Snoozing With the Masters

I love it when good things happen on their own. A few weeks ago, Peter asked me to identify a song. He hummed the iconic 4 note introduction to Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony. He knew it was Beethoven, but did not know the title of the piece. After I identified it, and explained that those are the opening notes of just the 1^st movement of the symphony, and that there were 3 other movements, he asked if I could make a CD of the piece so he could fall asleep to it at night. After a few evenings of listening, he then asked me for a recording of the Nutcracker. He didn’t receive the abbreviated concert suite, he fell asleep to the entire ballet. Next, he asked for more music by “real composers”. I have been burning CDs of movements from lots of masterworks, exposing him to Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Mozart, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky. I even slipped in some Sibelius. His hunger is growing. He asked me this morning if I could include in the next disc this song (then he began humming Fur Elise).

With all the opportunities that today’s kids have to be bombarded with noise and audible trash, Peter is requesting the classics. He was humming Tchaikovsky at the school bus this morning. I would say that he falls asleep with good things in his ear, and he wakes up with it in his brain.