FOUR GENERATIONS OF MUSIC MEMORY

When Mollie Tower-Gregory got the idea for a Music Memory Contest in Texas elementary schools in 1977, encouraged by her father’s elementary school music experiences, she never dreamed that it would one day involve thousands of students and spread across the country. The Music Memory program now encompasses thousands of students and actively engages not only her, but also her daughter and granddaughter who are part of a dedicated team of Texas music teachers who develop outstanding music education resources to support the interscholastic music listening and appreciation program for Grades 3 – 6. The following article. reprinted by permission, tells the personal and family story behind the Music Memory tradition.

Mollie Tower-Gregory, founder of Texas UIL Music Memory

Texas Music Memory contest: a 4-generation family commitment!
Mollie Tower-Gregory (middle) with granddaughter Christina Tannert (left) and daughter Debbie Tannert (right), and father Malcolm Tower (below)

Malcolm Tower, father of Mollie Tower-Gregory, remembered “the lifelong gift of music” he received from  the 1920′s Music Memory contests in his Austin elementary school. When Mollie became Elementary Music Coordinator in Austin ISD in 1977, her father shared his life-changing elementary school experience of music, and inspired her to resurrect and reinvent the long-forgotten Music Memory program, which now serves thousands of elementary students in Texas and other states.

Baker Elementary Music Memory students proudly hold the Austin ISD Music Memory Trophy, 1923

Music Memory and Mollie Gregory-Tower    

Written by Margaret J. Barker (M.A. English ’01), originally published on TxTell: a website that shares personal stories behind the accomplishments of University of Texas at Austin family members, past and present.  

The students file into the hall wearing t-shirts in their school colors. They huddle in teams and face off against opponents from around the city. “You’re going down this year, Bryker Woods!” challenges someone from Lee Elementary. It’s the annual citywide finals and the competition is fierce, the rivalries intense.

“Parents, please clear the floor and move to the balcony area,” an official voice announces over the P.A. system. “We’re ready to begin.”

Basketball, baseball, badminton?

No. Beethoven, Brahms, Bach.

This is the Music Memory final competition of the year, and all-star teams from 40 elementary schools are poised to listen to the orchestra on stage and write down their answers. Is that movement from Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5? Could that possibly be a rock version of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”? Who wrote the “William Tell Overture”?

When University of Texas graduate Mollie Gregory-Tower revived the Music Memory program in the Austin Independent School District in the late 1970s, she had no idea that the program would become so popular and spread to 10 states and thousands of schools nationwide.

Music Memory

When Mollie Gregory-Tower (B.Mus ’67, M.Ed ’79) assumed the role of Elementary Music Coordinator for the Austin [Texas] Independent School District in 1977, little did she know that one of her first requests for a change in the elementary school music curriculum would come from her own father. Malcolm Gregory (BBA ’32), then 66 years old, had an impassioned suggestion for her. He told her the story of a program he had enjoyed as a child, which had “changed his life.”

In 1922 and 1923, Gregory had participated in Music Memory, a school course that had given him the “lifelong gift of music.” Gregory-Tower was surprised; she had never heard her father speak of the program. He explained how it had taught him to appreciate classical music by introducing him to great pieces of music literature, and that he still recalled the melodies more than 50 years after he had first learned them. Gregory-Tower asked her father which works he had studied, and three days later he came back with a list of 19 pieces that he had studied in the 5th and 6th grades–recalled, of course, from memory. Mollie Gregory-Tower was impressed. She promised her father that she would restart the Music Memory program.

The youngest of seven children, Malcolm Gregory was just three years old when his family moved to Austin in 1914. He attended old Wooldridge Elementary School near UT, and through the relatively new Music Memory program he began to appreciate classical music.

“My father had an incredible music teacher,” Gregory-Tower recalls, “Katherine Cook. They named a school after her,” she says, referring to what is now Cook Elementary. “My father’s family didn’t have a lot of money. They were too poor to afford a record player or the records which Dad needed to listen to, but Miss Cook let the students listen at her house.”

Many of the students in her father’s Music Memory class would gather at Cook’s house after church on Sundays. They would sit politely on her front porch, and she would point her Victrola out the open front window so that her students could practice listening to the Music Memory selections for free.

Gregory was so taken by the beautiful music that he won the “Gold Pin” in both 1922 and 1923, a special award contributed by Austin businessmen for the Music Memory students who earned perfect scores on their listening tests.

Gregory went on to earn a full tuition Eagle Scout scholarship at The University of Texas, and though he majored in business, he retained his appreciation of classical music, attending symphony, concert, and opera performances whenever he could. “They sometimes had to travel great distances to hear opera performances,” says Gregory-Tower fondly, who inherited her father’s love of music. She graduated from UT Austin in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in music education and earned a master’s degree in educational administration in 1979.

Gregory-Tower took less than two years after her father’s request to establish Austin’s new Music Memory program. Music Memory had originally been sponsored in 1918 by the Music Supervisors Association (now NAfME) and was a countrywide competition in the 1920s and 1930s. The original program in Austin, written by a UT music professor, was sponsored by The University and eventually by the University Interscholastic League (UIL) throughout the state.

However, for reasons perhaps related to the wartime recession, the nationwide Music Memory program died out in the 1940s. The first year that Gregory-Tower resurrected the program (1979-80) in Austin, she could only find six music teachers who would volunteer to teach the new listening program in their schools. But Music Memory was such a success that the UIL board immediately reinstated the program statewide in 1981. The program quickly spread to 40 schools in Austin, and then to many hundreds of schools around the state. This too was a phenomenal triumph. The program won the Texas Arts Award in 1981, a rare feat for a program so new.

Soon, Mollie Gregory-Tower’s Music Memory program began to gain recognition outside the Lone Star state. In 1987, the American School Board Journal and the Executive Educator sponsored a contest to find “100 Winning Curriculum Ideas in the United States.” Music Memory gained national recognition as the winner of the award for the “Most Creative and Replicable Program.”

The Music Memory curriculum, a full-year program, is designed to prepare the students for the end-of-year testing and enables them to gain a great familiarity with 16 classical pieces. “We always have something by Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven,” says Gregory-Tower, “but we also make sure to have something written by female composers and other recognized composers from every major historical period.”

As a result, the students listen to, and can recognize, selected renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, and contemporary pieces, including jazz standards, opera selections, and even some Broadway songs. They hear symphonies played by large orchestras, vocal duets, solos for various instruments, and everything in between. For many students, exposure to historic musical periods gives them a strong background for expanding their current musical tastes.

Gregory-Tower emphasizes that the students are not simply practicing listening skills in the Music Memory classroom. The children also develop attention and concentration skills, the same skills needed in any academic environment. In addition, students often realize that “classical” music is not trapped in the past. “It is any music of high quality,” Gregory-Tower says.

The students begin to recognize their beloved melodies in T.V. shows and commercials, in films, in video games, or “somewhere in the background” of their daily lives. Gregory-Tower knows of many former Music Memory students who–10, 20, 50 years later–are still excited to recall and name pieces they listened to in elementary school, whenever they happen to hear them again.

The approach to teaching listening has evolved somewhat since Malcolm Gregory’s days of “sitting quietly and politely with his hands folded in his lap,” Gregory-Tower says. “They were expected to simply sit silently while listening, but now we have learned how to address all the learning modalities.”

When students are first introduced to a piece, they are guided through the listening with the help of a “listening map,” a teaching tool developed by Gregory-Tower and several other Austin music teachers to chart the progression of a piece.

The “map” is color-coded to show the form and pictures featured instruments and dominant melodies so that the students can follow along visually and begin to organize what they are hearing.

The idea has caught the attention of many other music lovers. Coordinators of classical radio stations, like KMFA, an Austin classical music station, have been charmed by children’s call-in requests for symphonies and other classical works, and they now regularly play the Music Memory pieces several times a week so that the students can practice listening. The stations offer augmented programs as well, such as “Music in Mind” and “Mind Your Music” to enhance their young listeners’ practice.

After a full year of study in their music classes, the students (grades 3 through 6) take a classroom listening test. About 75% of them earn perfect scores, which qualifies them for the school-wide test. The school-wide test is more difficult because it relies on remembering second themes and interludes. Students who do well on the school-wide test form six-member Music Memory teams, which compete against other schools in the district competition. In the contest, listeners must identify the composer and the title of the work based on hearing short sections of the pieces, which are performed for them, in some cases, by professional musicians.

Until recently, the Austin ISD competitions took place in UT’s Bass Concert Hall (Performing Arts Center) with the Austin Civic Orchestra playing the selections. “Hearing it played live is unlike anything else,” Gregory-Gregory-Tower says. “They’ve been listening to it on the tapes and CDs and on the radio all year. It’s an educational and enlightening experience for them to hear it performed live.”

In recent years, the contest has been conducted from audio tapes, but Gregory-Tower hopes it will return to a live format soon.

Today, Music Memory has spread throughout ten states: Texas, Georgia, Indiana, South Dakota, Connecticut, New Jersey, Florida, Nebraska, California, and New York. Tower observes, “The program can be started wherever there is interest.”

The program in New York City began when Arthur J. Lohman, a New Yorker, heard his visiting grandson talk excitedly about his involvement in Music Memory back in Austin. The grandfather immediately called up Mollie Tower. “Are you the Music Memory lady?” he asked her. “I want to get that program started in New York City.”

Two years later, in 2000, Gregory-Tower found herself on the stage in Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, handing out the awards at the first New York City Music Memory Contest, performed by the Riverside Symphony.

“You have been given a great gift,” she told the student contestants. Her father would have been proud.

Written by Margaret J. Barker

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Music Memory continues to grow and inspire, and Mollie Gregory-Tower hopes that wherever it takes root, it will do for students what it did for her father–instill in them a lifelong love for classical music.

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Today’s Texas UIL Music Memory Program

The Music Memory Program provides elementary students in grades 3-6 with exposure to, and a deep understanding and appreciation of, the world’s greatest music. While Music Memory is a nationally available program, Dallas is unique in the country in that every elementary school in the district participates in the program at some level, providing intensive study of some of the world’s greatest music to over 12,000 students.  Additionally, students from the Arts Magnet High School perform along side members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for the culminating joint performance/competition.  DSO Director of Education, Jamie Allen, conducts. Honorary judges for the competition often include local celebrities and/or DSO board members.

Click here to find out how your students can participate in the Music Memory Program and Annual Contest, and/or enjoy the incredible yearly music appreciation curriculum resources. Get 5% discount on your 2013-14 Music Memory resources with Code MM1314 (through June 15, 2013). Order your 2013-14 Music Memory resources here!

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Free Music Memory Workshop May 4th at Music in Motion – Plano, TX

Hear Texas UIL Music Memory co-authors Mollie Tower, her daughter Debbie Tannert, and Kay Greenhaw present a FREE workshop at Music in Motion on May 4, 2013.

FREE MUSIC WORKSHOP: May 4, 10 am MUSIC MEMORY: Active Listening & Interactive Learning in the Music Classroom. Texas UIL Music Memory authors Mollie Tower, Debbie Tannert, and Kay Greenhaw, share multimedia curriculum, annimated listening maps, & IWB activities & games.

Click here for details.

Beatles’ guitarist George Harrison died on Nov. 29, 2001. His song “Taxman” should be the official song of the tax-hungry US Congress. Enjoy the music, even as we fall off the fiscal cliff.

Let me tell you how it will be
There’s one for you, nineteen for me
‘Cause I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman

Should five per cent appear too small
Be thankful I don’t take it all
‘Cause I’m the taxman, yeah I’m the taxman

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.

Don’t ask me what I want it for
If you don’t want to pay some more
‘Cause I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman

Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
‘Cause I’m the taxman, yeah, I’m the taxman
And you’re working for no one but me.

Born: Nov. 23, 1221, Toledo, Spain
Died: April 4, 1284, Seville, Spain

Alfonso X, King of Castille, Leon, and Galicia, was appropriately nicknamed “El Sabio” (the Wise). His 32-year reign in Spain was a time of artistic and intellectual advances, in an atmosphere of religious tolerance and cooperation. Here are a four reasons why this wise King of Medieval Spain was a Renaissance man ahead of his time:

1. As a poet and musician, Alfonso contributed to the poetry, music, notation, and codification of the beautiful Cantigas de Santa Maria (“Canticles of Holy Mary”). No minor achievement, this was one of the largest collections of monophonic solo songs of the Middle Ages. 430 poems, written in the lyrical language of Galician-Portuguese, were notated with music, encompassing elements of secular as well as religious music. The Cantigas included the miracles of Mary, hymns, folklore, and Marian festivities, which helped humanize the Holy Mother and engender a moral code of ethics.

Hear Alfonso’s Cantiga “Porque Trobar”:

2. As an intellectual, Alfonso established Castilian as the vernacular language of learning, replacing Latin. A shared language contributed to scientific and cultural advances during his reign, where Christian, Jewish, and Islamic scholars cooperated in an atmosphere of religious tolerance.

3. As a scientist, Alfonso encouraged astronomy. He established the Toledo School of Translators to translate the latest works of Islamic  astronomy, which led to the creation of the Alphonsine Table of astronomical data. His love of astronomy and discovery were immortalized when a crater on the moon was named for him.

4. As a lawgiver, Alfonso was the author of the Royal Code of laws, Europe’s most advanced code of laws at that time, and was the originator of Spanish jurisprudence. For these achievements, he is honored as one of history’s 23 Lawgivers who are honored with marble medallions in the U.S. House of Representatives.

5. As a lover of games, he had The Book of Games translated from Arabic into Castilian. He also wrote one of the first Western treatises on the game of Chess.

Born Nov. 28, 1632 in Florence, Italy
Died March 22, 1687 in Paris, France

Italian Composer Conquers (and scandalizes) Versailles

Italian-born miller’s son of limited education and musical training, Lully rose to become master of French Baroque music and the favorite court composer of King Louis XIV. He endeared himself to the French public as well, with his acclaimed operas and his theater music for the popular comedies of Moliere. Despite repeated licentious scandals and dismissals, Lully always returned to Versailles and a forgiving patron in the Sun King.

Death by Conducting

He was the first composer to suffer Death by Conducting. His untimely and ironic demise resulted after rehearsing his Te Deum with less-than-satisfactory musicians. While pounding the floor with a stick (forerunner of the baton) to keep the orchestra together, he fatally stabbed his toe. The self-administered wound soon became infected and gangrenous. So he soon died, perhaps a sign that God too was displeased with his Te Deum.

Enjoy Lully’s exuberant but fatal Te Deum:

Born Oct. 1, 1865 in Paris, France Died May 17, 1935 in Paris, France After attending the Paris Conservatory, Paul Dukas became a music critic and orchestrator. As a composer, he was a perfectionist and destroyed much more than he ever published. Among his few surviving works, the most famous  was The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1897), a programmatic orchestral work widely introduced to the world in 1940 when  Mickey Mouse portrayed the Sorcerer in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

Among other works are an opera, Ariadne and Bluebeard, a ballet Le Peri, and Symphony in C. As a teacher of composition at the Ecole Normale de Musique, Paul Dukas helped shape a new generation of composers, with a roster of famous students that included  Olivier Messiaen, Manuel Ponce, Carlos Chavez, Joaquin Rodrigo, and Xian Xinghai.

See Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice from Disney’s Fantasia. What a shame Dukas died 5 years before Mickey immortalized his imaginative symphonic poem, which is now  a musical classic for children around the world.

Recommended CD for kids: Hear the music, along with the narrated story.  Also discover the history of this ancient story, learn about percussion instruments and play puzzle games in the guide. 41 min. CD

2012–13 Live in HD Schedule

Enjoy another spectacular season of the Metropolitan Opera in movie theaters around the world.

Find a movie theater near you.

Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore–New Production

October 13, 2012, 12:55 pm ET

U.S. Encore: Wednesday, November 7, 2012 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encores: Saturday, November 17, 2012 at 12:00 pm local time
Monday, November 19, 2012 at 6:30 pm local time

Anna Netrebko and Matthew Polenzani star in Bartlett Sher’s new production of one of the greatest comic gems in opera, as the fickle Adina and her besotted Nemorino. Mariusz Kwiecien is the blustery sergeant Belcore and Ambrogio Maestri is Dulcamara, the loveable quack and dispenser of the elixir. Maurizio Benini conducts.

Approximate runtime: 3:02

Verdi’s Otello

October 27, 2012, 12:55 pm ET

U.S. Encore: Wednesday, November 14, 2012 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encores: Saturday, November 24, 2012 at 12:00 pm local time
Monday, December 3, 2012 at 6:30 pm local time

Verdi’s Shakespearean masterpiece returns to the Met with Johan Botha in the title role opposite the acclaimed Desdemona of star soprano Renée Fleming. Semyon Bychkov conducts.

Approximate runtime: 3:27

Adès’s The Tempest—Met Premiere

November 10, 2012, 12:55 pm ET

U.S. Encore: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encore: Saturday, January 12, 2013 at 12:00 pm local time

Composer Thomas Adès conducts the Metropolitan Opera premiere of his own work, with baritone Simon Keenlyside starring as Prospero. Director Robert Lepage recreates the interior of 18th-century La Scala in this inventive staging.

Approximate runtime: 3:00

Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito

December 1, 2012, 12:55 pm ET

U.S. Encore: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encores: Monday, January 21, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time
Saturday, January 26, 2013 at 12:00 pm local time

The virtuosic El?na Garan?a sings Sesto in Mozart’s drama set in ancient Rome. Giuseppe Filianoti is the noble Tito and Barbara Frittoli is Vitellia, in this handsome revival of one of the composer’s final masterpieces. Harry Bicket conducts.

Appoximate runtime: 3:13

Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera—New Production

December 8, 2012, 12:55 pm ET

U.S. Encore: Wednesday, January 9, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encores: Saturday, February 9, 2013 at 12:00 pm local time
Monday, February 11, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time

Director David Alden’s dreamlike setting provides a compelling backdrop for this dramatic story of jealousy and vengeance. Marcelo Álvarez stars as the conflicted king; Sondra Radvanovsky is Amelia, the object of his secret passion; and Dmitri Hvorostovsky is her suspicious husband. Kathleen Kim is the page Oscar, and Stephanie Blythe sings the role of the fortune-teller Ulrica. Fabio Luisi conducts.

Approximate runtime: 3:54

Verdi’s Aida

December 15, 2012, 12:55 pm ET

U.S. Encore: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encores: Saturday, February 23, 2013 at 12:00 pm local time
Monday, February 25, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time

The Met’s unforgettable production of Verdi’s ancient Egyptian drama stars Liudmyla Monastyrska as the enslaved Ethiopian princess caught in a love triangle with the heroic Radamès, played by Roberto Alagna, and the proud Egyptian princess Amneris, sung by Olga Borodina. Fabio Luisi conducts.

Approximate runtime: 3:54

Berlioz’s Les Troyens

January 5, 2013, 12 pm ET

U.S. Encore: Wednesday, January 23, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encore: Saturday, March 9, 2013 at 12:00 pm local time

The Met offers a rare opportunity to witness Berlioz’s vast epic, last performed at the house in 2003. Deborah Voigt, Susan Graham, Marcello Giordani, and Dwayne Croft lead the starry cast, portraying characters from the Trojan War. Met Principal Conductor Fabio Luisi marshals the large-scale musical forces.

Approximate runtime: 5:30

Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda—Met Premiere

January 19, 2013, 12:55 pm ET

U.S. Encore: Wednesday, February 6, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encores: Monday, March 18, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time
Saturday, March 23, 2013 at 12:00 pm pm local time

Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, one of the world’s most exciting singers, takes on the virtuosic bel canto role of the doomed Mary, Queen of Scots. Director David McVicar turns to the second opera of Donizetti’s Tudor trilogy, which explores regal characters at fateful moments of their lives. Elza van den Heever sings Elizabeth I, and Maurizio Benini conducts.

Approximate runtime: 3:15

Verdi’s Rigoletto– New Production

February 16, 2013, 12:55 pm ET

U.S. Encore: Wednesday, March 6, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encores: Saturday, April 6, 2013 at 12:00 pm local time
Monday, April 8, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time
Wednesday, April 24, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time

Director Michael Mayer has placed his new production of Verdi’s towering tragedy in Las Vegas in 1960.  Piotr Beczala is the womanizing Duke, Željko Lucic is his tragic sidekick, Rigoletto, and Diana Damrau is Rigoletto’s daughter, Gilda.

Approximate runtime: 3:31

Wagner’s Parsifal–New Production

March 2, 2013, 12 pm ET

U.S. Encore: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encore: Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 12:00 pm local time

Jonas Kaufmann stars in the title role of the innocent who finds wisdom in François Girard’s new vision for Wagner’s final masterpiece. His fellow Wagnerian luminaries include Katarina Dalayman as the mysterious Kundry, Peter Mattei as the ailing Amfortas, Evgeny Nikitin as the wicked Klingsor, and René Pape as the noble knight Gurnemanz. Daniele Gatti conducts.

Approximate runtime: 5:40

Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini

March 16, 2013, 12 pm ET

U.S. Encore: Wednesday, April 3, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encore: Saturday, May 4, 2013 at 12:00 pm pm local time

Zandonai’s compelling opera, inspired by an episode from Dante’s Inferno, returns in the Met’s ravishingly beautiful production, last seen in 1986. Soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek and tenor Marcello Giordani are the doomed lovers. Marco Armiliato conducts.

Approximate runtime: 3:57

Handel’s Giulio Cesare—New Production

April 27, 2013, 12 pm ET

U.S. Encore: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time
Canada Encores: Saturday, June 1, 2013 at 12:00 pm local time
Monday, June 3, 2013 at 6:30 pm local time

The opera that conquered London in Handel’s time comes to the Met in David McVicar’s lively production. The world’s leading countertenor, David Daniels, sings the title role opposite Natalie Dessay as Cleopatra. Baroque specialist Harry Bicket conducts.

Approximate runtime: 4:31

1. Listen blindly. Listen to a work not knowing who wrote it, or the title of it, or the style and when it was written. Just you and the physical music, with no preconceptions or artificial mental expectations or without knowing anything about it’s origins or classifications.

2. Listen bodily. Listen with your gut, your own visceral reactions, your own emotional responses, your own freedom of imagination. Approach music as an innocent, like a primitive or a baby, and enjoy the “nourishment of impulses” that feed your body and mind. This kind of listening can be exhilarating, bewildering, exciting, calming, inspiring, emotional, or mesmerizing, but the physicality of “real world” sounds is key to this visceral musical experience. Let your whole body literally vibrate, resonate, and pulsate with the music, in a literal sense, and enjoy the sheer physicality of sound.

3. Listen with both ears.  This means focusing on the sounds as well as the overall flow of the music. Listen to the individual parts and the whole of the music, from the tiny details to the shapes of the phrases to the overarching form. Listen to the changes, to the repetitions, the recapitulating elements, the rhythms, the themes, and the instruments physically creating the sounds. Listen stereophonically with both ears, to bring into focus the whole from different perspectives of listening, just as the eyes view stereoptically through binoculars, bringing the world into a harmonious singular focus from two different visual perspectives. In order to learn this focused art of listening, sometimes it is helpful to listen with the left ear only or the right ear only, because the brain processes sounds differently in each hemisphere. Focused listening with both ears finally unites the parts within the whole, tying together the innocence of pure, immediate sounds with the experience of reflection and holistic context. As you listen with both ears, you gradually assimilate experiences into a wider frame of context and expectations, enriching your understanding of music.

4. Organize your listening experiences. Enjoy the immediacy of music, but find a disciplined way to track your listening experiences. Group musical works in ways that help you remember them, and compare them with others by organizing them in different ways: by composer, style, historical period, genre, instrument, favorite artists. Deepen your reservoir of music by taking notes, comparing music, counting the works that you really “own” as part of your own personal listening and/or performance history. Save your concert programs, record in a notebook new music as you encounter it, along with your reactions to the experience.

5. Listen to live music. No recording or video can replicate the full experience of listening to music live, in the flesh, with the musicians who are performing the music. This enriches your own experience of music, and it is equally vital to the musicians who are performing the music. Music is a social art, in which the musicians communicate directly with the listening audience. The living, breathing personal exchange of music dies when live music is replaced by second-hand music.  So support your local symphony, opera, musical theater, ballet and other musical groups, and enjoy the personal human bond that live music offers to both listeners and performers.

6. Join in the music making. Improve listening skills by performing music, especially with others. Sing, dance, play an instrument, move to the beat, or just tap your foot. But physically enter the world of music to focus your active listening skills. Playing music together requires listening actively and cooperatively to others, making music the ultimate social art.  Becoming physically part of the music as a performer necessitates and fine-tunes our listening skills.

7. Expand your listening world. Indulge in the music you love, but adventure periodically into new worlds of music that are foreign to you. If you are a big symphony buff, try a Gregorian chant or an intimate solo or chamber concert for a change. You may love rock concerts, but venture to an opera to understand that the same emotional combustion of love and music once had Italian audiences shouting in pleasure or despair. If you only listen to Western music, taste a little of the East in the complexities of Indian or Chinese music. If you love contemporary folk music, discover the folk tunes rampant in Mozart, Beethoven or Copland. If you normally turn to classical music for soulful comfort, enjoy a change of pace by sinking into a blues ballad, or a Piaf chanson, or a tearful Portuguese fado. Opera buff? Go see a ballet for a wordless change of pace.  If you are trapped in repertoire of the 19th century, venture forth into the 20th and 21st, as there’s a lot going on. Push your sonic limits beyond the comfort of your own narrow world of music. Ultimately, as your music listening grows, so do you. Your character, your morality, your tastes, your aspirations, are often reflected in your listening choices. Widen your listening framework, and you will find yourself growing and developing and changing, and yes, even improving.

8. Don’t let a day pass without listening to music. It’s not enough to go to music class or practice your instrument daily. Incorporate a 10-minute diet of listening into your daily menu. Something old, and something new. Enjoy the daily “comfort” foods of your familiar musical diet, but also whet your appetite with new, unfamiliar music every day. Record your impressions (see #4) and watch your experiences and tastes expand!

Footnote:

Roger Shattuck, who mentored me in graduate school, once wrote a surprisingly simple-sounding yet thought-provoking essay entitled “How to Read a Book.”  His ideas on “how to read a book” directly inspired my own essay on “how to listen to music.”

Born Sept. 8, 1841 in Nelahozeves, Bohemia (now Czech Republic)
Died May 1, 1904 in Prague, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic)

For Dvorak, classical music was a vehicle to express the character of a nation, and native folk melodies were important in his works. A passionate proponent of his homeland, as was Smetana before him, he continued to develop a Czech style, inspired by folk music as heard in Slavonic Dances, in symphonic poems inspired by Czech folklore, and in many songs. His father was a butcher as well as a professional zither player, who encouraged his son to also become a butcher. Fortunately for the son and for the world, Dvorak opted for a career of music, and not butchery.

From 1892 to 1895, Dvorak was director of the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. While in America, he was zealous about discovering an American style of music. One of his students, Henry Burleigh (one of the earliest African-American composers), introduced him to black spirituals, which Burleigh later transcribed and collected with his teacher’s encouragement. Dvorak’s search for an American musical idiom culminates in his 9th and last Symphony, subtitled “From the New World.”  While the themes are original, some show the inspiration of African-American and Native American melodies.  This most American of symphonies is still a worldwide favorite, a recording of which was even taken to the moon in 1969 on Apollo 11. Dvorak encouraged American musicians to continue to search for a national style, influencing such composers as Amy Beach and William Grant Still. Aaron Copland also incorporated American folk tunes in his music, which helped further define an American style of music.

Dvorak was musically influenced and encouraged by his friendships with Brahms and Tchaikovsky. He composed in all genres, including operas, symphonies, chamber music, songs, symphonic poems, concerti, choral works and more. Deeply religious, Dvorak composed his largest choral work, Stabat Mater, at the death of his daughter; today it is often performed at Easter in the Czech Republic.

Listen to the 2nd Movement of Dvorak’s 9th Symphony, “From the New World”:

To create, one must first imagine; to imagine, one must first learn to see, to listen, to feel, to perceive. Music and the arts are the cornerstone of education in the broadest sense. They open our eyes and ears, develop and transform us personally, connect us emotionally with others, and offer a universal bridge of understanding in a troubled world. Music and the arts play a lifetime role as a child develops into adulthood. They help us integrate body, mind, and spirit, and help us forge bonds with others. The arts encourage us to explore who we are and what we stand for, inspire us to discover our “better angels” as individuals and as societies, and help us overcome barriers of language, generations, and geography to assert our essential humanity. The arts are a beacon of freedom and common cause, and have been the “movers and shakers of the world forever, it seems,” reasserting the universal rights of the human spirit whenever and wherever they are threatened.

From the first soothing sounds of a mother’s lullaby to the bright colors and comforting touch of a favorite blanket or toy, the miraculous world of infancy begins to open up. Babies react to sights and sounds around them, connecting emotions and meanings to what they see and hear. Soon they interact with the outer world as they enter a creative phase of imitating external sounds, rhythms, movements, smiles, gestures. They are, in effect, hooked on the elements of art that surround them: the lines, shapes, textures, colors, patterns, movements, rhythms, expressions, and forms that connect them to their ever-expanding world. The arts help wire and integrate young brains for lifelong learning–energizing and connecting the body, mind, and feelings. An instinctive love of music, poetry, and dramatic play is fostered through nursery rhymes, singing, dancing, and rhythm games, just as the gloriously messy and colorful world of art beckons with unlimited possibilities in finger paints, play dough, bubbles, and blocks. Storytelling, tactile toys and books, pretend games, and games of hiding and discovery like Peekaboo and Hide ‘n Seek stir imaginations and add excitement in the fantastic fray of a toddler’s perceptions. But none of this is mere child’s play: early exposure to the arts lays a complex groundwork of mental, physical, and emotional connections that opens the door to a lifetime of curiosity, learning, experimenting, problem solving, understanding, and creativity.

The arts are at the heart of every child. And the arts must be at the heart of education. If we choose to ignore children’s basic instincts for music and art at early ages, or fail to nourish their innate love of the arts throughout their education as they mature, we will as a society have “missed the beat” and “missed the boat.” The ancient Greeks knew the value of arts in education. Aristotle thought the cornerstones of education should be music for the mind and spirit and gymnastics for the body. Centuries later John F. Kennedy expressed our need for the arts this way:
“The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation’s purpose. . .and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.”

Music in Motion’s 2012 catalog hopes to be true to the spirit of both Aristotle and Kennedy, by presenting the best in music and movement education for all ages, along with complementary art, dance, and creative dramatics, to redirect the arts “to the center of a nation’s purpose,” where they belong. The arts, like the heart, pulsate at the center of our common humanity. They are, simply, our life blood.