Utilizing Montessori’s own music curriculum

To the editor:

I write to comment on Maureen Harris’ essay “Music: Good for kids and test scores” in the Public School Montessorian (21:4, Summer 2009).

For 28 years I have been a Montessori music and movement teacher and teacher trainer. I recently completed a doctorate exploring the effects of communal singing and dance on the development of community in the Montessori school where I teach.

I am glad Harris is thinking about music education in the Montessori classroom. I am very much in agreement with her that music is not just a “frills” subject.

Music affects children, and all of us, profoundly.

Harris asks whether Maria Montessori, as “a visionary whose innovative ideas were so unconventional for her time would embrace a music-enriched curriculum.”

The answer is yes, of course, and in fact she created one. Maria Montessori built a fabulous music curriculum, one that is not often used or understood today.

In describing the effect of the program Harris designed and calls “Montessori Mozarts” on the math scores of the children studied she says:

The experimental treatment was a six-month “in-house” music-enriched Montessori program designed … to teach concepts of pitch, dynamics, duration, timbre and form as well as skills in moving, playing, listening, singing and organizing sound.

A full Montessori music program includes all of the elements mentioned above. There are Montessori manipulative materials for these concepts. Maria Montessori and her friend, musician Anna Maria Maccheroni, put together a collection of music for movement exploration and for listening. Students of 5 and 6 years of age at the Washington Montessori School in New Preston, CT, (where I teach) can differentiate between major, minor, pentatonic and chromatic scales and play and sing the Singing Charts, which are Maria Montessori’s distillation of the melodic patterns underlying western music. They are equally at home with rhythmic patterns, and can read and write rhythmic notation. They sing easily and on pitch, having had the bell work, singing charts, rhythmic training and excellent songs and singing games. I do not know the effect of their music training on their math scores. Harris’ article presents a statistical approach to one aspect of the study of music, which has its most powerful and important effects in very different parts of human experience. When the whole person is approached in teaching and all the senses and artistic abilities are engaged, of course we should expect higher performance in all subjects!

Harris says that her program is “ music-enriched Montessori instruction.” A full Montessori curriculum which includes the music materials is “music-enriched.” The genuine Montessori curriculum contains an entire music program as extensive as the math and language curricula, with manipulative materials and three-period lessons and it leads all the way to musical improvisation and composition.

Harris’ use of the words “traditional Montessori education” as the lesser of two systems (her “Montessori Mozarts” being the better) throughout her article and in her research is misleading because the authentic traditional Montessori music curriculum includes all the components mentioned. When Harris says her control group had “a traditional Montessori curriculum” it must be that they did not use the complete Montessori music curriculum. In fact most Montessori classrooms today do not know or use the full music curriculum.

I agree with Harris that Maria Montessori was certainly a forward-looking educator, and surely would have had many more wonderful things to offer if she lived for another 82 years. I also agree that she would have embraced some other music educators’ work, but not all. She understood the importance of giving children the very best material to work with in forming their musical awareness. Zoltan Kodaly and Carl Orff, her contemporaries and seminal music educators, felt the same and insisted that the quality of the music used with children must be the very best from the folk traditions, the classical repertoire and their own contemporary compositions.

I disagree with her position that because today’s classroom teachers are not musically trained they should rely on a recorded program. If they are introduced to the real Montessori music materials, they can be taught and learn music just as the children learn. This is preferable to always using a recorded, packaged system. Unaccompanied singing, spontaneous and expressive, and joyful, uninhibited dance—this is personal music making, a very important goal which is not achievable using a packaged system of recordings. There is certainly a place for excellent recorded music in the classroom but it should not be the basis of the music program.

Sanford Jones, renowned Montessorian, music educator and composer, once said that if a person “takes their music vitamins everyday” (by this he meant working with the Montessori bells) they will end up with relative pitch and an understanding of the basics of Western music. This was his response to a classroom teacher who said she did not understand enough to be able to guide the children in music. Of course we cannot know everything! But even this can be of educational value: it is important for them that we model our interest and our desire to learn music, and then model the process of learning. They will share our explorations and cheer our success.

Maria Montessori’s music materials are elegant, simple, highly intuitive, user-friendly, just as organized and extensive as the math or language materials. If they were good enough for the children of her day to learn music, today’s teachers can also learn the real thing.

I agree with Maureen Harris that teachers need someone to help them learn music and how to use the Montessori music materials. This should be a musically-trained person who can explain them, answer questions and offer the children further exploration in music and movement. That is the place of the music specialist today. The music specialist does not take the place of the classroom teacher in her daily work in music with the children, but enhances and offers further musical training, both for the teachers and the children.

Is there room for additional material, recorded music, and attention to the fact that most classroom teachers today are not musically literate? Of course there is. But we should start by offering classroom teachers the opportunity to learn music using the full range of music materials that Maria Montessori created. There are programs available for teachers to learn them. Marcia Perez offers this training, and I do as well. Montessori teacher training programs should work hard to increase the hours allocated to music and movement education.

There are several outstanding music-listening and music-history recordings for young children, including A Pocketful of Music by Martha Braden Jones, which has short mini concerts (some as short as three minutes) for the children to hear. Each concert includes three different pieces of music with a short introductory paragraph for the teacher to read before the concert.

The Canadian Tall Timbers Music Listening Program is excellent, extensive and includes a similar system of a paragraph for the teacher to read before the concert. The whole system takes less than five minutes a day.

John Feierabend has put together some excellent recorded music for children, including a DVD called Move It! with movement explorations of well-known and well-loved classical compositions choreographed by Peggy Lyman, former Martha Graham dancer and dance teacher. The DVD features children and adults of various ages and abilities performing these lyrical, expressive movements.

Peter and Mary Alice Amidon and the New England Dancing Masters have created outstanding materials from the Anglo-American and African American traditions. They include songs, singing games and contra dances very appropriate for a Montessori environment. Some of their books and CD’s are Jump Jim Joe, Down In the Valley and Chimes of Dunkirk.

When Harris writes that “Montessori Mozarts” is “the new, innovative, music–enriched curriculum for today “ she implies that the traditional Montessori curriculum is not “music-enriched.” The genuine Montessori curriculum is full of music. Most Montessori teachers do not know and are not using the complete music curriculum. That is our challenge.

Perhaps Maureen Harris has built a good music program for classroom teachers who are not musically trained. I do not know—I have not studied it yet. The presentation she wrote in the s raises the issues I have outlined in this article.

Maria Montessori built a fabulous, all-inclusive music education program that is not understood or used in most Montessori classrooms today. Let’s discover and share the treasures it contains.

I agree with Maureen Harris that music is of vital importance to our children. The world needs all the music we can give. Let’s work together to reintroduce the music curriculum that should be in every Montessori classroom.

Matilda Giampietro
matildag@charter.net
MatildaG.org