Subjects
curriculum
Music
The Emerson Waldorf School campus resounds with music. Early Childhood and Grades students sing every day and learn a variety of instruments. By high school, we’re encouraging them to find their passion in music and giving them the space and guidance they need to pursue it.
Our music program assumes that every human being is musical, and it’s designed to help students claim this natural gift. It is not aimed at producing musical technicians. Rather, it nurtures a deep sense of musicality. Students that come through our program have the skills to continue as lifelong musicians, whether as hobbyists or by eventually attending a conservatory.
In the early years, EWS music classes nurture and strengthen a child’s natural musicality without any academic instruction, but eventually expand to include music literacy instruction. Classes approach music education through experience. Games, dances, stories, songs, and playing instruments teach the children what they need to know about listening, responding, intonation, reading music, writing music, and improvising. This early groundwork allows students to begin a more earnest pursuit through the middle elementary and middle school years. As they enter high school, they choose a specialty that they want to pursue more earnestly.
Starting in first grade, they learn to play pitched and unpitched percussion instruments, simple flutes, and lyres. In the fourth grade, children add other string instruments by starting with a traditional Appalachian dulcimer and eventually adding ukulele. Some will continue to guitar, clawhammer-style banjo, fiddle, and double bass. Throughout their experience, they continue to play percussion instruments of all types, sing in harmony in various styles, and play simple wind instruments.
The students continue to deepen their abilities and knowledge with all these instruments through the eighth grade. In high school, they will commit to one of four specializations: string instruments, percussion instruments, vocal music, or wind instruments. The high school program offers a balance between instructor-led skill development in the chosen area and inquiry-based projects in specific areas of music that are developed collaboratively between the students and instructors.