Music at Trinity School

Music, with its elements of melody, rhythm and movement, lies at the very center of our being.  We are all born as creatures of music, naturally accustomed to regularly recurring patterns of sound, delighting in variations of pitch, duration, and timbre, and enjoying the freedom of using our own voices and bodies to make sounds of our own.

Music at Trinity School seeks to encourage and develop the natural aptitude for music that we all possess, young and old.  Beginning with the instrument that we all own, we sing!  From Junior Kindergarten up, we build over the year an age appropriate repertoire of songs that serve in two particularly important ways:

They bring the class together into focus as one beautiful voice where each is important
They emphasis our belief that singing is a natural activity, and that we all can sing

From the beginning of their vocal training, the concepts of good singing are introduced, and the idea that singing is something that needs to be practiced just like any other activity.  Your children should be singing whenever they feel so moved!  In the early grades, matching pitches, and learning how to sing together as a group are both important.  As they mature, rounds and partner songs are introduced to develop their ability to hold their line while hearing something else going on.

Scientific evidence suggests that we are all born with excellent senses of rhythm, having been carried around by our mothers for nine months.  This can be lost.  At Trinity School, we move in music, particularly with the younger grades.  Not only is this helpful for their developing ability to coordinate their movements, it’s also lots of fun! 

We also use non-pitched and pitched percussion instruments regularly in the classroom.  We explore the sounds of each, finding words to express their differences and similarities.  We learn about the fundamental musical concepts of sound and silence, of high and low, quick and slow, soft and loud, long and short, rough and smooth.  How to organize sound becomes an important issue: when to play, when not to play, and what to play.  Work with the instruments begins as accompanimental.  Composition is also encouraged, where we work either as a whole class or in small groups, telling stories or setting scenes in sound.

We begin to learn how to play hand bells at third grade, continuing in grades four and five.  It is an excellent way for every child to learn to read music, and to be an important part in a team activity producing something of musical beauty.  This year, second grade will be introduced to the recorder.  

We also learn to listen, and to discuss what we hear.  Across the grades, we listen to music from different centuries and from different cultures.  We learn that all music can be discussed using the same vocabulary, and that all music can be interesting even though we may not like it all.  We learn about the different sounds of the instruments, we learn the names of the instruments.  We learn how to talk about the form of a piece of music, terms that can be used as easily for a piece of symphonic music as for a rap song.

Moving beyond the basics of music at Trinity that have been described above, the music curriculum also pays attention to the general curriculum of each of the grades, supporting it thematically wherever it can.  That being said, the new year has begun with an all school music project on dance: dances from around the world, from different centuries, and dances with words and without words.  We will follow this with a shorter project on the Halloween theme, and then will prepare to retell the Christmas Story in an all school production.