Hemisfärernas musik – ur barnets perspektiv. Barn kan och vill sjunga

Swedish

Abstract

Children can assimilate music. Newborn infants perceive music; premature infants improve their nutritional intake when exposed to lullabies; prefer consonant music to dissonant; prefer scales with unequal tone steps to an “out-of-tune sounding” scale with seven equal steps. At the age of 4 days the infant brain is activated like the adult with exposure to music following musical syntax, whereas syntax errors evoke a “chaotic” activation. Infants are relaxed by Infant Directed Speech and by lullabies. Children want to sing. This desire must be welcomed, with regard to the child’s physiological conditions. The child’s vocal cords are short and vulnerable. The spontaneous tone level is higher than in the adult; when singing in unison, a level comfortable for the child must be chosen. If the child tries to imitate the adult tone level, the result is blurred song, which may obstruct the child’s singing development and injure the voice. The Swedish Royal Academy of Music supports the important project “Children singing”.