Music, this invisible and intangible art, can give people the most beautiful spiritual enjoyment and the strongest infection. Plato believed that music has the function of subtly beautifying and beautifying the soul. It is human nature to like music. Music appreciation generally refers to music activities that gain aesthetic enjoyment through listening to music works.
Music appreciation is an aesthetic activity in which people feel, appreciate, evaluate, and understand musical works during the activity of listening to music. Music is the art of sound, hearing, time, and emotion. It is mainly carried out through "listening". Listening to music is an aesthetic process from the auditory perspective. The musical image obtained through hearing will inevitably arouse associations and imagination in the brain, and will inevitably produce emotional resonance that is consistent with the mood and artistic conception of the work. Appreciating music can expose children to more excellent music works, broaden their musical horizons, and enrich their musical experience. It has far-reaching significance for improving people's cultural accomplishment and cultivating people's psychological quality.
The ability to appreciate music is not something you are born with, but is acquired through nurture. Suzuki believes: "Human abilities are not innate. Children who are just born follow the survival functions given by nature to survive. They adapt to the environment they encounter and acquire various abilities." ?Cultivating music appreciation ability must start from an early age. When many people hear music they are unfamiliar with and don't like, they will shake their heads and say: "It doesn't sound good, I can't understand it." ?Actually, music is not mysterious, it’s just that they don’t have the ability to appreciate music. If you want to understand music, you must have ears that appreciate music. Otherwise, as Marx said: For non-musical ears, the most beautiful music has no meaning. Suzuki said: "There is no such thing as being born tone-deaf. Tone-deafness is caused by hearing lullabies sung by tone-deaf parents thousands of times." ?He also said: ?Musical ears can be acquired through listening training, rather than talent or inherent. The more you practice in the future, the more results you will get. It is the development of human adaptability in listening training?. If you want to have "appreciative ears", you must develop your hearing ability from an early age. Music listening is required in the auditory sense, and the earlier you start to ask for it, the better the results will be in the future.
1. Cultivate children’s interest in music appreciation from an early age
The music research team of the School of Psychology at the University of Leicester in the UK released a psychological research report, which stated that babies can remember Music heard in the first 3 months of life. Alexander Lamont, the leader of the research team, said that only after 20 weeks of pregnancy can the fetus in the womb fully hear sounds. Scientific practice has proven that when the fetus is as early as 6 months old in the mother's body, its auditory organs are mature and complete, which means that the fetus' hearing ability can be cultivated through the mother's appreciation of music during the fetal period. Fetuses can distinguish different types of music, and they have the ability to distinguish between likes and dislikes in music. A British psychologist studied this issue by placing listening headphones on the abdomens of several pregnant women, then playing music while monitoring the fetal heartbeats. The heartbeat of some fetuses accelerated, apparently in response to listening to beautiful music. Of course, some fetuses are not like this, so researchers believe that fetuses already have likes and dislikes for a certain kind of music. Follow-up observations revealed that mothers of fetuses who reacted to their fetuses said: After their children were born, their temperaments were very gentle. Within 1 week of birth, babies have the ability to hear sounds with their ears. As long as human organs can function, they will have their own instinct to satisfy or develop the organs.
As Rousseau said: "People need education since they are born from their mother's womb." In this way, you have a good starting point for music appreciation. Suzuki believes: "Except for music, there is no other field where education can begin from birth. In this sense, music education is very important."
For infants and young children of different ages, the music they choose to enjoy is also different: for fetuses, some classical music, soft and elegant tunes are more suitable. Special attention should be paid to playing music for a certain amount of time. Do not play music all day long for the purpose of musical prenatal education, which will interfere with the tranquility of the fetus. Studies using "sucking technology" have found that newborns 24 hours after birth speed up their sucking speed when hearing beautiful music, and reject arrhythmic noises by stopping sucking and being restless. Therefore, it is necessary to listen to soft, melodic and rhythmic music for newborns. 4-month-old babies start to listen to music, and they prefer to listen to beautiful music. Babies aged 5-6 months already have the ability to perceive changes in music melody. As early as 12 months old, babies can remember and enjoy the music they heard before birth. Therefore, when educating children in music from infancy to early childhood, it is better to choose Chinese and foreign classical music with a sense of tranquility. For example: piano music "Butterfly Lovers", music played by dulcimer, erhu, guzheng and other musical instruments. Children aged 3-6 should mainly listen to songs they can understand, and listen to some titled or untitled works appropriately, such as: "The Fox and the Rabbit", "A Day in Kindergarten", "Four Little Swans", "Shepherd Boy" Piccolo" and other instrumental music. There are also some instrumental music with beautiful melody and distinctive rhythm, such as "Lullaby", "Percussion Music", "Children's Song and Dance Music".
2. Enrich children’s life experience and improve their sensitivity to music
To cultivate music appreciation ability, we should first train children to listen to sounds, understand the expressiveness of sounds, and cultivate their understanding of sounds. Sensitivity begins. That is to first cultivate children's "listening" ability and enrich their life experience. "Listening" is to "listen attentively" consciously, attentively, and emotionally. Therefore, it is necessary to cultivate children's "listening" ability and habits purposefully.
1. Use various opportunities to encourage children to listen.
Our lives are full of various sounds: the sound of wind and rain, birds singing, frogs crowing, roosters crowing, water ticking, cars whistling, etc. Parents or teachers can listen from time to time, intentionally or unintentionally. To encourage young children to listen. For example: Once, when the teacher was preparing to start an art activity, it suddenly started raining heavily. Many children ran to the window to watch and listen to the rain. The teacher did not interrupt the children and asked them to return to their seats, but instead They conduct random education. In this way, children are randomly guided to listen to various sounds, so that children can form the habit of appreciation in their lives.
2. Teachers create conditions to guide children to listen to the various sounds of nature.
When face to face with children, children can be allowed to listen to and imitate various sounds: clapping, stamping feet, finger twisting, leg slapping, jumping sounds, etc.; in the kitchen, children can be allowed to listen to pots, bowls, ladles, The clinking sound of pots, the sound of cooking and cooking; when you go out, you can listen to various sounds around you: the sound of walking, talking, and cars. Guide children to listen to the different sounds made by different vehicles such as bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trucks, ambulances, and fire trucks. There are many sounds in life that young children can listen to. For example: the sound of a pendulum, the sound of sawing wood, the sound of hawking, the sound of washing water, the sound of eating crispy things, laughter, crying? Make full use of every opportunity to naturally and consciously guide children to listen to the sounds around them, Cultivating their listening skills can enrich their various perceptual experiences of sounds, thereby cultivating their music appreciation abilities.
3. Cultivate children’s sensitivity to music in various music activities.
Three-year-old children entering kindergarten are motivated to appreciate music, and music can often arouse their emotional cries. It is not enough to simply listen to music to young children to cultivate their appreciation ability. We can also cultivate them in activities such as singing, dancing, singing performances, rhythm and music games. Children in small classes still have difficulty perceiving changes in intensity and register, but they can already identify changes in speed in musical works, and their movements can change with the changes in the music. For example: The melody of "Elephant Walking" is mainly performed in the bass area. The music is deep, slow and powerful. In teaching, young children cannot distinguish whether the pitch of this piece of music is high or low. When teaching, the teacher can tell the children while doing the movements: The elephant's body is very heavy, and when we learn how to walk like an elephant, we have to take each step slower. So the music we listen to is relatively slow, and the music is deep and heavy. This kind of teaching that combines movement and stillness is suitable for the age characteristics of small class children. If visual teaching aids such as pictures or toys related to the content of the musical works are used in the method, it can help children feel and understand the musical works. Another example: In the big class music game "Fox and Rabbit", when listening to music, children can be inspired to use stomping feet and clapping their hands to express the different rhythms of fox and rabbit according to the rhythm of the music. When learning game movements, children can be inspired to think about how to walk to make themselves more like a cunning fox and a cute little rabbit, and then practice the various movements of the fox and rabbit respectively with the music. In this way, young children can remember that the music that represents the fox is relatively low, slow and a bit scary; while the music that represents the bunny is cheerful, lively and jumping. We can say that children in the upper class can correctly identify the emotions and properties of familiar musical works, and can perceive various details in the works.
3. Determine reasonable appreciation goals and improve children’s appreciation ability.
Children of different ages choose different music, set different goals, and put forward different requirements, so that children’s appreciation ability can be effectively improved. For example:
Small class: Appreciating "Lullaby", the goals can be set as:
1. Can feel the soft, slow, beautiful and peaceful musical mood of the song, and deepen the understanding through action performances Understanding of musical works.
2. Develop children’s imagination and expressiveness.
Middle class: Appreciate "Picking Tea and Flying Butterflies", the goals can be set as:
1. Be familiar with the melody of the music, perceive the cheerful mood of the music, and let the children immerse themselves in the joy of singing and dancing. middle.
2. Guide children to use movements to express melody, and imagine various actions of picking tea, watching butterflies and flapping butterflies.
3. Cultivate children’s interest in enjoying the music.
Big class: Appreciate "Listen to Mom Talk about the Past", the goals can be set as:
1. Through listening, seeing, thinking, expressions and movements, feel the melody of the music and know Song name, understand the content of the song, and experience the deep, slow, narrative style of the song.
2. Inspire children to love life by appreciating and comparing the different lives of people in the old and new societies.
In short, the purposeful and planned musical edification of young children can help them establish an aesthetic psychological structure with artistic creativity as the core in artistic activities, thereby improving their aesthetic psychological quality and promoting their The development of personality improvement and socialization will ultimately cultivate their ability to appreciate music.