Are lessons killing my child’s love of music?
Βy Hattie Garlick
When I was pregnant, I imagined standing at the front door, waving a small boy off to school. He had scruffy hair, scuffed knees, grey shorts and – always – a violin case on his back.
Today, my seven-year-old has the very same hair and grubby knees. But he refuses to pick up the violin case. He had a pathological hatred for the piano lessons we tried. His dreams of playing the drums deteriorated, too, when he realised that packing out stadiums might involve some practice first, and that, in turn, would detract from playtime.
Learning to play an instrument is a rite of passage for middle-class children – as is avoiding practice. Hattie Garlick asks if there’s an easier way
For a while I insisted. We rowed over the piano keys as I begged, bribed and cajoled him to fumble thunderously through Chopsticks. It was miserable. So we stopped. But have I failed him? Do music lessons matter?
Playing an instrument is a rite of passage for most middle-class primary school children. Fail to start early, the orthodoxy states, and you miss the chance of incubating a mini Mozart. Mastering music – quite literally – takes practice, practice, practice.
Strings attached: music lessons can become a musical battleground Credit: JGI/Jamie Grill
But at what cost? Harris Cooper is professor in the Department of Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, North Carolina – and is known as the “homework research guru”. Having analysed around 200 studies, he concluded that homework results in no academic benefit for primary school children. Moreover, it tends to have a negative impact on their attitude towards learning.
Could the same be true of enforced practice? Might I be killing off my son’s love of music as I force him to slowly murder Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik on the piano?
When I ask friends on Facebook for their music memories, my inbox is flooded with stories of childhoods blighted by recorder practice. It may have been 30 years ago, but for many, the pain is still palpable.
“I started recording myself practising playing the violin and then sitting in my bedroom with the door closed and the tape playing to fool my parents,” says Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow.
There is plenty of more solid evidence that overcrowding our children’s schedules with too many activities, however “enriching” and “educational”, is a dangerous game.
Professor Peter Gray is psychology professor emeritus at Boston College. In his book Free to Learn, he points to the dramatic decrease in the amount of free, unstructured time given to children, an upswing in scheduled activities and a rise in depression and anxiety. We are, he claims, crowding out children’s natural curiosity and desire to learn.
And yet… “I’m sad, now, I that can’t read music,” Creasy says. During my own childhood I played, in quick and painful succession: the recorder, the violin and the clarinet. I never persevered with any. But today, unable to read music or pick up an instrument for pleasure and escape, a part of me also regrets those decisions.
The British violinist and artistic director of the Jewish Music Institute, Sophie Solomon, began lessons at three. “I always loved lessons,” she says, “because the Suzuki method was fun and my dad learnt with me.” She didn’t always want to practise, but “by the time I was six, I was good enough to really want to play”.
Today, her own children – aged seven and four – are taking violin lessons too: “And they love it. If you start very young, it’s so natural.” So convinced is she of the benefits of early musical educational that she helped to found a primary school in east London – Hackney New Primary School – where all children must learn a string instrument from the age of six.
Children who undergo musical training have better verbal memory, second language pronunciation accuracy, reading ability and executive functions. Learning to play an instrument as a child may even predict academic performance and IQ in young adulthood Credit: Getty Images
Mozart, of course, was so proficient at the piano and violin by the age of five that he performed in front of royalty. But do you necessarily need to begin at birth to stand a chance of playing professionally?
I quizzed players in the award-winning British chamber orchestra, Aurora. Cheeringly, their percussionist Henry Baldwin and bassoon player Amy Harman did not take their instruments up until the age of 10. Then, says Baldwin: “I probably only practised once or twice a week, for between 30 minutes to an hour. Very lazy, I know…”
Both musicians, however, had tried playing other instruments first, starting at around the age of six.
Indeed, Aurora’s lead violinist Alexandra Wood began playing at three, like Sophie Solomon. Even at this young age, she practised for an hour every week. She always loved playing, she says, “but when I was about 12 I hated practice. I remember my mum saying, ‘Just try one more week’, repeatedly, for about a year!”
Wood’s perseverance paid off, however. As a young teen, she was accepted into the National Youth Orchestra, and found fresh enthusiasm. Today she makes her living playing at some of the world’s best music venues, to rave reviews. What more could a parent want for their child?
Expert view
Robert Cutietta, author of the book ‘Raising Musical Kids: A Guide for Parents’:
“Research suggests we have a window of opportunity when it comes to developing a musical sensibility, and it’s open from birth to the age of around nine. However, people immediately jump to the idea that their child needs to take formal lessons. In fact, that development can take many forms, lessons are just one way to do it.”
Children, Cutietta says, do not need to be practising an orchestral instrument or even learning to read music to reap these rewards. In fact, he is wary of focusing on musical theory or reading music while young.
Appreciation of the sound must come before the study of notes, he says. “A lot of people, me included, think it should be about internalising the sounds and the rhythms at that age,” he explains.
“I advocate more of a folk approach to training.”
Even if you harbour no such ambitions, it seems there are cognitive advantages to early musicianship. According to a study published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience in 2014: “Children who undergo musical training have better verbal memory, second language pronunciation accuracy, reading ability and executive functions. Learning to play an instrument as a child may even predict academic performance and IQ in young adulthood.”
Robert Cutietta, the dean of the USC Thornton School of Music, Los Angeles, advocates exposing children to music at a young age – their musical ability is probably never going to be natural and flowing if they don’t start actively developing it by age nine.
“Dance is a great form of musical training for children,” he says, since it helps children to focus exclusively on the music, internalise its rhythms, patterns, and component parts and respond to it naturally. “It’s about being surrounded, submerged in music in a natural way.”
So for the moment, we are going to pack in the lessons, pack away the books – and dance our way to genius.