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Dusseldorf / DPA
There’s a tremendous hullabaloo in the city concert hall as 1,000 primary school children aged between 6 and 10 chatter and laugh. But when the singing teachers step on to the stage and give a signal to each corner of the hall, silence descends in an instant.
Moments later the hall resonates with the sound of 1,000 children singing Atte katte nuwa, a folk song from Lapland, followed by Im Fruehtau zu Berge, the German version of a Swedish hiking song, Sumer Is Icumen In from medieval England and a native South American song.
This is an educational experiment with global implications. A wealthy businessman is helping it along.
The aims: to fix deficits of schooling by teaching a package of life skills that choral singing provides, and to revive Germany’s once mighty reputation as a place where almost everyone could sing, and do it without embarrassment.
More than 13,000 children from more than 60 primary schools in the German city of Dusseldorf are coming to this “Singpause,” or break for singing, in the concert hall over several consecutive days. It’s similar to the eisteddfod gatherings of Wales, another nation with a stellar choral tradition. For a whole year at school, the children have been practising for the big day, singing songs in alien languages for 20 minutes twice a week.
There’s no huge group rehearsal but when they all get together to give their concerts, every note fits together. “The children were able to sing rounds in six voices,” Manfred Hill, the 72-year-old president of the city’s music association who founded the musical project 10 years ago, says proudly.
Hill, who’s also the boss of a company which makes fire extinguishers, says around 80,000 children have taken part in the programme since 2006. They’re taught by professional singers using the so-called Ward method, which aims to teach young children the basics of music theory and note reading through singing.
At the end of Grade Four, when German children are aged 10, “the children can read music and sight-sing a simple song,” according to Hill. There are around 1,160 “singing breaks” every week at Dusseldorf’s schools and 42 singers have now been trained as teachers.
The program, which costs around 680,000 euros (770,000 dollars) a year, is funded partly by the state and partly by donations. Another 10 German cities have since launched similar projects and others are interested. Hill’s condition for contributing his expertise is that the singing breaks have to be open and free to all children in a school and that they have to last over the four years of primary school.
Refugee children are also integrated straight away. Hill, who has three sons, believes that singing together in foreign languages helps children bond, despite language barriers. “You can sing in all the languages of the world,” he says.
He also believes that singing as a form of education is dying out. “If you ask most 30 to 50 year olds whether they can sing, most of them say no,” he says. That’s because most of them find it embarrassing
to sing out loud, because they haven’t done so since they
were children.
“At German schools, singing isn’t necessarily a matter of course any more,” comments concert hall manager Michael Becker. Ricarda, now in Grade Five, took part in four singing break concerts during her time at a city primary school.
“I’ll never forget it,” says the 10-year-old, who can now read music. “We had a real sense of community. It would be nice if singing breaks continued after primary school at upper grades.” Projects like that in Dusseldorf are also aimed at motivating the next generation to take part in choral music.
In the SingBach programme in a nearby state, Grade Three children are taught songs, hymns and rearranged arias
by Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the greatest composers in
the German music tradition, which they then sing in a concert at the end.
The German Choral Society (Deutsche Chorverband), which is made up of 22,000 choirs, says it has observed a “renewed interest in singing.” Demographic change has also affected choirs, but a recovery set in a few years ago, according to spokeswoman Nicole Eisinger.
However, the structure of choirs is changing, she says. A more fluid scene with small vocal pop ensembles is increasingly popular, because many people are now more mobile and cannot commit long-
term to a choir. But as Hill says, “It really doesn’t matter if it’s hip hop or something else, the main thing is that people are making music.”
