My Picks for Music Appreciation

My dad is a classical musician, so music appreciation was a huge part of my upbringing. It’s very important to me that my kids learn about and love classical music, so it’s always been a part of our “specials” in the afternoons, sometimes on a weekly basis, and sometimes a month or semester at a time. When the kids were little, we started with a year of Meet the Orchestra type pieces (Peter and the Wolf and Tubby the Tuba, etc) and thematic pieces (The Planets, The Four Seasons, Pictures at an Exhibition).

Then we moved towards focusing on one or two composers a semester and picked a few pieces of music that we listen to a ton so that the kids are familiar with the melodies and story behind it. In non-pandemic times, I’d pick something that a local orchestra would be performing at some point during the school year, as live musical performances are so special! To learn about the composers, we like the Opal Wheeler biographies and Introduction to the Classics CD series (“The Story of Mozart in Words and Music” etc.). Anna Harwell Celenza’s picture books are a really fun in-depth look at specific pieces, as well.

When the pandemic hit, we took advantage of the Met Opera free nightly streams and free weekly student streams and just watched the operas we've studied or that I love--The Magic Flute, Marriage of Figaro, Barber of Seville, The Merry Widow, and Hansel and Gretel. We're pretty Mozart heavy in our opera studies because I feel like he's easy to love. Obviously opera is not something everyone is comfortable with, but I’ve been surprised at how much the kids have gotten into the operas we’ve watched!

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