Music: Developmental Stages of Musical Experiences

Introduction

Many educationalists and psychologists argue that the musical nature of children is innate. Indeed, it has been proved through pre-natal scans that babies respond to music long before they are born. That is, before they have seen anybody move to music, they respond to music through movement while still in their mothers’ wombs. This means that all children have some musical capability that awaits to be nurtured and developed. In this view, Howard Gardner (1983) in his theory of multiple intelligences suggests that, while children may demonstrate greater strength in one of the seven intelligences, all children possess musical abilities. With guid­ance, they can project both logic and expressiveness in their musical inven­tions, improvisations, and compositions.