Beautiful Music
"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know, " said John Keats in 1819 in his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn.
For our music students, truth & beauty are intertwined
If they are taking lessons voluntarily, it is because they wish to MAKE BEAUTY.
And that is why WE TEACHERS do music, and teach music.
We do music because music is, in some way to us, BEAUTIFUL.
But the darkness is growing
A trend of increasing UGLINESS...
is being thrust upon our children and students.
In a Wall Street Journal article called "Darkness Too Visible", Meghan Cox Gurdon stirred up a hornet's nest by taking book publishers to task for an ever-increasing number of ugly and uglier books, using relevance as an excuse to feed shock and swill to young readers.
She discussed "the increasingly dark current that runs through books classified as YA, for Young Adult—books aimed at readers between 12 and 18 years of age—a subset that has, in the four decades since Young Adult became a distinct category in fiction, become increasingly lurid, grotesque, profane, sexual, and ugly...
"No family," she says, "is obliged to acquiesce when publishers use the vehicle of fundamental free-expression principles to try to bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children's lives." *
Her original article can be found at The WSJ, and a second article describing the backlash and resentment against her first article can be found in a July 2013 article of Imprimus called The Case for Good Taste in Children's Books.
Our musical choices matter
I agree with Ms. Gurdon. We are shaping the tastes of young children with the choices of reading and even musical material we offer them.
Piano method music tends to be a pretty safe field for young ones!
Watch out for popular music
However, the vocal music young singers and guitar players wish to do are frequently age-inappropriate. They are being sexualized too young.
A desire to fortify our children and students against the harshness of life may impel us to feed them a diet of nails and scorpions, so to speak, to steel them against the horrors which they may eventually encounter.
Let them celebrate what is good
Particularly in the world in which we live, where, as Haldir the elf says (in "The Fellowship of the Ring") of the growing darkness of the times,
"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."
They do need to be warned and instructed... but they also need to know that "there lies the dearest freshness deep down things", as poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in "God's Grandeur":
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with
ah! bright wings.
Do your students know that light will overcome the darkness?
Childhood should be a time of wonder, and beauty. Help your students find music that is more than relevant, music that is timeless and BEAUTIFUL.
*The Case for Good Taste in Children's Books, Imprimis July 2013
Dianna:
Your website is a light in the darkness. THANK YOU for all you do in helping to spread the love of music. It matters!
Recent Articles
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Angels We Have Heard on High - Free Christmas Songs Arrangements
Angels We Have Heard on High: children love the fancy "Gloria" chorus, and you can download multiple arrangements for piano, violin, & guitar! -
Gospel Song Jesus Loves Me: Beginner & Easy Piano, Plus Lead Sheets!
Gospel song "Jesus Loves Me" is well-known to many children. Here are easy arrangements to learn the music & each word to Jesus Loves Me, for early piano. -
Easy Piano Sheet Music Swan Lake -Beginners & Intermediate Pianists!
Easy piano sheet music Swan Lake, lovely solos & duets, with lyrics in the beginner arrangements for dreamy students who love imagining. New arrangements! -
The Wellerman Sheet Music: Easy Piano & Lead Sheets!
The Wellerman: Tabs, sheet music & lyrics for piano, guitar, & more! Such a fun, high-energy song to sing & play - learn it fast with letters in the notes! -
Christmas Carol Lyrics Song from the Bible: Free SATB and Guitar Tab
Christmas carol lyrics from the Bible and an old-fashioned carol-like tune combine in this free Christmas song for SATB choir or a solo vocalist with guitar.
Interested in songs from the Bible for your students or church? Check out my other website, SingTheBibleStory.com!
All the first-year material I give my beginner students.
Piano keyboard sheets, scales, chords, note-reading exercises, and over 256 pages of music!
This beautiful song book for piano & voice "Esther, For Such a Time as This", available as a digital download, tells the riveting story of the time when Jews in ancient Persia faced a foe named Haman, and how a brave young queen risked her life to save her people.
A good choice for a singing story-teller, an operatic group, a short theater production, or a class of children!
This book is also available from Amazon as a paperback.
This book is available as a digital download from this site. Visit this page to see some free examples from the book.
It is also available from Amazon as a paperback!
This is the perfect easy start for little pianists.
And when they start reading white-key notes on the staff, this is a fun easy resource to say each week, "Choose a new black-key song at home this week and figure it out to show me next lesson!" They will be spending more time at the piano.
A perfect read aloud storybook
for little boys or girls.
The Adventures of Tonsta highlight the travels of a very young boy with a good heart, who goes about helping folk in trouble.
With a red cap on his head and a sack of tools slung over his shoulder, Tonsta seems to meet people in distress wherever he goes.
Lots of trolls in this book - including one who gives him a Christmas gift!
Ashley:
Thank you so so much for this site!
I'm teaching my little sister and everything up here is absolutely amazing! I will definitely be making a donation as soon as possible! Thank you again! You're wonderful!
Stasi: Because I have such a diverse group of students I spend SO much time making supplemental material and I feel like I have to pick through other websites, to only find one or two useful things.
I am so thankful for the wealth of supplement that you have offered here! And it's all SO user friendly!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!
About the Author
Hi, I'm Dana! (Say that like "Anna".) I'm the owner of Music-for-Music-Teachers.com, and a newer site, SingTheBibleStory.com.
Like some of you, I've been playing the piano since early childhood, and have added a few other instruments along the way, plus an interest in arranging and composing music.
You can find out more about me and the reason for this website at my About Me page.
Recent Articles
-
Angels We Have Heard on High - Free Christmas Songs Arrangements
Angels We Have Heard on High: children love the fancy "Gloria" chorus, and you can download multiple arrangements for piano, violin, & guitar! -
Gospel Song Jesus Loves Me: Beginner & Easy Piano, Plus Lead Sheets!
Gospel song "Jesus Loves Me" is well-known to many children. Here are easy arrangements to learn the music & each word to Jesus Loves Me, for early piano.