At 2:56 PM -0400 9/17/11, David W. Fenton wrote: >On 16 Sep 2011 at 23:56, John Howell wrote: > >> By rights we should require good sightreading as >> a prerequisite before we accepted any student as >> a college music major, but if we actually did >> that we wouldn't have any voice majors at all >> (except the smart ones, many of whom started >> taking piano at around the age of 7!!). > >You seem to be dancing around the problem -- someone who decides to >pursue the study of singing probably doesn't know that they want to >do that until they are 17 or 18 years old, precisely because the body >and the voice don't mature soon enough for them to realize they have >an instrument worth training. If they haven't already had solid >training on a musical instrument, they'll land in college as a bare >novice, with little or none of the musical rudiments in place that >you'd expect from a 12-year-old pianist, for instance. > >It's the nature of the instrument, and there's not much can be done >about it, seems to me.
As a practical matter you're correct. But my point is that music should be taught as rigorously in elementary schools as any other subject, and as rigorously as it is in the Kodály programs in Hungary. Where we may differ is my firm belief that EVERY kid has "an instrument worth training," and should be singing throughout elementary school, not just the few that are identified as "gifted" or "talented," and that without that entirely reasonable early training they are so far behind that they may never catch up with the instrumentalists who HAVE had rigorous training in private lessons (because their parents could afford them), and thus may never have the opportunity to develop the talent they do have. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music School of Performing Arts & Cinema College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences 290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön." (Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
