Presented here are 3 short videos of Grandbaby #2, 2 years 4 months, singing the little CCS Art Song that is also posted below. The 3 videos offer a fine example of the consistent inconsistency in the young child’s developing tunefulness. The child experienced the song in the CCS Online Music Classes that she does with Daddy. It had become a favorite that she sang often. Mommy didn’t know the song, but with video recorder in hand, initiated singing just to get the child to sing the song. The child sang repeatedly on tape as a surprise for Grammy in anticipation of her long awaited visit.
Note that Mommy’s pitches were not the ones the child chose, and that despite delay and conversation between the tapings of the three renditions, the child was consistent in keyality across videos. Her chosen keyality was a third higher than the rendition she heard in the Online Classes. Many of the child’s pitches are not precise, yet in each of the three videos, she approximates the shape of the melody directionally. Over three videos, the listener might conclude that the song is in Aeolian tonality, yet in any one video, it is at least apparent that the tonality is “non major.”
The child’s eyes cue the many distractions of camera, floor cushions, and somebody coming into the house, and her singing reflects those distractions. Yet her own deliberate movement with the song does not always distract her pitch, but supports it.
Notice across videos the general consistency of precision with the resting tone, and the somewhat consistent 5th. Often the pitches moving to and from the resting tone and 5th are more approximate, yet they generally move in the right direction. Note that the keyality she has chosen puts the song above the beginning singing range, with her actually reaching the D a ninth above middle C, thought not consistently.
There is an interesting parallel between her tonal performance and her rhythm performance. Rhythmically, her tempo lags, yet the relationship between durations is fairly close, and generally accommodate the rest in the 6th measure, which is not tied to the words. It appears that the anchors of macro and micro beats rhythmically and resting tone and fifth tonally serve to create a sketch of the song in the meter and tonality, with tempo and intonation still approximations at this level of development.
Young children float in and out of tunefulness and in and out of rhythmicity. A young child’s performance any given day will vary from that of any other day, and even from that of successive performances. The evaluation of a single musical response cannot be conclusive as a measure of the young child’s music development.
“The Modest Violet” is a musically sophisticated little song with a Haiku text many would assume would not “appeal” to little children. This two year old chooses to sing this little Art Song over traditional folk songs, play songs, and pop songs. Little children are truly artists.
Song Notation [From the Come Children Sing Institute SONG LIBRARY]
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