Children's Descriptions and Representations of Music

The purpose of this study was to compare children's descriptions and representations of music. The subjects were students, aged 5-10 years, who had been enrolled in a Suzuki string program from 7 months to 4 years. The research questions posed showed that: symbolic representations (drawings/markings), verbal descriptions, and ratings for motor skills in performance were similar across age, gender and length of musical training. The drawings of the children were classified as: pictures/icons, music symbols, and abstract lines/shapes. These children were about evenly divided between drawing pictures and music symbols. The descriptive vocabulary used by 75% of these children involved music terms. The musical dimensions that children found salient and thus chose to draw/describe were pitch, notes, rhythm and timbre. Future studies need to determine (a) at what level of training or development a child becomes aware of the unique rather than the general features of a music composition; and (b) which teaching methods will be most effective in helping children expand their comprehension of music from the kinesthetic/performance domain to their appropriate usage of symbolic representations and descriptions of music. The Study The influence of Suzuki's (1978) ideas stressing the importance of beginning music learning in early childhood through listening to develop musical sensitivity, playing skill, and memory are echoed in many teaching curriculums today. The Suzuki approach emphasizes teaching by rote in the beginning lessons and does not introduce music notation until the child has developed the above skills. This study focused on students, aged 5-10 years, who were enrolled in a Suzuki string program affiliated with a university.