If only Caspar David Friedrich could have seen our Texas moon last night. It wasn’t quite full, but it was a bossy-bold moon, so bossy, in fact, that it would have inspired Friedrich to rethink his already revolutionary style of painting. Oh, those Friedrich paintings—the … Read more
I guess it’s the heat. I’m feeling a bit draggy. Are you? Our Texas drought has dashed any hope of a normal agricultural season. The barn is hot. The animals are hot. It’s hard watching our livestock foraging for anything that resembles grass. Yet, I … Read more
This article states so well the life-and-death importance of the Arts in our lives. (Note that I wrote “in our lives,” not just our children’s lives.) The author, Ronnie Sanders, a member of the Texas Commission on the Arts, describes the plethora of recent studies … Read more
He’s a what? It bustles with energy, this Music Man Museum in Mason City, Iowa. The corridor jumps to life with a full-sized reconstruction of “River City” from the 1962 Warner Brothers film The Music Man and the whole place is filled with kids. Some … Read more
While it’s certainly more expensive than teaching one’s own children music lessons, hiring an outside music teacher has much to recommend it. As I mentioned in a previous post, I taught our oldest two children piano for over two years, largely because of financial necessity. … Read more
“Music is connected to everything.” That’s our motto at the Professor Carol office and it proved a good one yesterday. I came home to find a fist-sized tarantula in my kitchen, perched at a 60° angle in front of the refrigerator. Okay, where’s the musical … Read more
In a talk I give at conferences called The Wrong Reasons to Teach Classical Music, I present what I believe to be an array of “right” reasons. Reason Number Six (in my countdown) involves the role music can play as our children study the Classical … Read more
I recommend two firm boundaries for parents who teach private music lessons to their own children. (In my last post, I outlined some of the advantages teaching one’s own children music lessons.) First, fix the lesson time and stick to it. A specific time obviously … Read more
Learning to play an instrument is a great way to expose your child to music and its developmental advantages. Giving your child private music lessons is not the only way, of course. Curricula that explore the development of cultural movements and ideas, such as Discovering … Read more
I kept two plastic cannons on a shelf in my office at SMU. Each was two inches tall, and made of flexible green plastic. The wheels turned and the gun barrel went up and down. They became known as Dr. Reynolds’ cannons. But wait: these … Read more