Ten Pieces

I've finally seen the BBCs Ten Pieces film.

Finally, because it was a project I was very interested in. It promised that it would inspire children to get creative with music. I tried to book tickets to take a class to see it at the cinema, even though our nearest cinema is a bus ride away, making it cost more than the school budget can afford, but  all the performances were full. I asked if the BBC were able to send me a DVD (which I would be happy to share with the other schools in my cinema-less town). The reply came that our details would be put on a list but we should be warned that demand was very high - a DVD never arrived. So, now I have finally seen it and I'm a bit disappointed.

As a music teacher, I should be welcoming anything that is engaging children in music and it makes me sad to think that I'm not thrilled with this film. The problem is that I don't think it is going to inspire children to get creative with music and it got a bit lost. It didn't excite me and I like most of the ten pieces.

Watching it has brought me back to my original question I had when the project first started. Why do children need to listen to these particular 10 pieces? There was a lot of debate in the Classical music world at the beginning of the project about which ten pieces should be chosen. Every famous classical musician had their own list and there were letters to the Times.

http://www.classicfm.com/artists/nicola-benedetti/news/childrens-music-controversy/
I also have to question why classical music?  Why not a great song, or a military march, or a rap, or a rock anthem?

There is this middle class idea that listening to classical music is good for you; that it is somehow improving. Mozart makes you smarter; Dr Rauscher proved it but what about Schonberg? I'm convinced that there is a connection with heart rate and pulse of the music with psychological stuff but it's much more complicated than 'classical music good - everything else bad' There is also a belief that children aren't listening to classical music, which is just so patronising. I'm willing to bet that children are exposed to more classical music than their parents (unless their parents are nerds like me).  There is classical music in assembly, creative writing lessons, the background of films and computer games, never mind music lessons.

It's not really surprising that Ten Pieces was disappointing as it had a lot to live up to.  Disney knew what he was doing and there is nothing better than Fantasia to introduce children to amazing music coupled with beautiful images.  I was hoping for something similar from the BBC film.  Instead we got bouncy presenters talking over the beginning of each piece telling us what we should think of it.

The film started with the presenter telling us that he would ask us which was our favourite piece at the end. Somehow, that question didn't make the final edit. 

When they said, "there are no right or wrong answers to how a piece of music might feel,"  they immediately went on to tell us how we should feel. 

Whatever happened to letting children enjoy stuff? Put great music in the background of a cartoon they love and they will have an emotional connection to that piece for their whole life. Get them to act out what they think is happening in a piece of classical music and it will be fun. Draw pictures of the music, write stories about it, play it, sing it, get involved with it but don't make it something you 'have' to do or must 'understand' to be smart.

It's called playing music for a reason. Let's start playing with music again and take some of the anxiety out of it.