ABSTRACT
A seven-year-old piano student came to lessons one day and sat down to perform a Mozart ‘Rondo’. He played with confidence and feeling. At the end of a most convincing performance he turned to me and said with a hint of despair, ‘That was all wrong, wasn’t it?’ The reason for his comment was that he had improvised most of the left-hand chords. His improvisation harmonised pleasingly with the right-hand melody but he had not played it according to the written score. This incident led me to consider young children, who often begin lessons with enthusiasm, soon lose interest and the music lessons become a source of frustration, possibly due to the lack of opportunity to explore and play. Music lessons may be one of the earliest situations where children are made to feel that they are doing something wrong.
