The teaching of music has made enormous strides in the past fifty years. Performance is booming. As several academics have remarked in recent years, young people in secondary school are now playing at the standard of former tertiary students.. Orchestras, bands, school concerts, school tours, performance at public events ‒ the teenage music calendar is full to bursting ‒ to be out there, up front, doing it..

But who is listening?.

Go to a symphony concert and row after row of grey heads nod attentively to the music. Seasoned listeners, they bring a knowledgeable critique and lifetime appreciation to focus on the music-making. But where are the young ones? And the middle-lifers? Out there, presumably, doing it!?!.

What has caused this gap between music-making and music appreciation?.

To start with, the grey heads went to schools where THE excursion for the year was to go to a Schools Symphony Concert. Radio stations were finite, definable, and dominated family life. Listeners were generally people who focussed on one broadcaster, and if your bent was classical music, that meant the ABC. And many informative programs, such as that presented by Neville Cardus, talking about music, teaching, expanding concepts and consciousness, formed the fabric of musical life. (As teenagers my sister and I, shy kids from the bush, were asked a number of times “Where DID you girls get your musical knowledge?“ We didn’t really know the answer. It had come by osmosis from Auntie ABC.) Advent of records and record players expanded the available repertoire enormously, but still, lifetime habits of concert-going were well established in early life..

The multi-track, multi-media, multi-dimensional, multi-distractable revolution exploded soundlessly in our midst and the shock waves are still reverberating. School excursions are a dime a dozen. There is no longer a genre called ‘popular music’ ‒ it has as many heads as a hydra. No longer just ‘jazz’ but as many streams as devotees and exponents, no longer just ‘folk music’ but world music with its intertwining cultures, no longer just ‘classical’ music but film scores, sound scapes, liturgies, threnodies colliding with symphonies against a backdrop of global tragedies..

All of which is exciting, frightening and stimulating but brings with it a blur of impressions which no longer register with depth or intensity. Don’t stay still long enough to let anything sink in: endemic trivialisation..

The individual music-maker stands very small in this environment. There are, to put it simply, too many choices..

How is it, then, that our young people can become such competent performers? That requires concentration. Which brings us to a second soundless revolution; loss of physical freedom. The lazy days down at the local creek without an adult in cooee, the long walks, the casual ebb and flow of children from one house, one street, one park to another (‘Mind you’re home by dusk!’) have gone forever. Now it’s stranger danger and get in the car while I go to the supermarket, children accosted on the way to school by strange blokes in track suits (or half a track suit), innocent-faced street-wise children asking “Do you want to score?“ Alas, they are not talking about musical manuscripts..

Childrens’ lives have become intensely structured. Before- and after-school activities every day of the week; sport, language-school, more sport, dance, sport gymnastics, sport and sport dominate the week, Saturdays and often Sundays as well. Music lessons and practise fit more readily into this structured dimension. But ask any taxi-parent; the pace is killing..

Time out is the casualty; time for absorbing, reflecting, assimilating and truly listening. Subliminally the ear is attuned to the four and a half minute grab and the twenty second sales pitch. Neither capturing more than superficial attention..

Who has the time, the interest or the attention span to sit through a concert? And here is the dilemma. The professional life of performers depends on the musical life of listeners..

Music educators have a responsibility to this. Kids Concert Club is a pilot program testing possibilities. The Australia Pro Arte and Australian Chamber Soloists series of concerts on Sunday afternoons was chosen as a good focus: in particular, it avoided a late night finish which could disrupt the weekly routine of youngsters. It also allowed the luxury of an ‘all-together’ late afternoon tea at a favourite cafe (ice-cream and chips mostly chosen by kids, coffee and cake for adults). In particular, the music teacher attended with the group, taking a personal interest in the concert, the performers and the opinions of children and adults alike.

Out of six concerts offered, three were selected. The Concert Manager and administrative committee have been keen to support, and introduced special rates for children and families. This enabled many of the less-affluent to have access. The music teacher takes a group of unaccompanied children, and a number of parents come with others.

It transpired that this was the first time many of the adults, let alone children, had ever been in a concert hall. Initially somewhat ill at ease and a little inclined to fidget, the change in the children’s behaviour over time has been remarkable. They soon become seasoned concert-goers. Most gratifying for the music teacher was the surprise and delight of both adults and kids in discovering the music, the concert-hall and the joy of talking about it afterwards. Children are very at home with contemporary music, and often choose it as their favourite work. (At the most recent concert, two eight-year olds voted Brenton Broadstock’s Federation Square the best work in the whole program. Their comments on it were most perceptive, showing insight far beyond their years.)

The social aspect of this interaction is a most important part. Attendance of the teacher, enthusiastic involvement of the teacher, personal interest of the teacher in all aspects of the day (including the quality of the ice-cream and chips!) is an essential ingredient. This is teaching by example, but also becomes more; it becomes a social focus, a network and a friendship group for everyone taking part. Some families have enjoyed it so much they have attended more concerts. As an introduction to concert-going, the Club has proved to be a resounding success.

Additional activities have been trialled and are very successful. These include:

• Teaching students to play themes from the concert works in their regular music lesson.
• Playing simple arrangements of some of the works in orchestra rehearsal time.
• Introducing ideas about the works for children to think about (e.g. if the work is long, and you find it hard to follow, make pictures and stories in your head that would fit the music.
• What sort of film would you make to this music? -- what sort of game is this composer playing with this scale? and so on).
• Meeting composers (e.g. George Dreyfus) who are welcoming and really interested to meet the children.
• Talking about the kinds of people the composers were ‒ the human side, the ‘way people live’. (George Dreyfus has been immensely supportive, sending a score of Larino, Safe Haven for the senior orchestra to play, sending the children photographs and cuttings from newspapers about the arrival of his group of Jewish children just before World War 2, and writing letters to the group. The children saw kids just like themselves ‒ but victims of war and hatred. I have heard Larino played many times, technically much better, but never with the feeling that this group performed it. Ross Edwards has also been very supportive, writing personal letters to the group when we played two short pieces of his).

Yes, it’s a huge amount of work. But its rewards are exceptional. It is not run for gain or profit, but for the growth of an ideal. After four years, it needs expansion with involvement of more teachers and students.

It is the personal and ‘real life’ context that makes this pilot project work. Australians do not respond well to stuffy elitism. They respond extremely well to human need, human caring, human involvement. The development of these directions in Symphony Australia are to be resoundingly applauded. All honour to our past mentors, people like Sir Bernard Heinze, who would sit up all night in a second class railway carriage to bring the message of music to Australian schools. And all honour to Auntie ABC. We have a strong past and an inventive and adaptable present. Together we can help build a sound and successful musical future.

Dindy Vaughan BA (Hons) MA. Recipient of the University of Sydney Alumni Award for Achievement in Community Service Selected to appear in Who’s Who in the World, Millennium 2000 edition, and subsequent editions. Selected to appear in the worldwide publications Outstanding People of the 20th Century and Outstanding Intellects of the 21st Century.

Contact: (03) 9870 3052; email: rondaf@vicnet.net.au.