Why I Encourage My Children to Study Music
by Paul Zucchi

 

I was once asked to speak at the conclusion of a children's recital at which all four of my children had just performed. I had been asked to explain my own personal reasons for giving the gift of music to my children. In my case this was and continues to be an expensive gift since each of the four studies two or more instruments.

 

What should have been an easy task - basically I was speaking to the converted - turned out to be anything but. In preparing my talk I learned that it is exceedingly difficult to talk publicly about the things one holds most precious, in this case children and music.

 

What I also discovered is that parents give the gift of music to their children for a variety of reasons. When I searched my own heart I came to the conclusion that the primary reason for exposing my children to music had to do with one or more kinds of poverty. I went on to relate a couple of stories to help explain what I meant.

 

The rest of my talk follows almost intact.

 

The first of these stories came from my father. When he was young and living in a small town in Italy, the parish priest took it upon himself to assemble a choir of young people. In a small town where not much happened, this was considered an exciting development. Unfortunately for my father, he was not invited to join the choir. Instead, his brother, my uncle, was selected, possibly for the simple reason that he had a good voice. In the ensuing months my father had to endure his brother singing the exercises the choir was assigned. Obviously, his being overlooked hurt my father very deeply. I imagine he felt like many of us have felt being left off a team in sports as the sides are being picked. Or he felt like some of us have felt being excluded by a circle of friends. He felt like he was on the outside. His poverty was one of inadequacy and exclusion.

 

I must have heard that story often because I still remember the tune his brother sang after his first lesson, a tune which incised itself deeply into my father's mind. I vividly recall my father's repeating the notes: so-so-do-do-mi-do-re-re-fa-la-so-mi-fa-re-do.

 

I heard this story for the first time in 1960 when my father purchased our first piano. One of the first things my father did when the piano was wheeled into the living room was to hunt out those notes on the keyboard. He then strung them together and played them as best he could. Having played them he felt a kind of vindication.

 

Of course, I would not have understood what was going on in my father's mind at the time. I hadn't been there being overlooked many years before. I was too young to have any concept of "closure" and how important that can be for any individual. Suffice it to say that he no longer felt like he was on the outside. And more to the point, this piano, this huge, music-making instrument was now, sitting there, on the inside of his house. At that point he stepped back and passed on the gift to those who would not be on the outside, to those who would not feel the kind of poverty he had experienced long ago.

 

The second story occurred not long after the arrival of the piano. My older sister began lessons at once. She seemed to enjoy them well enough but, after all, we thought, she was a girl and that sort of thing is expected of a girl. Then to my surprise, my twin brother, the more extroverted of the two of us, asked if he could start taking lessons. His request was granted. However, it wasn't long after that that he regretted asking for the lessons. He would become quite upset practicing while the other boys, myself included, played outside. One other thing we quickly learned about our family was this - while it was relatively easy to start taking lessons, it was just about impossible to stop taking them! So when my father asked me shortly thereafter if I too wanted to learn to play the piano I politely refused - a decision I deeply regret to this day. Mine became the poverty of missed opportunity.

 

I regret not studying music because, as I matured in later life, I discovered that my heart was moved by a number of things, one of which, as I explained above, was music. What I also learned in the intervening years is that it is exceedingly important to pay attention to what it is that the heart yearns for. But while I was and continue to be moved by music, I also have to accept that my understanding and appreciation of it will always be limited because of my lack of study and training. In the First Canto of the Inferno, Dante tells Virgil, his guide and the poet who most inspired his own verse, that he explored his work, that is, Virgil's, with "great love" and "long study". Surely both of these are also prerequisites to a full appreciation of music.

 

There are many, many research papers out there expounding the merits of studying music. I don't need to go into them here, we've all heard about them. But what I do want to say emphatically is that I do not encourage my children to study music to improve their concentration, so that they will do better in math, so that they will be better disciplined, so that they will receive status or honours. These are, in my view, merely positive byproducts of the process. I encourage them to study music so that they can experience more deeply, understand more clearly, appreciate in a way that I never will, what surely must be one of God's greatest gifts. I encourage them because I believe that music is one means among others, through which, if their minds and hearts are so disposed, they can experience, profoundly, how wonderful it is to be alive to what is truly great and beautiful in this world.

 

I recently went to pick up my son, John, at his cello lesson. The lesson was over but his teacher was playing for him the first movement of the Suite No. 1 for Unaccompanied Cello by J.S. Bach, a piece he was just beginning to learn. Not wanting to interrupt, I waited outside the door for the music to end. Anyone who knows the piece knows how utterly beautiful it is and it was being played exquisitely. I couldn't help feeling a great desire to be in there, inside the room, beside my son, taking it in more fully, seeing as well as hearing. And then I realized that I was experiencing in fact what I have long felt metaphorically. I was again on the outside. Here was my poverty again. Eventually, the piece ended and then, and then, I heard an explosion of applause from my son. From his reaction I understood that he had been deeply touched by the piece and its playing. At that point, it no longer mattered that I was on the outside. What mattered most to me was that my son had been moved by the beauty of Bach's work.

 

John Adams, the second President of the United States, once said, "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." I find it interesting that John Adams put art ahead of science, at the pinnacle of human endeavor. But he had good company. Albert Einstein once said, "If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music." Incidentally, I feel I would remiss in failing to mention that I am a civil engineer by profession.

 

I said at the beginning of this now overly long explanation that my encouraging my children to study music was a response to one or more kinds of poverty, in my case experienced over two generations. What I find most ironic but so very, very true is something my children's piano teacher pointed out to me on more than one occasion when we discussed my children's journeys, musical or otherwise. "Paul", she would say, "you're one of the richest men I know." To which I would invariably reply, "Indeed I am, indeed I am."

MC; Mike Petersen as "Papageno"

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Give your children their first taste of classical music.  Come join us for our sixth season.

 

Music and Truffles is Mooredale Concerts' popular classical series for children five and up.  It’s entertaining, it’s interactive, and a wonderful opportunity to expose your children to classical music.  Many children who have attended these series have gone on to discover their own musical abilities. 

 

The programs are unique in presenting shorter, child-oriented versions of the adult performances featured later that afternoon.  Series hosts will include Mike Petersen as "Papageno", the colourfully-costumed master of ceremonies and Anton Kuerti, Artistic Director and of course, there will be a chocolate truffle for each person at the end.