Wow! You guys had so many interesting things to say about Jennifer's family visit to the art museum. Some of you may know that I don't have any kids to take to events, but being aroung pre-schoolers on a regular basis gives me some experience with this!
Jennifer mentioned needs for museums (and, really, the symphony is a museum as well) to address people with all the senses (or modes of learning, if you will), while Chris defended the "quiet reverie" that people often adopt in a museum and Marcia suggested ways to make learning museum rules fun.
Symphonies and other music entities have adopted various ways of appealing to (and educating) family audiences, with kids' and family concerts featuring works such as Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker along with jeans and popcorn. Check out this 1946 Disney cartoon version of Peter and the Wolf. It's one of my favorite "children's" pieces!
Even as long ago as 1946, orchestras were trying to reach out to younger audiences. I like Fantasia, too. When I was in middle school, my school orchestra went on a field trip to see Fantasia 2000 in theaters. So far, I've mostly been talking about the ways that orchestras and composers change themselves to make their product more accessible to children (like "baby food") with jeans, popcorn, and cartoon characters.
Why can't you take your family to a "serious" orchestra concert, say, a Mahler performance? Or Stravinsky's Rite of Spring? As Jennifer and Chris noted, it comes down to our social conditioning: children traditionally "don't belong" in these settings, and orchestras are doing very little to make Mahler and Stravinsky fun for families.
My pre-schoolers love Stravinsky. When we listen to Rite of Spring during listening time, I set the scene and tell them the "story." (I just tell them it's a really fast dance - I leave out the part where the dancer dies at the end.) They LOVE screaming as loud as possible and dancing as fast as they can.
There are so many options out there for orchestras to make "real" classical music fun for families! Maybe our idea that kids will only like music that's been de-thorned and pre-packaged for them is contributing to the struggling classical music industry. It's definitely time to shake things up!
How would you shake up social norms of non-involvement in order to make classical music fun for families? Screaming and dancing to Rite of Spring? Clapping along with Terry Riley's In C?
We want to know!
Jennifer mentioned needs for museums (and, really, the symphony is a museum as well) to address people with all the senses (or modes of learning, if you will), while Chris defended the "quiet reverie" that people often adopt in a museum and Marcia suggested ways to make learning museum rules fun.
Symphonies and other music entities have adopted various ways of appealing to (and educating) family audiences, with kids' and family concerts featuring works such as Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker along with jeans and popcorn. Check out this 1946 Disney cartoon version of Peter and the Wolf. It's one of my favorite "children's" pieces!
Even as long ago as 1946, orchestras were trying to reach out to younger audiences. I like Fantasia, too. When I was in middle school, my school orchestra went on a field trip to see Fantasia 2000 in theaters. So far, I've mostly been talking about the ways that orchestras and composers change themselves to make their product more accessible to children (like "baby food") with jeans, popcorn, and cartoon characters.
Why can't you take your family to a "serious" orchestra concert, say, a Mahler performance? Or Stravinsky's Rite of Spring? As Jennifer and Chris noted, it comes down to our social conditioning: children traditionally "don't belong" in these settings, and orchestras are doing very little to make Mahler and Stravinsky fun for families.
My pre-schoolers love Stravinsky. When we listen to Rite of Spring during listening time, I set the scene and tell them the "story." (I just tell them it's a really fast dance - I leave out the part where the dancer dies at the end.) They LOVE screaming as loud as possible and dancing as fast as they can.
There are so many options out there for orchestras to make "real" classical music fun for families! Maybe our idea that kids will only like music that's been de-thorned and pre-packaged for them is contributing to the struggling classical music industry. It's definitely time to shake things up!
How would you shake up social norms of non-involvement in order to make classical music fun for families? Screaming and dancing to Rite of Spring? Clapping along with Terry Riley's In C?
We want to know!
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