I’m a big believer that music education should focus more on giving students the skills to do music rather than merely telling them about it.
The above video was shot on my iPhone this past Thursday morning. It is my eighth-grade musicianship class at Geneva Academy in West Monroe, Louisiana, where I have been teaching music and choir since 2008. Music is not an elective at our school. It also is not pitted against the other fine arts either. Geneva students take music three days a week in the upper school (and 2-3 half-hour lessons in the grammar school as well). In this video, I asked the students to put their music scores down and sing from memory. This is the first and only take. It is not edited or altered in any way. This is not an auditioned group, nor is this a formal choir. I gave these students this piece and several others at the beginning of the semester. We read through it on solfege, rhythm syllables, absolute pitch names, etc. I could tell them all day about the beauty of Mendelssohn’s Elias oratorio. I could highlight that we would not likely have the music of J. S. Bach without the work of Felix Mendelssohn. That won’t have the same effect as tasting and seeing the music of Mendelssohn for themselves.
More than that, the camaraderie and sense of accomplishment of reading through great works of music is very rewarding to the students, not to mention to me as well. It just does not get old, seeing another class pick up the piece and mature in their reading and singing ability year after year.
I share this to hopefully encourage you out there who are not sure how to move the needle of music literacy in your community. These students reaffirm to me that they can do more than we think. For the school administrators out there, hopefully, this video shows that you can take an average group of students and have them sing through the great works of western music culture. They do not have to be in a formal choir. You can train them into reading through the great choir works. And in the process, you’ll have some rewarding returns on that if you will just patiently put in the time.
If you are interested in reading more about music literacy and don’t mind a shameless plug, check out some works I’ve written and been a part of:
BACH to the Future: Fostering Music Literacy Today which is in paperback, Kindle, and Audible formats.
Raise the Song: A Classical Christian Guide to Music Education which is currently only in paperback.
They are by no means exhaustive, but they will fill in the gaps that are obviously left off of this post.
Mendelssohn's "Lift Thine Eyes"