Playing "Twinkle"

WHAT IS MUSIC HOUSE?

“One of the advantages of being disorderly
is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.”
A.A. Milne

My friend Betsy, an experienced, out-of-the-box music teacher who recently got a degree in Music Therapy, brings a group of five four year-olds into her room. Each sits down in front of a xylophone and picks up a mallet. After allowing them to explore the instruments any way they want for around five minutes, Betsy asks the children what song they would like to play together. They agree on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

As Betsy plays a simple version on the piano, the children begin to play along, but not the song as we adults think of it. Though some come fairly close to the rhythm, the melody is unrecognizable – notes are everywhere. The only thing that sounds like “Twinkle” as we know it is the background that Betsy is providing. Not only has no one found the melody – no one appears to be looking for it. Some children are exploring the capabilities of their instruments in ways that seem to have nothing to do with the song, yet if Betsy stops, so do they. The jam session goes on for almost ten minutes – that’s a long time for a four year-old. Every child is not only involved, but rapt. No one loses interest, not even for a minute, and when it’s over it is because Betsy needed to end it. Afterwards, hoping to gain insight into the minds of children, she asks one young man what he was doing.

“Playing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’,” he says.

“One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” Is there a right or wrong way to play “Twinkle,” and if it can be argued that yes, there are more and less accurate facsimiles of the song, so what? For these four year-olds, whatever it means to play the song has transcended the boundaries of our adult imaginations. These are the seeds of genuine musical connection that have not yet been channeled, disciplined, molded or otherwise squelched. It is our golden opportunity to be privy to a glimpse of freedom, where unencumbered souls and music meet on the highest plane. When we find a way to preserve this throughout children’s subsequent musical experiences, then we may say we have found something noble.