Music Together

Music Together is a music and movement program for children aged newborn through kindergarten. First offered to the public in 1987, the program is now offered in over 2000 communities in the United States, as well as in 40 other countries around the world. This expansion has been accomplished through independent centers which are licensed to use the program. All teachers must attend and pass a Music Together teacher training.

Since its inception, Music Together has emphasized the importance of having parents and caregivers actively participate in class with their children. This is based in part on the work of early childhood educator Lilian Katz, who noted that while children can learn skills and knowledge from any adult, they learn dispositions only from their loved ones; by participating in class as musical role-models, parents and caregivers help impart to their children the disposition to become lifelong music-makers.

Music Together starts with the premise that all children are musical, and that they can achieve basic music competence provided their music environment is sufficiently rich. All class activities are based on Developmentally Appropriate Practice, an approach to learning that takes into account how children really learn at different developmental stages in their lives. Because very young children learn primarily through play, the program provides a fun, relaxed environment with a nonformal teaching approach.

Some critics of this and other early childhood music programs have questioned whether an organized class is necessary to teach children a basic life skill such as singing. However, children can no longer reliably learn music skills from their surrounding environment, as they could several generations ago, due to a steady decrease in live music-making activities available to them. A study done by Levinowitz showed that fewer than 50% of first-graders could sing in tune.

Music learning is in many ways analogous to language learning; just as the child seems to teach himself language through interacting with a language environment, he teaches himself music through being in a music environment. When adults model active singing and movement behaviors, the child imitates and learns. The combination of classroom activities and at-home music-making inspired by a recording and songbook help children learn music skills naturally and effortlessly.

Music Together is noted for a repertoire which emphasizes the use of a wide variety of musical modes (tonalities) and meters. With much of the music of our culture—especially “children’s music”—using predominantly major scales and duple meter, it is difficult for children to gain a breadth of music experience. The Music Together repertoire includes songs in such tonalities as Phrygian mode, aeolian mode, Mixolydian mode, and Dorian mode. Children are also introduced to songs using triple meter and “unusual” meters such as 5/4 or 7/8. In this way, the Music Together repertoire helps strengthen children’s audiation, a termed coined by learning theorist Edwin Gordon to describe the process by which we mentally hear and comprehend music. The ability to audiate is essential to any meaningful music learning.

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Wikipedia