ABSTRACT
Recapitulation theories proposed that the starting points of music learning for very young children match the starting points of the cultural history of Western music. In the 1920s to 1940s Satis Coleman developed her ‘creative music’ approach for young children and proposed that children should live the evolution of music by first making their own instruments (the drum stage), then moving rhythmically (rhythmic stage) and finally singing and performing. The fundamental idea that children’s music education should follow a sequence from the simple musical elements and forms of European music, to more complex and sophisticated, underpins many approaches to music education.
