Josef Stallings

Homeschooling 101: Music Appreciation

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the fourth installment in a series of primers for the new homeschooling family. My name is Josef Stallings, and my wife Anne and I have been homeschooling our 8 children for over 13 years. For more information on our background, please see the first primer in this series here.  

This fourth primer deals with the teaching of music appreciation in the homeschool setting.

MUSIC APPRECIATION
I’m not sure when the idea of a music appreciation class originated, but it must have been a long time ago. I can’t remember any time when people did not appreciate music. It’s the diverse cultures expressed through music that people find it difficult to appreciate.
 
In a nutshell, music appreciation is teaching what to listen for in music, and how to understand different types of music. Most music appreciation classes focus on learning about classical music, and folk music from other cultures.
 
The good news is that if you want to teach your kids about classical music, you have only a very short period that needs to be covered. The basic eras of music that we still have available to us today are these:
 
  1. Medieval (476-1400)
  2. Renaissance (1400-1600)
  3. Baroque (1600-1760)
  4. Classical (1730-1820)
  5. Romantic (1815-1910)
  6. 20th century
  7. 21st century
The only one that matters here is the Classical era, which lasted from 1730 through 1820. Composers during this era include Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, Johann Stamitz, Joseph Haydn, Johan Christian Bach, Antonio Salieri, Muzio Clementi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Luigi Boccherini. Beethoven and Schubert cannot be said to be Classical era composers, as they were involved too much in the Romantic era, which makes their music have a cheap dime-store quality.
 
After spending hours of our time trying to find anything good from Muzio Clementi, Antonio Sallieri, and the rest, we stumbled on the fact that Wolfgang Mozart wrote over 600 pieces, ranging from operas to symphonies to piano pieces, and all of them are really good. So, we just decided to get the entire Mozart collection, which includes everything that Mozart wrote, contained on 170 CDs. This set us back about $700. The actual cost of the collection was around $400, but we put it on our credit card, and made minimum payments (something I don’t recommend).
 
After listening to about 50 pieces by Mozart, the kids started using the CDs as frisbees, and none of them work any more. So much for that.
 
MUSIC APPRECIATION – SECOND ATTEMPT
It occurred to my wife, Anne, that she could get the kids exposed to a lot of different music by bringing them to restaurants around the city. Once a week, Anne brought the kids to a different restaurant, and bought a cup of coffee. The kids were asked to listen to the music playing at the restaurant, and write something about it.
 
It turns out that every restaurant that they visited was playing the same pop music rotation from the 80’s. Anne said that if she had known that she was going to be listening to the same David Bowie songs 30 years later, she never would have bought the albums back then. The kids were very bored.
 
MUSIC APPRECIATION – THIRD ATTEMPT
After talking with the kids, Anne discovered that they already had an appreciation for a wide range of music. That is, each kid seemed to like something different:
 
  • Heinrich (17): Italian opera, and works by American composer John Adams (especially Transmigration of Souls, Nixon in China, and Doctor Atomic)
  • Amilda (15): Exclusively anything by Taylor Swift
  • Stepheno (13): Pink Floyd, Neil Young, and Blue Oyster Cult
  • Ilsidore (11): Tiny Tim, Spike Jones, and Stan Freberg
  • Myacolpa (9): Woodie Guthrie, Pete Seeger, The New Christie Minstrels, and Lawrence Welk
  • Mike (7): 80’s pop music sung in Japanese
  • Finalina (5): Barney and Miles Davis
  • Stevie (3) : Anything by Mozart
With this mix of music, it became easy to just give each kid a day when their music would be played for the entire school day, and force the other kids to listen to that music. This caused lots of fights among the kids, as they really couldn’t stand each other’s preferences in music. 
 
So, Anne decided to just spend the school day in silence, without music.
 
Now, none of the kids can stand the silence, and they all appreciate music. Problem solved!
 
SUMMARY
Music appreciation is easy; cultural appreciation is not. It is easy to love music; it is hard to love each other. Trust me, with eight kids, if we get out of this alive, it’ll be a miracle. Next month, when I go back home for my twice-yearly visit from Diego Garcia, I’ll have to work up a bit of empathy for Anne on this one. I’d like to get my hands on some of those Mozard CDs that we nearly went broke buying, and see if any of them still work. Maybe Stevie and I can enjoy them together.
 
As always, I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts about this article, and our approach to homeschooling. Please leave any comments or suggestions that you have found useful in your own homeschooling experience. 
LTC Bob Smith, if you are reading this, I could really use your help with the typing; it took me all day to get this article out. I’ll start paying you, for real this time.

Our next article will cover teaching science in a homeschool setting.

Until next time,
 
Josef
 
(Note from Anne: Start working on the empathy, Buddy. You’re teaching for the whole week when you get back here. I love you!)