Children's Choir

What is the point of a children's choir? It sounds flippant, but I actually believe it to be a hugely important question.

I had the opportunity over the summer to take a two-week long class at St. Thomas University on the Orff Schulwerk approach to music education. The program's information is here, and you can find more information about Orff-based music education here. It was a great program - exhausting, too.

Orff is a fairly loose approach to music education; music-reading skills are not overtly taught, nor is performance a big deal. Rather, children are encouraged to experiment and make their own music. Near the end of the class, my fellow students started to ask about endgoals - for example, at what grade level should all of your students be able to clap a rhythm of half- and quarter-notes? So our teacher shared a comprehensive chart that worked through each grade (1-5) and different parts of musicianship (Rhythm, Melody, Harmony, Form/Expression). So for example, our teacher expected that by May, all of her second graders should understand eighth notes through whole notes, be able to sing So, Mi, Re, Do melodic patterns, and be able to play a 2-part canon on the xylophones.

I was intrigued by this. Should I make some goals for my children's choirs? If I did, what would they be? Because my choirs consist of a fairly wide range of ages, I cannot create a chart for each grade level like our teacher did. How to teach basics when I have one child who is a Suzuki recorder prodigy, and other children who have never done anything musical in their lives?

Even more fundamentally, what is the final goal of a children's choir? The purpose of an adult choir seems obvious to me: to lead, teach, encourage, and enhance congregational worship. I'm not sure that this purpose applies to children's choirs. As I thought about it, I realized that I actually have several goals for my children's choir (the older one, grades 3-8)

• Learn basic music-readings skills - including sight-singing
• Learn texts worth memorizing
• Learn music worth learning
• Lead worship
• Learn about the traditions of the church and the meanings and stories of the church seasons
• Have positive, quality musical experiences

Back to my Orff class. One of our teachers works at a private elementary school where she (as the music teacher) sees her kids everyday. That's incredible. People asked her, "Do you have a lot of kids that go on to be music majors?" Her answer was unexpected: "No. We have a lot of kids that go on to be good people." All the music educators with me cheered. In a room surrounded by teachers, I got to thinking: a history teacher's job is not necessarily to create new historians, but to form people who understand history and will improve the world through their understanding. An English teacher's job is not necessarily to raise up the next Shakespeare, but to form people who are able to write well and appreciate literature. Is not a music teacher's job to create, if not musicians, then at least people who understand and appreciate music? And what about church musicians, when engaged in their teaching role?

• Is our goal, like Christian Youth Directors, to create well-developed young Christians?
• Is our goal, like music teachers, to create young people who appreciate music?

In typical Lutheran fashion, I have to answer "both".

In a later post, I'll talk about how I try to carry out this dual goal.