Children love music. They don’t know or care what music adults think they ought to love. So when they get a chance to hear classical music, children love classical music.

After a Covid-related hiatus, the Eastern Music Festival is presenting its 61st season in Greensboro, North Carolina. Since 2010, it has presented children’s programming in various branches of the Greensboro Public Library called Encircling the City. I first wrote about this project when it was fairly new.

This year, seven different library branches hosted programs. I attended three of them and heard three different string quartets perform.  The format was largely the same as before, although it had a different conclusion than I recalled before.

Quartet members were all fellows at the Eastern Music Festival. One of them explained that a fellowship is like an internship. They don’t get lessons, but they have started professional careers and perform with the faculty orchestra.

Opening the program

Each performer demonstrated his or her instrument. This year, all the programs started with the same piece: “Umoja” by Valerie Coleman.

Coleman, an African-American flutist and composer, originally composed it for women’s chorus early in the 21^stcentury. The title is Swahili for “unity.” The piece is based on a simple melody and uses the traditional “call and response” performance method.

Apparently, she never published it in that form, but her website shows versions for wind quintet (2001), flute choir/flute quartet (undated), concert band (2008), and a greatly expanded version commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra (2019). The Eastern Festival Orchestra (the faculty orchestra) performed that version on its second concert.

Coleman might have arranged the string quartet version especially for Encircling the City. As of now, it is not mentioned on her web site.

Plenty of composers of color are composing music for orchestra and other classical music ensembles, by the way. And plenty of orchestras eagerly play new music. The contention that classical concerts present only the music of dead white composers to an audience of elderly white people is a brazen lie.

The second piece

Each quartet group chose its own second piece.

On the first program I heard, a quartet member asked the children to say what emotions they heard listening to “Umoja.” Everyone agreed it was a happy piece.

Then the quartet started a movement by Felix Mendelssohn and asked what emotions they heard in that one. Everyone agreed that it was a sad and sometimes angry piece. Then the quartet played the entire movement and asked again for comments. Several children had some very perceptive observations.

The quartet on the second program I heard didn’t give the same verbal prompts before playing the music. Therefore, the children didn’t have as much to say about the music. Their second piece was the first movement of Samuel Barber’s String Quartet.

Adult concert goers will immediately associate Barber’s name with the Adagio, the slow movement of that same quartet. And, I should mention, not all the adults who attend these concerts are accompanied by children! I found it refreshing to hear some less-familiar music.

While the performers talked, the children were a little fidgety. When the music started, they listened attentively, although I did hear one child sitting on someone’s lap whisper a question.

The final quartet I heard played the opening of one of Haydn’s quartets. Before playing it, a quartet member made some remarks about nicknames for pieces and talked about the interval of a fifth. But at the end, instead of asking specifically if anyone heard the interval or thought the nickname was good, they simply asked if there were any questions. Only adults had any, and the children became very restless.

The end of the program

The performers of the first two quartets asked if any of the children played an instrument. A few played violin or other stringed instruments. A few played piano. I heard at least one child who played guitar.

At this point in both programs, several children spoke up at once, so it was hard to hear. I would say that most of the children were too young to start on wind instruments. Many who didn’t play an instrument wanted to learn.

Each quartet had a child-sized violin and asked if anyone wanted to try to play it. The third quartet had two. The children lined up for the chance with enthusiasm.

What the experience means for society

Classical music has a reputation as stodgy music that appeals only to old white people. It is, its critics say, elitist and a fringe taste that no longer matters.

The first time I attended one of these Encircling the City programs several years ago, one performer told me that performing for children made her more nervous than any other audience. After all, children make it painfully obvious if something bores them.

And I have never seen a bored child at any of these programs while the music is playing. For that matter, when I have seen children in the audience at classical music concerts for grownups, they have always listened attentively.

Children don’t know that they’re not supposed to like music by dead white composers. They don’t know anything about the taint of elitism. They like classical music anyway. If they get a chance to hear it regularly, many, at least, will develop a lifelong taste for it.

But our society has started to place serious obstacles in the way of children getting regular exposure to classical music. Here are just three:

• Schools music programs suffer from overemphasis on standardized tests on academic subjects. Fewer children have opportunity to experience anything but current popular music either as a member of a school ensemble or of the audience for one.
• Classical music doesn’t get the radio airtime it used to—and not because audiences don’t want it.
• Making classical music harder to find plays into the lies of those who want to banish it from society.

Losing music instruction in schools further harms anyone who might want a musical career in anything but industrial pop music. They will not have the chance to learn instruments, for example. And ultimately, orchestras—both professional and community orchestras—will not be able to find enough members to function.

Classical music will not die out from lack of interest. Murder remains a chilling possibility.

Related posts:

The birth of the idea of classical music
Children and the Eastern Music Festival
Classical and pop music: 200 years of rivalry
Is classical music dying, or still important today?
orKIDstra: delightful music outreach to children
Perspective on yet another obituary for classical music
School bands in the United States
Youth orchestras: killing two stereotypes at once