Conducting The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky: so easy a child could do it. Well, maybe not exactly, but this kid is pretty darn impressive. He’s obviously spent some time listening to the piece and something in his genuine excitement tells me that it wasn’t anything forced on him by a parent. Even though we might consider The Rite of Spring “tame” by today’s contemporary music standards, it’s still a formidable and extremely complex piece of music. But to see a five year old kid having so much fun with it—even grooving to it, you might say, not to mention displaying some pretty keen conducting chops—says something about early exposure to contemporary music.
Filed in: Education.
Tags: conducting, early education, kids, rite of spring, stravinsky
What a spectacular confirmation that talent is a genetic trait. Larry, you did a wonderful job of videographer as well as being an inspirational parent. I guess Hillary is not so excited as Charliet is.
Beautiful to watch and a glimmer of hope that rap music is not the only thing a child in this day and age will hear.
Larry–I love it!!! So, when you have two gigs at the same time, you must allow your son to take one! And don’t think the younger sibling walking by didn’t absorb everything on the way! My oldest son used to conduct the ‘Nutcracker’ at age 3, but he aspires to be a primary care physician and perhaps a cardio-thoracic surgeon! So, can I book a date in 2025 with your son?
Hi Brian! I’m the father and videographer of the child conducting in that video. I’m so excited and overwhelmed by the response that this video has had, and the great discussions that have ensued. I happen to be a professional conductor, which is why his outlet is conducting, but I think it could just as easily have been dancing or some other sort of physical outpouring of expression.
Awesome. In response to Erik, perhaps this is a way to deal with or even possibly prevent attention deficit disorder. What that kid was doing required no small amount of attention. Those that know me and where I used to work know that dealing with pieces over 5 minutes in length became a very hot issue for myself and others. But this is proof that people can and will accept it given the right exposure. Kudos to those parents for having that recording in their home.
That’s awesome! From my experience with my own kids (currently a 3yo and an 8mo) I definitely think that the rhythms and sounds of much “difficult” modern classical music can be experienced as physically immediate and understood by children who are exposed at a young age. Complex aural memories also seem to be formed and recalled easily at this age- for my daughter this includes exact wording of sentences in long stories that I read aloud and associations of melodic fragments with particular movies, etc. The boy in this video, while showing what may be particularly special gifts, is just an example of how children can process complexity in music as physical excitement. We just need to expose them to as much music as possible, paying attention to our own attitudes about orchestral music (for instance) and the associations that are formed. By age 5, a lot of kids would only associate music like this with a “scary” part of a movie, or think that it goes on too long because they only hear songs that are under 4 minutes.