Modern >(new research) concert instrumentalists, starting as children >now learn >their instrument by ear for the first few years, when they have learnt >the instrument and some of its' possibilities, they are introduced to >the dots and in so doing create a happy medium and a happy player.
This is unfortunately not the approach adopted by the Luxembourg conservatoires (based on the French system), where kids and adults alike are obliged to do two years of "solfège" (music theory) before they can touch an instrument. An exception introduced around the mid 90s (too late for my older children but in time for the youngest) is for violin, where the kids can learn to read the dots in parallel to learning the instrument). This is what my older kids did too, but I had to send them to a private teacher for this to be possible. "Solfège" is a horribly abstract approach to music. My older kids could read music perfectly well before I transferred them from private teachers to the Conservatoire, but they still had difficulties with the compulsory "solfège". "Wat soll dat????" (= What the hell is all this blahblahblah about?). Bit off-topic I suppose. Maat et gudd mais net ze dacks! c To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
