, percussion instruments, and voices

Maintain steady beat

Handle mallets and drum beaters

Move spontaneously to music

Respond to sound and silence games

Limitations

Responds to abstract or iconic musical notation:

Pictures

Hand signs

Movement/motions

Age

4–5-year-olds

Musical Behaviors

Able to classify sounds as:

High-low

Loud-soft

Fast-slow

Smooth-disconnected (legato-staccato)

Appropriate Activities

Can reproduce sounds and patterns vocally and with instruments

Able to play simple, repeated instrumental accompaniments to songs and improvise on simple classroom instruments

Improvement in stepping to the beat

5-year-olds can learn simple dance steps

Organize sounds that express a story or accompany a song

Limitations

Require many opportunities to match pitches and order direction of musical sounds in terms of going up, going down, and staying the same

Based on the chart above, answer the following in terms of what age is appropriate for each activity.

1. Analyzing/hearing the different sections of a song.

2. Responding vocally using different tones and inflections.

3. Singing the song “I’m a Nut.”

4. Echoing/responding to short, clapped rhythms.

5. Playing a steady beat on the xylophone or other percussion instrument.

6. Seeing abstract images and performing them either on voice or instruments.

[childrenfuturemind]

Lucy Carter, 8, is too young to get the Covid-19 vaccine and lives in a state that has banned schools from mandating masks.

With just a few weeks until school starts, Jennifer Carter, a mother in Springdale, Arkansas, is agonizing over whether to send her 8-year-old to in-person class this year.

Her daughter Lucy is too young to get the Covid-19 vaccine, and Arkansas is one of a handful of states that have banned schools from mandating masks.

With the contagious delta variant spreading throughout the state, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, Carter is wrestling with whether she should choose virtual learning for Lucy or risk sending her to school.

Lucy would wear a mask, but now that schools can’t enforce face coverings, Carter fears few other kids will do the same.

“If she’s one of only two kids who is wearing a mask, how effective is a mask?” Carter said. “I just feel like they have taken away the only tool they have for the younger kids who can’t get vaccinated.”

As the academic year approaches, a patchwork approach to masks is prompting ire from parents, regardless of which policy their children's schools have chosen.

[childrenfuturemind]

In 2018, a female orca whale known as J35 gave birth to a calf that didn’t live. Now there’s some happy news for J35 – she’s had another calf, and this time it appears to be strong and healthy. Above, the fin of the mother orca, J35, and the calf, J57.

(Source: Photo by Katie Jones, Center for Whale Research.)

Now there’s some happy news for J35 – she’s had another calf, and this time it appears to be strong and healthy. The new orca has been given the label J57. With the birth of J57, there are now 73 orcas in the area.

Scientists report that several other orcas in the area are also pregnant.