Klarinet Archive - Posting 000305.txt from 1997/08
From: Karl Krelove <kkrelove@-----.com>
Subj: Re: How young is too young?
Date: Sat, 9 Aug 1997 21:18:10 -0400
At 07:49 PM 8/9/97 -0400, Jonathan Cohler wrote:
>There seems to be a lot of misinformation about this subject floating
>around the list. This is not really a matter of opinion, but one of
>empirical fact. There is no question that starting students younger=20
is
>better. They should be started as young as is physically possible for
best
>average results.
>
>Again, these differences matter not at all to a beginner who is just
>learning how to hold, blow, finger and read music.
>
>What does matter is getting musicians started as young as is=20
physically
>possible when their learning potential is greatest. That's why
violinists
>and pianists start at age two.
>
>The younger the better. No question about it. It has been proven over
and
>over again.
>
I've been watching this discussion without so far participating, and I
can't say for certain I've read every post. Since the discussion has
moved somewhat far away from the original question, which as I remember
concerned whether or not to begin a specific 7 year old with clarinet
study, I want to throw in one general <italic>caveat</italic> I haven't
seen mentioned in the posts I've read.=20
The discussion I've seen has all centered around the age at which a
child can begin to meet the physical and, perhaps, attitudinal demands of
learning to play a clarinet. Be careful, though, about how young you
expect a child to learn the mechanics of music reading. Very young
children (pre-school and sometimes as old as 7 or 8) have a good deal of
trouble handling the demands - especially the rhythmic ones - of standard
notation. Most of the systems that have been developed for use in
teaching very young children do not depend on the child's learning to
read standard notation at the beginning. Before anyone objects with his
or her anecdotal evidence that some specific child he knew could read
music perfectly by the time he could walk, I am talking about
generalities, since the discussion has left the specific instance that
started it. Small children generally don't relate to symbols as we do or
even as most 9 or 10 year olds do. Rhythmic notation is essentially
mathematically based and even many of my fourth and fifth grade kids have
trouble with the relationships without some kind of mnemonic (syllable)
system to mediate for them. Suzuki-taught children learn totally by rote
until they are old enough for the notation to mean something to them (by
which time many of them play technically so far beyond what they can read
that they resist reading notation, regarding it as an impediment). The
age at which the notation begins to mean the same thing to a child that
it does to us is different for each child. My concern with starting a
normally talented, interested young child who has not already shown
himself in some other way to be the next Mozart or Bernstein is that the
teacher needs to be very careful how he presents the musical material. To
start with a standard method book or other notation-driven approach may
cause considerable discouragement because the reading task may honestly
not be possible for the specific child at her specific stage of
"cognitive development." In short, if you feel that a five year old can
learn to play the clarinet by using a smaller instrument, maybe you're
right. But you need to be very careful not to expect the impossible
cognitively, or you may kill forever an interest that might otherwise
become a life-long love.
Just a different direction for an already very extended thread.
Karl Krelove
"Time is the best teacher; unfortunately, it kills all its students!"=20
