For many reasons sound is an element to be considered at many levels; starting with, what I consider the most important one: COMMUNICATION (the relationship that forms when two people talk, the ‘speaker’ & the ‘listener’), continuing with the joy that music and every activity that involves sound offers, and of course the creativity and expression of such it withholds.

The UNESCO Week of Sound is held in January each year, with the aim to educate the public and raise awareness among all actors in society about the importance of the quality of our sound environment.

“Sound is important; it affects all ages and permeates economic, environmental, societal, medical, industrial and cultural dimensions. It contributes to our individual and collective behavior, helping to shape the relationships we form with others. Supported by the Week of Sound association, since 2004 a week of events is organized around five sound-related themes using a cross-cutting approach: (hearing) health, acoustics and the sound environment, recording and reproduction techniques, the relationship between image and sound, and musical expression and education. Convinced that the sound environment, because of its importance, influences our personal and collective behavior, UNESCO’s General Conference at its 39th session in 2017 recommended that UNESCO works towards raising awareness of sound-related problems at the international level and promotes good practices related to sound in all areas of life, starting from early childhood”.

Within an ample theme such as “Sound”, we can find plenty to write about musical expression and education.

“We tend to think that the realm of music is the privileged area of some happy few. Experience has taught us, however, that if offered the right kind of education from a very early age onwards, anyone is capable of entering the realm of music. Not everyone has the talent to practice music at an artistic level, or create new work, but everyone can reach a stage where they can enjoy it.” (From:” The Montessori Approach to Music” (P.1)

As the Montessori approach to music is based upon the understanding that young children learn first through their experiences and senses, we at once engage the ear, the eye, the voice, the hand, the body, and the soul of the child – the whole of the child is actively involved in the entire musical [sound] experience.

“Music is essential to your child’s development; music helps children develop skills in communication and self-expression. It brings joy to the Montessori classroom and is instrumental in developing a child’s basic math and literacy performance. Best of all, children of any age and at any level can benefit from music in the classroom … we find 4 reasons why:

• Music enhances a child’s brain development. With recognizing the child’s sensation development (sensory area) periods and introducing experiences that coincide with them; during early childhood music helps build connections between brain cells that boost the child’s cognitive development.
• Music helps children understand and communicate their feelings/emotions. Classical music, Mozart specifically, has a calming effect on children and adults; it is used not only in Montessori classrooms, but also in the field of Neurofeedback to enhance concentration and focus on academic work. Especially with ADHD challenged individuals.
• Music helps develop your child’s spatial skills. How can music help your child build spatial reasoning and math proficiency? It’s simple. Music is all about patterns. It involves ratios, proportions, and even basic math skills.
• Music is a mood booster.  From birth, children react to music; they may begin to breathe more rapidly, smile or vocalize, or it can make them calmer as a reaction to smooth music or sounds.

For Dr Montessori Music and Sound are closely related; it would not be right not to consider her approach to music without including her vision on sound itself.

“Recent research in neuroscience shows how the brain organizes itself in response to sensory input. Montessori education involves a very orderly education of the senses, and research on the self-organizing properties of the brain can be viewed as supportive of that process” (p.342) … “Research [also] suggests that the quality of one’s sensory discrimination capacities is influenced by sensory experiences one has early in life. Those experiences serve to organize cognitive structures in a manner that optimizes discriminative capacities specific to the stimuli one experienced early in life. Furthermore, since higher cognitive processes arise out of lower ones, cognitive organization early in development could have an important impact at higher levels of processing” (p.343) … “One possible reason for the relation is that sensory discrimination might feed into a multitude of higher-level abilities. For one, language is enabled by fine auditory discriminations between phonemes, and by making such discriminations very quickly” … (p.344).

“The brain organizes itself in response to input received early in development. The period of maximal plasticity is probably very early in life, before initial cell assemblies and neural connections are created; to optimize children’s perceptual capacities, they should be exposed to an orderly progression of sensory information in early childhood. Because higher cognitive skills are built on the foundation of simpler ones, such organization could have exponential effects on higher cognitive functions” (p.347).( From “The Science Behind the Genius”: Angeline Stoll Lillard. Oxford University Press.)

The Sound Cylinders isolate various sounds and thus sensitize children to sounds in the world. Then there are the Montessori Bells, which are used to introduce children to music and through various activities with songs and clapping; this way, children learn to appreciate and create melodies listening closely to the sounds of the phonemes and the notes.

“Teachers often play soothing classical music in the classroom. The purpose of this was to create an environment that Dr. Montessori believed would most interest children in work, and thus be most conducive to learning: “We have repeatedly emphasized that both in the environment at school and in the materials used everything should be carefully considered in its artistic bearings, to provide ample room for development for all the phenomena of attention and persistence in work which are the secret keys of self-education.”

(p.161) from: “The Science Behind the Genius”. Angeline Stoll Lillard. Kindle Edition)

These excerpts about Dr Montessori’s approach to sound are similar and in accordance with many theorists that confirm that sound and the differentiation of the sensory inputs is extensive at a young age, right when neuroplasticity is at its highest and optimal. In the Montessori classroom, in the Sensory Area we can find specific materials that help children at a very young age to isolate inputs for the 5 senses; in case of sound experiences, children work with a phonetic approach while learning to read, every letter makes a sound, also the combinations of sounds make up syllables and so on; differentiating these will help children to recognize them, thus, to be able to read.

Music is a universal language, loved by children and adults in cultures throughout the world. Children have an uninhibited inclination to move, dance, and make music, as well as an innate capacity to appreciate all types of music. Musical activities are included in the daily life of the Montessori classroom and respected as much as other curriculum subjects; music is fundamental in early childhood education, helping children to develop in various ways, including problem-solving and logical thinking skills. Language acquisition is enhanced as children learn songs with varied vocabulary, meter, and rhyme. Cultural lessons are enriched with songs about continents, planets, respect for the Earth, and much more.

Sound and Music are the main element of communication, it has “something to say” about others, about other cultures and engaging with it helps the child to experience the value of diversity and respect for others that are different. It is very important that as teachers and parents we can forge these values by having our students and children be in close contact to those elements.

On a more personal note: I was fortunate enough to have a “taste” of different musical and cultural heritage of so many places; living in Venezuela my dad build an impressive collection of folk and autochthonous music which I learned to appreciate and love. There was always this distinctive sound of the music in each country we visited, and of course the country I lived in for so many years and where my children grew up, Venezuela. It was in that country that my oldest son started his career in music; from school band, music school, jazz music school, to earning his degree as a Sound Engineer. He now lives in Madrid, Spain, and is a proud member of the band Candeleros; their music, a mix of African/Caribbean sounds who take from ‘Cumbia’,’ Merengue’, and ‘Dub’, being living proof of the fact that Cumbia music travelled to Europe to stay; Candeleros’ six members come from Venezuela and Colombia and have been able to offer a diversity of sounds and cultural heritage from these two Latin American regions bringing joy and fun to their audience. (Check out their Instagram @candelerosmad)

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