Music, Music, Music, Music, Music, Music, Music October 19 2025
What does Waldorf education have to do with music? Everything!
Singing songs, singing rounds, singing the seasons, singing of all kinds, pentatonic flutes, recorder playing, string instruments, flutes, orchestra, choral singing, percussion instruments, musical plays, and more, and more! From singing through the day in preschool and kindergarten, to mastering the pentatonic flute in grades one and two, to learning the recorder in grade three and starting a stringed instrument, to full form orchestra to, alto, tenor, and bass recorders, and singing for just about everything—music is integral to everything taught in Waldorf schools.
At Waldorf Publications, we work energetically to support musical activities with a joyful fervor. We have books for recorder playing — Music From Around the World for Three-Part Recorder Ensemble; by Michael Preston; Recorder Ensemble and 25 Chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach both by Steve Bernstein; and now a complete set of 10 recorder books (5 for students; 5 for teachers) by David Gable who, out of his decades of teaching music at the Cape Cod Waldorf School, offers clear and simple instructions on how to introduce the diatonic recorder and how to simply and steadily build skills in playing the instrument. By fifth grade he introduces alto and tenor recorders and then, in seventh grade, the bass can be added for a rich, low, (and to some ears, comical) quality.
This series, Play! Recorders in the Classroom! is now complete as a guide, and is particularly useful to class teachers who have never had the chance to learn to play a musical instrument. They can now study along with their students to learn how to play the recorder like a musician! Beginning in grade three, where pentatonic flutes have been part of the classroom since grade one, each set of two books, one as a guide for teachers, and one with music only for students, helps both teachers and students master each note on a soprano recorder (third and fourth grades) and then alto, tenor, and bass recorders (grades five through eight). Followed carefully with practice several times a week for ten or fifteen minutes, beautiful music can be the result.
It’s a miraculous thing how much more deeply music allows lessons to penetrate into the souls and memories of young people. Songs help children remember times tables, hear languages that are not their own, and understand a bit about ancient civilizations. Experience the Lydian mode of music, expressing the mood of ancient Greece, for example, or songs of the Troubadours from the Middle Ages. In modern world history, La Marseillaise, and “Do You Hear the People Sing” from Les Misérables can communicate more than a thousand words of teaching or reading to build a revolutionary mood.
Much research has been conducted concerning the benefits of learning to play a musical instrument. The steady practice, gaining proficiency in music literacy (another foreign language, after all!) and concentration necessarily make for increased skills, focus, and competence in several arenas. In one research project, Dr. Elizabeth Spelke, a research fellow at Harvard, studied youngsters who played soccer and youngsters who studied a musical instrument. At the end of a year, the musical group’s comprehension of complex mathematics was significantly higher than that of their soccer-playing counterparts.
Music also plays a grand part in eurythmy lessons — a dance form that expresses music and word in movement, unique to Waldorf schools. The music in these dance lessons buoys up the children’s capacities to identify tone, intervals, and pitch with movement, making these realities of music visible through human gesture and movement.
High School Eurythmy at Green Meadow Waldorf School.
The mood, rhythm, and pace of music all contribute to musical comprehension that serves children for life in music appreciation and comprehension. Again, the social aspects involved in dancing with others include spatial awareness and sensitivity to the spaces between us all — a subtle but powerful education all on its own.
“If music be the food of love, play on!” Duke Orsino said in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night! And so, music is nourishment in love — love of harmony, love of learning, love of life. Incorporated into all learning, music can make a deep and lasting difference in a young person’s journey of learning, uprightness, and cooperative community.
