The oldest song in the world

Here is an opportunity to read about, view and listen to the oldest known song in the world.

I do wonder if the rhythm is correct! Sounds too modern.

The oldest instrument in the world

Here is an opportunity to view, listen to and read about the oldest musical instrument so far discovered. It is believed to be a neanderthal flute.

The Yarts

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.
SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

Creating stuff that will really last

In Making the Cut, Doug Wilson says that some of what we do now will last into eternity, citing 1 Corinthians 3:10-15.

1 Corinthians 3:10-15 Because of God's grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have-- Jesus Christ. 12 Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials-- gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. 13 But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person's work has any value. 14 If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. 15 But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames. [New Living Translation, 2nd ed.

This is an intriguing thought. Doug applies it to our music-making.

What we do here matters. The work we do matters. This is not limited to ethical good works; it includes cultural good works.

In music, what we sing matters. The way we sing it matters. What we compose matters. In the resurrection, we will be given a new song, but this does not mean that the old songs will be taken away. Too often, evangelical Christians throw up their cultural achievements like makeshift scaffolding. We think, "It’s all gonna burn, man," and so what we do here does not matter. But as Paul teaches us in 1 Cor. 3, some of it is going to burn, but other aspects of what we do in ministry will be tested and purified. Some of our hymns will be with us in the resurrection. Rather than trying to guess which ones, we need to turn our attention to all of them, with an educated desire for all of them to glorify the Lamb as worthy, "the Lamb that was slain." We should sing as though we wanted all of them to make the cut.

Singing

Do you sing? Lots of people do, but I notice that many don't. Some people feel really awkward singing. Dancing is what makes me feel awkward. I'm clumsy and feel like I have two left feet.

But although I have a really ordinary voice, I've always enjoyed singing. When I got to high school, I was invited to join the Belmont High School Choral Group, which I thought was a great honour. I was a tenor for a brief time, but my voice deepened and I had to change to bass.

We used to sing a version of the well-known Bach choral from St Matthew Passion, which as a hymn is called O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded. But our version was called Commit Thy Way To Jesus.

And we sang what we called Negro Spirituals such as Who's That a-calling? and Standing in the Need of Prayer. I think we should call them African-American Spirituals currently, until the next name change...

In the 1960s, it seemed that every school had a choir and choral group, but few had bands. These days, lots of schools have stage bands and concert bands, but not so many have choirs.

Quite a few of my piano students over the 40 years I've been teaching piano have been shy about singing. They think that a musician is someone who presses keys, hits things or blows into metal or wood. But a singer, they think, is a person who hangs round with a bunch of musicians.

WRONG! That's a drummer! [Sorry Pete...]

I think everyone should learn to sing for these reasons:

1. Sing to praise the God who made you for the wonderful world he has given us and especially for sending his Son Jesus to die for our sins.
2. Learn to sing so you can sing to your children and grandchildren.
3. If you learn to use your very first instrument [your own body and especially your voice], playing another instrument will come more easily and you will play it more musically if you play what you are singing in your head.

You are a really terrific portable musical instrument that doesn't need to be plugged in and won't run out of batteries for ages, we hope.