Let There Be Music: The Music Curriculum in the Waldorf

School, Grades 1-8 (Reprinted from RENEWAL Magazine)

As the main lesson curriculum follows the very specific stages of child development, so also does
the music curriculum. Engaging the soul activities of thinking, feeling, and willing in the child, the
study and experience of the various elements in music arouse and cultivate the very forces
necessary to be able to meet the challenges of the world with enthusiasm and confidence.

The music program in each Waldorf school reflects the specific skills, talents, and interests of the
class teachers and of the music faculty. The size and configuration of the school building, the
number of students, and the funding available also play a role. In every school, however, is the
realization that music is necessary and essential to the entire Waldorf school experience.

What follows is a general overview of the Waldorf music curriculum. It briefly describes the
music activities in each grade in view of the understanding of child development that underlies
Waldorf Education. What is done in each grade builds upon the work of the previous year,
deepening and broadening the skills and experiences already acquired.

It is in the early grades that Waldorf music education can look most different from traditional
music education. It is not obvious that the children are acquiring musical skills. They are not yet
reading traditional notation or keeping time to a strong beat. In the teaching of music, as in all
Waldorf pedagogy, there is an awareness of the importance of bringing the right thing at the
right time.
 Singing is part of the daily
experience of every Waldorf student.
The first grader, for example, is at a particular point in his evolution as a human being. What is
brought to him as musical experience must be appropriate to his stage of development. The
young child does not experience music as an adult does. He is still living musically in a world of
sound, tone, and rhythm that is, as yet, unformed and undifferentiated. The teacher must bring
something appropriate to the child and bring it with reverence, imagination, and enthusiasm. The
aim is not simply to teach children to sing and to play music, but to awaken qualities of soul.

Grade One

The six- or seven-year-old, still fresh from the spiritual world, is just beginning her evolution as a
human being. She is “unfinished” and open to the outside environment. She experiences music
as a surrounding, permeating force and feels that “the music sings me,” rather than “I sing the
music.” Singing freely in the “mood of the fifth”—pentatonic melodies that employ open
intervals of the fifth, moving around the central tone A—brings this floating, unfinished quality
that is appropriate for the first grader.

A variety of instrumental sounds are used for “tone color” and mood only, not to accompany the
singing with harmony or beat. The children sing songs about nature, the seasons, and the magical
world of elves, gnomes, and fairies. Movement, dances, and song games address the in- and
outbreathing qualities we strive to nurture both on the physical and the soul level.
In most schools, the first graders first learn to play a Choroi interval flute and then the pentatonic
flute. These simple wooden flutes possess only the tones of the scale that create the larger, open
intervals. Often the lyre is introduced in grade one. Improvisational games and activities are used
extensively, and, above all, the experience of listening is cultivated.

Grade Two

Here, music continues to be presented so that it appeals to the feeling life of the child. Music in
the “mood of the fifth” is gradually replaced by more purely pentatonic melodies. By the end of
second grade, there are pentatonic songs that have a definite tonic ending—pentatonic major on
G and pentatonic minor on E. The songs are about nature and the seasons, and also about the
saints, heroes, and fable characters whom the children encounter in their main lesson blocks.

This pentatonic spring song is an appropriate song for the end of the second grade. From
Shepherd’s Songbook by Elisabeth Lebret, published by the Waldorf School Association of
Ontario.
Work on the Choroi pentatonic flute and lyre is continued, as is the development of soul
breathing. The second graders explore the polarities and contrasts in music, between listening
and making music, high and low tones, loud and soft, fast and slow, and the exploration of
various tone colors. This happens, still without the use of formal musical terms, still in the realm
of feeling. Improvisation is continued. Some preparatory experiences are introduced as a prelude
to composition and traditional notation, which begin formally in grade three.

Grade Three

During the third grade, most children go through the inner transformation that Rudolf Steiner
called the “nine-year change.” The child incarnates more fully into the physical body, leaves the
magical world of early childhood, and experiences himself as an independent being separate
from the world. A number of new musical experiences are now appropriate: singing songs in a
major diatonic key; playing the Choroi diatonic C-flute; and learning the rudiments of musical
notation, though in an imaginative way. The keynote C is central now, providing a “landing,” or
grounding point, for the child who is at this stage in the incarnating process.

Sacred songs and folk songs are important, as are songs about house building, cooking,
gardening, and telling time—key subjects in the third-grade curriculum. As preparation for part-
singing, the children learn songs in which they can experience call-and-response, drones,
antiphony, ostinatos, and other steps toward singing in harmony. They make music lesson books
that contain their growing musical vocabulary and that show their new skills in reading and
writing traditional musical notation.

The musical element of rhythm tied to beat is introduced in the third grade. Steiner speaks of
beat as “driving us into our bones,” so that it is now appropriate for the nine-year-old who is
entering more deeply into the physical body and the material world. Simple percussion
instruments are used to explore beat, rhythm, and other qualities of tempo.

For the younger child, performing for an audience engenders too much self-consciousness—
literally. It is more appropriate to “share” the class workings at an assembly or other small
classroom venue for parents with the children in their own circle, rather than facing an audience,
whose gaze and focus is on them. After the nine-year change, the child’s awareness of her own
individuality has developed sufficiently to meet this experience in a healthy way.

Grade Four

Having gone through the nine-year change, fourth graders are ready for another new set of
musical experiences. If the proper preparation has been provided for part-singing and harmony,
the children will now be able to sing simple rounds, canons, descants, and quodlibets (partner
songs) with grace and ease. Holding on to one’s own part while listening to the other and to the
whole is challenging, and the fourth grader is now ready to take on such an activity.

The curriculum includes the Norse myths, local geography, and local history. The children can
learn their state song, local folk songs, and songs having to do with their regional geography.
What they sing should express their growing strength and vitality and also their deepening inner
life. Songs in minor and major keys are utilized, and the moods they engender are explored.
 In the third grade, and sometimes the fourth,
most children take up a stringed instrument, typically the violin or perhaps the cello.
In most schools, children start to play a stringed instrument, usually the violin, in the fourth
grade. If this has begun in grade three, then the fourth grade can be the time when some
students opt for the cello or viola. Work on the C-flute is continued, incorporating harmony parts
to accompany the singing, or part reading on the flute itself. Various keys and their accidentals
are learned on the flute. In some schools, students work with instruments connected to the local
culture: the ukulele in Hawaii, the hammered dulcimer in Appalachia, or the guitar in the West,
for example.

The fourth graders continue their study of music notation, with the main lesson block on
fractions nicely complementing the learning of the time signatures. Various meters are
experienced and studied. By the end of the year, the children should be able to sight-read simple
melodies, both vocally and instrumentally.

Since the children have “landed” in a world where music is a more external reality, deeper work
with an instrument can begin. Private lessons, regular practice, and the striving for excellence,
while hardening and stressful for the younger child, are now—well after the nine-year change—
appropriate and manageable.
The child by the end of grade four has acquired important basic musical skills. The children of
course come with differing musical aptitudes, so that their levels of skill will vary.  And some
children will have had the advantage of musical experiences and education outside of school. In a
Waldorf school, however, the assumption is that every child has the innate capacity to sing and
to make music and that this capacity should be developed as much as it can be.

The music curriculum in the upper grades of the Waldorf school brings the children ever more
sophisticated and challenging musical experiences, but experiences that are appropriate to their
stages of development.

Grade Five

In Waldorf circles, grade five—the fulcrum point of the grade school years—is usually referred to
as “the Golden Age of Childhood.” The children realize or approximate a certain harmony and
balance in their physical and emotional development. In addition to the study of ancient India,
Persia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, the study of the magnificent and inspirational culture of ancient
Greece and the Greek ideal of grace, beauty, and balance is at the heart of the fifth-grade
curriculum. The children strive toward this harmony, and their musical activities reflect and
support this. Appropriate songs—such as “Glorious Apollo,” “Fair Moon,” and “Iona Gloria”—are
songs that bespeak harmony and balance in form.

In Waldorf schools in the United States, American geography is also an important study block in
the fifth grade. The rich American folk music tradition provides many songs and accompanying
song games that are suitable for grade five. Examples of such song games are “Alabama Gal,”
“Shoo Fly,” and “Godling, Godling.” These can be sung in two or three parts, so that the children
develop skill in singing together in harmony. Many folk songs are either in the pentatonic scale or
in one of the traditional modes. These tonalities are precursors to our more familiar major and
minor scales and lend themselves well to improvisation.
 Traditional
American folk songs such as “The Erie Canal” are learned during the fifth-grade block on
American geography.
The children also study the basic principles of composition, learning how to create a score using
the traditional notation that was introduced in grade three. Scales, as well as modes, are studied,
and the musical key signatures are explored more deeply. This study includes the Circle of Fifths,
one of the theoretical wonders in music and a foundation for the study of relationships in music
scale tonalities.
 The Circle of Fifths can be introduced in a
graphically variant form that is the basis for an aesthetically pleasing exercise in geometric
drawing.
The Circle of Fifths is a basis for the study of music theory in the later grades. Rudolf Steiner
suggested that purely conceptual music theory is best brought at around age sixteen or
seventeen.* Thus, for the fifth grader the Circle of Fifths should be presented in an imaginative
and artistic way. The freehand geometry block in grade five provides an excellent opportunity for
such a presentation. One can have the children create beautiful forms within the Circle of Fifths,
indicating the relationships of the intervals and the key progressions.

The children may begin to study an orchestral instrument other than the violin or cello, such as
the clarinet or flute. Or the string program can be expanded to include the bass viol. String
ensembles of varied skill levels are formed.

In many schools, the children continue work on the diatonic Choroi flute, and, in others, the
recorder is introduced. Some music teachers bring the alto recorder first, since its range is more
like that of the fifth grader’s singing voice, and—because it is a new instrument with a new tuning
and fingering— everyone can start afresh together, working from a common ground of
experience. It is also possible to start with the soprano recorder only, or with both instruments.
 Fifth graders
experiment with musical rhythms on a version of the gamelon, a traditional musical instrument
from Bali.

Grade Six

In grade six, the children study ancient Rome. Therefore, this is the time for them to experience
the Latin language through the many wonderful Latin songs and rounds available. During this
study of Rome, songs that lend themselves to marching are particularly well suited to the sixth
grader. Marching patterns and forms can be created together by the students and teacher and
carried out with precision and intention while singing. Creating these exact forms echoes what
the children are doing in the grade six geometry block, where they are studying classical
Euclidean geometry and using compasses and protractors.

The Middle Ages is another focus of study in the sixth-grade main lesson. The music curriculum
can draw on the vast and rich repertoire from medieval music history. The voices of most of the
children are still pure and unchanged, and singing plainchant or Gregorian chant is a form and
style perfectly suited for them at this time. “Pange Lingua,” “Ut Queant Laxis,” and the Kyrie
from the “Missa Cunctipotens Genitor Deus” are wonderful examples of plainchant, a vocal
musical form that expresses the important reverential aspect in medieval life.

If any children are experiencing the onset of the voice change of puberty, one can provide them
with musical experiences in which they, too, feel successful and empowered. Girls’ voices begin
to change at this time, as well, but their vocal shift is not nearly as dramatic as that of the boys.
The changing male voice is often very limited in its range. Creating drones or ostinatos for a song
is a way to give the boys something they can successfully sing, which not only contributes greatly
to the musical experience itself, but also is in keeping with the style and quality of medieval
music. Other aspects of music important during the Middle Ages are covered, such as the
relationship of text to music, the spread of music around Europe, and the beginnings of notation
and its development.

The sixth graders study acoustics as part of their physics block. This is a wonderful opportunity to
integrate the music curriculum with the study of natural science by experimenting with and
experiencing various aspects of sound and sound production. It could also be a time to explore
creating new forms of notation for sound pieces composed in class. The students each bring in
something that can make a sound, such as two rocks, pennies in a jar, waxed paper, or a lamp-
shade, and the class creates a composition using these “soundmakers.” A form of notation is
then created so that the composition can be expressed in written form and later replicated in
performance. The symbols represent the duration, pitch (if applicable), dynamics, and any other
musical nuances in the composition. This creative exploration can accompany the study of the
development of traditional music notation from its origins in the Middle Ages.

The sixth grade is also an appropriate time to introduce the recorder, if it has not been introduced
already in the fifth grade. The children can learn to play any of the four most commonly used
recorders—soprano, alto, tenor—and, if their hands are large enough, the bass. The recorder
appeared and came to prominence in the Middle Ages, and the medieval repertoire for the
instrument is rich. There are many beautiful two-, three-, and four-part pieces that the class can
now play.

In some schools, the recorder is presented in an earlier grade. But to introduce the instrument
when the children are studying the historical period in which it gained popularity can be
especially rewarding. The focused and overtone-rich tonal quality of a recorder is quite different
from that of a Choroi flute and is more suited to the way the older child hears music and
experiences tone. Thus the child’s aural development may be another reason to postpone the
introduction of the recorders until sixth grade.

The recorder is a solo instrument and an instrument for consort playing, in which a small number
of players play recorders of the various voices.  A large group of children playing recorders at the
same time can sound strident and unpleasant. For classroom playing, it is important to have
good quality instruments in the various voices and, as much as possible, to keep all the recorders
in tune with each other. Recorders are made of wood or of plastic. Plastic recorders are generally
inexpensive, a good quality soprano costing perhaps twenty dollars. Wooden recorders range in
price from inexpensive (twenty to thirty dollars) to very expensive. A high quality rosewood
soprano can cost four or five hundred dollars. The standard of excellence in recorders is one
made of wood, and anyone serious about playing the recorder as a solo or ensemble instrument
would choose a high quality (and therefore relatively expensive) wooden instrument. There are,
though, excellent wooden sopranos that cost less than fifty dollars.

An inexpensive wooden recorder, while made from a natural material and having a certain visual,
aesthetic appeal and warmth, may not always be consistent in tone. Thus, some teachers prefer
plastic recorders for the children. Although less aesthetically pleasing to some, a plastic recorder
may be more consistent in tone than a comparably priced wooden one. To bring the highest
quality musical experiences to the children, it is better to have instruments that create beautiful
tone and have the ability to withstand the rigors of frequent classroom use than to use inferior
ones for the sake of appearance. Excellent wooden and plastic recorders are now available, and
care should be taken to choose the best instruments for a given situation.

Grade Seven

A focus of study in grade seven is the Renaissance— a period of cultural rebirth, world
exploration, and discoveries in science, astronomy, and other areas. The students experience the
rich vocal and instrumental repertoire of the age. Since the recorder was an important
instrument during the Renaissance, the seventh graders continue to play music for that
instrument, with all four standard versions of the instrument—soprano, alto, tenor, bass—now
having been introduced.
 St
udents from the Whidbey Island Waldorf School (Washington) played in a mixed ensemble at an
outdoor Michaelmas celebration.
Many of the children, both boys and girls, experience the changing voice during this year. While
their vocal instrument is delicate and fragile at this time, it is very important that they continue
singing through the change. Much can be lost if the voice goes unexercised. The music teacher
honors the process of change, explains it, assists it, and supports it by providing music that the
cambiata (changing voice) can successfully sing. Songs with a limited vocal range in the middle to
lower parts serve this. As mentioned earlier, the use of ostinatos and drones can help these
changing voices find their way in the choral setting and feel empowered in their contributions.

The study of physics in the seventh grade includes a block on the harmonic overtone series. This
is an excellent complement to the deeper exploration of intervals and harmony in the music
curriculum.

As the explorers of the Renaissance traveled the world, discovering things new and different, so,
too, can the seventh grader experience other cultures through world music and the many
wonderful folk songs from around the globe.
Grade Eight

The eighth grade is a year of challenges and changes. The students study the great revolutions—
American, French, Russian, and Industrial—and the human striving after freedom and the
realization of ideals. In their own development, the students are reaching the end of the seven-
year cycle that began at age seven and are now entering adolescence.

The music during grade eight attempts to meet this turbulent, often disturbing, always inward,
quality of the budding adolescent. It should reflect the profound changes that the student is
going through in his experience of the world and of himself. Music with deep meaning and
striving must be the basisof the musical experience during this special time. Ponderings about
death, loss, and the struggle to know oneself can be brought in song to meet this inward process.
“Ich Lebe Mein Leben,” “Immortal Bach,” and the “Winterreise” song cycle by Schubert all speak
to these universal human questions.

Songs about the ideals of freedom, equality, and brotherhood are inspiring and uplifting to the
eighth grader. Some excellent examples are “Hearken All,” “Freedom Is Coming,” and “The
British Grenadier.” Songs that include riddles, puzzles, or humor are also welcome as they lighten
the sometimes grave mood of the eighth grader. Continued work with the changing voice takes
place, as does more theory (still presented in an imaginative way), composition, and increasingly
complex part-singing.

Ensemble work is important in the eighth grade. Students of similar skill levels can form string
quartets and other smaller groups, including vocal ensembles. In many schools, the students in
the upper grades form anorchestra, which can undertake larger instrumental works. These
various ensembles provide music for school festivals and special events throughout the year.
They may also perform in the larger community, at a nursing home, for example, at community
fairs, or at another school. Such performances give the students the experience of sharing their
creative endeavors for the benefit of the larger whole. Sharing the gift of oneself in this way
fosters a healthy sense of service to humanity. Also, ensemble work provides eighth graders
practice in working with others to achieve a common goal.

Music in the Waldorf curriculum seeks to bring the living, healing presence of music into the life
of the child and gives him an opportunity to experience both his own individuality and his
relationship to community. It provides a chance for the expression of the soul, a discipline for
achieving skills and goals, and contributes to the awareness of what it means to be truly
human. 

* Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness, (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1996),
118–119. Lecture originally given in Dornach, April 1923.