Classical Music For Children

As the baby develops, those brain cells form connections with other brain cells. When babies listen to music, especially classical music, they make strong music related connections in the brain. Over time, continued listening to classical music actually changes the way the child's mind works by creating brain pathways that would not have been there otherwise. Listening to music does not increase IQ, per se, but can make the mind perform many important tasks more easily and with greater skill. The development of new and more complicated instruments seriously impacted styles of classical music as they became available. There are no set instruments that had to be used for classical music, composers wrote for different groupings including orchestras, wind ensembles or various combinations of instruments for chamber music. Instruments like the piano, violins, violas, clarinets and trumpets were used. The human voice was also used, which invented its own series of classical music, namelythe Opera. Individual instruments were also used as a basis for pieces of music written solely for them such as the violin, piano or cello.

For years, we've known that listening to music has benefits for children's development. CD series like those from Baby Einstein have become extremely popular with parents of babies because experts have recognized that listening to classical music is not only engaging to very young children but actually increases their brain's ability to perform spatial reasoning. This is a very good method of preserving the piece as the written music contains the technical instructions for performing the work. The written score, however, doesn't usually contain explicit instructions as to how to interpret the piece in terms of production or performance, apart from directions for dynamics, tempo and expression. This is left to the discretion of the performers, who are guided by their personal experience and musical education or the direction of a music director or conductor.

There has long been a connection between autism and music. Autistic children, though deficient in language, are generally able to process music as well as children their age who do not suffer from a learning disability. This often makes music of special interest to autistic children, and there have been many case studies regarding autistic children who are musical savants. Autism is a neurological disorder that affects socialization and communication. It is a spectrum disorder that affects roughly 0.6 percent of the population, occurring four times more often in males. They have trouble learning to coordinate the movements of the lips and tongue that are required for speech. In addition, they are highly prone to ear infections, which often lead to hearing loss. When children suffer hearing loss, it further impacts their ability to speak.