Music Lessons

We're huge music lovers. We listen to it constantly of course, but we also try to play it on a regular basis. It's relaxing and inspirational and fun. And though it's been a while since either of us actually studied it in any sort of academic sense, we've recently been loving (and learning a ton from) the dvd set of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts.

If you've never heard of it, Leonard Bernstein gave a series of televised performances beginning in 1958 in which he filled Carnegie Hall with young kids and then taught them about music. You can find little snippets of the concerts/lectures on YouTube, but I highly recommend checking out the entire series (we got ours from the library). I love how he doesn't talk down to the children, and takes his time using numerous examples to illustrate a musical point. He even gets the kids involved, doing sing alongs and such that are so magical they'll break your heart.



On a slightly related note (oooh, a pun!) I recently had the pleasure of re-watching Amadeus. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid, but there is a genius scene in which Salieri transcribes a Reqium for Mozart (who isn't feeling so hot) that is so amazing and moving it has been permanently burned into my brain.