At the Top of Their Lungs

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“Your child thinks your voice is the most beautiful voice in the world,” Hershey says.

The Music Together organization, now 20 years old, has just moved into a large new international headquarters near Princeton, New Jersey. Considering the group’s humble roots, this is a great achievement.

Kenneth Guilmartin established the Center for Music and Young Children in 1985 using the royalties from a copyrighted version of the song “Happy Birthday to You.” His grand­father published the song for its writers, sisters Patty and Mildred Hill, and helped them funnel proceeds from their classic to early childhood music education programs that came to include the center. In 1987 Guilmartin and Lili Levinowitz offered the first Music Together classes.

While it is true that schoolchildren who learn music tend to do better in math and that high school seniors who have studied music appreciation score higher on SATs, academic achievement was not Guilmartin and Levinowitz’s primary motivation. They looked instead to work by psychologist Howard Gardner that viewed music as a separate human intelligence and learning theorist Edwin Gordon’s evidence that most people have at least average musical aptitude. They believed that this aptitude had been stunted in many children because it was not nurtured during crucial preschool years.

“The music in and of itself is worth it,” says Susan Hoffman, editor of Music Together’s national newsletter, PlayAlong. “So much is learned through music: rhythm, meter, melody, tonality. There’s lots of information in the simplest song or chant. We teach body awareness. We stimulate emotional intelligence. Music is a uniquely coordinating experience, connecting eye, ear, voice, brain, heart, and the kinesthetic self. It is the essence of being human. We are on a mission to change the world, one song at a time.”

With Music Together classes now offered across the United States and in 22 other countries, they seem to be well on their way. Guilmartin and Levinowitz continue to collaborate, offering original music that is pitched in the right range for children’s voices (slightly higher than adults’), in a full assortment of tonalities and meters. Instrumental play-alongs, rhythmic chants, and songs with thought-­provoking lyrics make Music Together classrooms around the world reverberate with wonder and feeling.

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