A number of programmes that bring music and singing into classrooms around the country are proving a huge success – helping to create our future musicians and also exposing children to the social benefits of the arts, writes CONOR POWER
THERE’S NO doubt that we as a nation have produced more than our fair share of musical talent, but what of the generations to come? Our primary education system provides a basic grounding in music, but is it adequate for a country where music plays such an important role? A number of musical initiatives have been attempting to fill this perceived gap in schools around the country by setting sophisticated standards of awareness and appreciation of the art that will hopefully become a marker for the future.
The Music in Schools programme in Co Cork has been running since 1994. Largely funded by Cork County Council, the idea is an off-shoot of the highly-successful West Cork Chamber Music Festival and involves bringing musicians into primary schools around the county to interact with the children.
“At the moment, it is certainly filling a gap [in the curriculum],” says Ian McDonagh, Arts Officer for Cork County Council, “because there is no other way that schools have access to music of that standard without having to travel considerable distances.”
The programme takes place throughout November and December when classical and traditional musicians visit approximately 30 Cork schools. Over the course of an hour, pupils are treated to a recital of live music, followed by a question-and-answer session. For the children, it’s a rare treat, as it is for the musicians themselves, for whom this is a very different sort of gig.
“It differs significantly in that it’s more of a workshop,” says internationally renowned fiddle player Matt Cranitch. “A very important part of it is explaining to children how the instrument works. The uileann pipes in particular are very fascinating for them because most of them will never have seen the instrument up close.
“We do a similar thing with the fiddle; showing them the significance of the bow and, of course, all the physical activity involved in playing both instruments.
“We talk to them about the rhythm of the different tunes at a fairly elemental level and the beat of the different tunes. We try to get them involved with humming the notes of the drones and they love joining in like that – not with loud clapping, but being able to appreciate the different rhythmic impulses of the different tune types.”
During Cranitch and Eoin’s duet performances at Gaelscoil Chloch na gCoillte in Clonakilty, the children’s initial instinct is to clap along noisily but their teacher gently encourages them to applaud at a quieter level. It’s not easy, as the infectious rich sound of live music fills the bare-walled room the school has “borrowed” for today’s session.
“We find that the children tend to ask a lot of questions,” says Cranitch.
“The younger children ask more questions. The older the children get, the less curious they seem to be. The kids this week have been asking loads of questions – and intelligent questions too.”
A very similar project – Music in the Classroom – has been running in the Sligo area for the past 11 years.
“It’s a programme of curriculum support,” says Sligo County Council assistant arts officer Rhona McGrath. “We work with the teachers to prepare a programme of music. Twice a year, an ensemble of either classical, traditional or jazz musicians goes into a school.”
There are 21 schools involved in the programme and nearly all the musicians are full-time practitioners from the Sligo area. The programme initially ran alongside the Drumcliffe Chamber Music Festival and was run by Dublin-based organisation Artscope.
“The project grew out of a five-year residency that the German ensemble Vogler Quartet had in Sligo from 1999 to 2004,” explains McGrath. “There were three strands to the residency: one was performance, one was education and one was instrumental tuition. The residency was always intended to be a catalyst for a more long-term project.”
The programme has since broadened its partnership to include musicians, teachers and the Sligo Education Centre. During the more experimental phase McGrath says they tried working with both primary and secondary schools, but found that it was complicated to make room in the busy schedule of secondary schools than in primary schools.
The reaction to the programme from all concerned has been overwhelmingly positive, she says. In learning about each piece of music, pupils are learning about the composer, their country and the times in which they lived, thus pulling in contextual geography and history in one stroke.
Musically speaking, the scheme has given many pupils the opportunity to experience music in a new way and it has led to students going on to study music into their teens and adulthood – many in Sligo Academy of Music.
Music in the Classroom also helps to give employment to local musicians, says McGrath. It provides an interaction with society away from the very different atmosphere of recitals, resulting in more work for the musicians. This is also enticing more musicians to the area, she says.
The Limerick-based Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO) runs another project bringing music and musicians into the classroom with an altogether more ambitious brief. Sing out with Strings is funded primarily by Limerick Regeneration and the JP MacManus Foundation. The focus is on using music as a catalyst for personal and social development in some of the city’s more socially disadvantaged areas.
Established in 2008 with one school (Galvone National School in Kennedy Park), it has now been extended to Southill Junior School and St Mary’s Boys School.
“Just like any other children, they’re packed full of potential; they’re really bright kids,” says ICO education officer Kathleen Turner. “It introduces music into the culture of the school . . . initially through singing and songwriting. This gives the children an opportunity to identify personally with music because they’re coming up with their own lyrics and they’re talking about what they want to talk about.
“That’s then arranged into music and when the orchestra comes to visit them [twice every academic year], they get to perform their music in concert with the Irish Chamber Orchestra.”
The second year also involves the pupils progressing to violin tuition and establishing an orchestra of their own.
Before the project started, there was a small amount of resistance from some pupils, based mainly on a lack of familiarity with the whole concept. But, as Turner says, once the music has become a normal part of the school’s identity and of the identity of the pupils as individuals, then the enthusiasm and the passion for it become unbridled.
“And it’s not just about music,” Turner says. “It’s about developing important transferable skills that benefit the whole curriculum: listening and responding, group cooperation, memory, communication, concentration, respect both for leaders and for themselves as individuals.”
Teaching staff have also been enthusiastic, turning up at 8am on school mornings to take their own tuition and feedback from teachers is positive – many talk of a strong sense of “calm that has been growing” in all the schools.
Turner says music should be “no less necessary” than the compulsory subjects of English and mathematics. On the evidence of the music programmes in schools in operation so far around the country, such a development would be something that we could all benefit from.
