Bayside - I And I

And then one day at a Berlin school, standing in front of fifty children of six to nine years old, I realized how poorly most of them are oriented in classical music and how little they learn about it in school lessons. Who is Mozart, what is a symphony, how does a violin sound - they had no idea about this. But the rapper 50Cent's song was known to almost everyone, while the names of Beethoven or Brahms did not tell them anything. And when I asked them to sing a melody, I heard popular songs, and not songs, for example, Schubert or Mendelssohn. But nevertheless, at the end of the meeting, when I played Bach’s jig to them, they not only listened attentively, but even admitted: “Wow, that sounds cool!” “Rhapsody at school” is designed to show boys and girls that, besides rock and pop music, there is other music, show them how it sounds and what emotions it evokes,perhaps even “infect” them with Mozart and Bach. This is just a modest beginning, nothing more, but if you manage to arouse interest in one of them, if the children can sit quietly and listen carefully for some time, we can admit that the lesson was not in vain. Or maybe someone will even want to learn how to play one instrument or another, or at least someday go to a concert.