Introducing Classical Music to Our Music Students’ Homes
This week I had the pleasure of being joined by Sadie Hoyt, a classical pianist passionate about education and performance. As a piano teacher herself, she has lots of experience with teaching piano lessons, and is a wonderful educator. Listen in to hear some of our tips, tricks, and thoughts on introducing classical music not as a requirement, but as a wonderful new experience for your students.
Enjoy this week’s transcript!
Carly
Hi teachers. I'm Carly Walton, and this is a Teach Music Online podcast, your number one resource for innovative online music teaching. In today's episode, I had an amazing opportunity to chat with Sadie Hoyt, and in this episode she shares not only the benefits of classical music for us as musicians, but also how amazing it is for our students and their families to listen to classical music in their home. Hi, Sadie. Welcome to Teach Music Online podcast. How are you today?
Sadie
I'm great. So great to be here, Carly.
Carly
Can you tell us about your background with classical music? I just want to hear all of it because I've seen you have such a passion and love for classical music, for listening, for teaching, for understanding the history behind it. So share with us what inspired you to, I guess, or what gave you this love for classical music from a young age?
Sadie
Sure. So I started piano lessons when I was 5 or 6. And a lot of piano teachers introduced their piano students to classical music. From a young age, I was learning classical music. But I owe the bulk of my love for classical music to my parents and the home environment that I grew up in. My parents really emphasized art, music, and good books, so we had a huge record and CD collection. We went to the Symphony, the ballet, and the opera all the time. My mom was a ballet dancer, so she brought her love of ballet into the family. And then my dad comes from a family that all took classical music. And we inherited a Grand Steinway piano from his family. So it was very much a part of our family culture. And I sensed that as a child, and it stuck with me.
We grew up with a lot of music genres. I like to emphasize that I'm not just a classical music lover. I love a lot of genres. I like to say that I like great music, but I will say that out of all the genres that I was exposed to as a child, classical has definitely had the most profound impact on me. And it sounds maybe a little cheesy, but it just totally has changed and influenced my outlook of the world and the way I see humanity, the depth of the human heart, all of that. I know that I owe a lot of that to classical. So, yeah, that's why I do what I do. I try to spread the word.
Carly
I love hearing that your parents brought that into your home. And unfortunately, in today's world, it's hard to find a household that really loves and encourages their kids to listen to classical music or brings it into the home. You said something that I think is really amazing. You said that it's impacted how you view the world and has changed your perspectives. What are some of the benefits that you've seen in your life? And I don't even know if you can differentiate, right? Because you've never been without it. But what do you feel like it's given you as far as perspective or just gratitude or history. What are some of those things? I'd love to hear them.
Sadie
It is really hard to separate because it's been with me since day one, but it's beautiful. It's very powerful because it's fully notated. There's a huge capacity for creating a “Cathedral of sound”, as I like to call it, which is just a majestic masterpiece. I listen to music throughout my day quite often, and there are many times a day where I don't choose classical. It's often during those times of day where I need it for a specific purpose. So it's like I'm stressed out; I'm going to listen to some cool jams. I need to relax; I'm going to put on some heart music. I'm going to go to Church; I'm going to put on this hymn. There are very specific purposes for music. But I think that what classical has offered me is music as art.
So sometimes I don't know what I need at the moment. And then I turn on classical, and I realize, Whoa, I just had an experience. I didn't realize I needed to revisit that memory and process it. Or it can be a powerful space for catharsis and self reflection, especially today, when so much is already created for us. We live in an era of consumption. And it's so important to have those art forms that don't fill in all the gaps for us. Like a beautiful work of fiction. You have to imagine the rest of the details in your head. I think classical music is really similar, actually, to an amazing piece of fiction in that way, because it doesn't give us all the missing pieces. It doesn't usually assign a particular script.
Of course, you have certain pieces like The Nutcracker that do. But the bulk of classical music doesn't come with even a title, sometimes. It's called Symphony #1, Symphony #2. And I think that's really beautiful, because it becomes something different in the minds of every single listener. So for me, maybe I’m experiencing a moment of darkness, and then I just remember this beautiful Symphony. And I know that if it's possible to bring all those instruments together and to create order out of chaos, and for a composer to imagine that great piece of art, then there's so much goodness in the world, and life is okay.
Carly
Yes. I think about my own experience with classical music as well. And for me, a lot of it came from understanding the composers and perhaps what they were going through in their life or where they were raised. Whether it was Germany or England or France, or where they came from, and their history, and what encouraged them, or the trials in their life that caused this work of art, and then studying a lot of piano music. And once you know the composer and their life a little bit more, there's so much more depth to learning their work when you understand who wrote it. You mentioned that you have a degree in history. So how did that history degree help you even more dive into the history of music as well?
Sadie
Yeah, I'm so grateful for that detour because I definitely went about my music career. And around that way, I considered going to a conservatory. I got into a conservatory and then decided on the Liberal Arts instead, which was really great because I did my music at the same time. I got a minor in music and a major in history. But yeah, I would say from an early age, I've always been fascinated. And again, I owe this to my home environment. With so many good books and artwork lying around, I've always been really fascinated seeing the parallels between the different art forms and the reflections of history in the music.
I try to bring that into music lessons, too. But just playing Debussy, you can hear the artwork in his music. I love looking at not only the history, but the gardens of the time, the styles of the time, the mannerisms, the philosophy, all of that. You learn to connect the dots. And that's another reason why classical music is so important. It's bringing us different eras right here, and we can experience it now. So you kind of enter into historical time periods, different eras. You experience tragedy from a different era, but then also, like the resilience of humanity amidst those tragedies, like composers like Shostakovich and Holocaust survivor composers, people like that.
Carly
Yes, it just adds depth. It adds depth and meaning, especially when accompanied by world music. Music of the world. I mean, the study of music is the study of history. And gosh, I love that so much. I had a call months ago with someone who teaches world music, and he knows, like the music of every single country and culture. And he teaches that. And I just thought, Gosh, that would be such a fun thing to study as well. I had, like, one class on world music in College, and I thought, there's so much we're never done learning or understanding music, why it's written, who it's written by, what can be done with it.
Another thought I had was, I firmly believe in bringing music into our homes that is uplifting and encourages us to be kind, be thoughtful, and be considerably compassionate versus music that is heavy or has rhythms or language that bring negativity or that feel just rough. And I have, since a young age, felt that way about media and music. And I hope to give that to my kids as well. But what's hard is what the world is giving us. You turn on a radio, you turn on Netflix, you turn on a movie.
Carly
Some movies obviously have amazing soundtracks. I'm more thinking about pop culture and pop music. That's what teenagers are usually drawn to and even what my four year old is drawn to play. She wants to play a lot of pop music, which we let her sometimes, but I'm trying to find ways to help her see the goodness that comes from classical music. So one thing we've done is like the William Tell Overture. That's our clean up song. We turn that on when we're cleaning up the house because it's fast and exciting.
We listen to The Nutcracker a lot, like Claire de Lune is a very lyrical one. They love pretending to be ballerinas, but I want to shift into you telling us about how you've made it your mission to bring classical music into the everyday home. Maybe it's even a home where there's not any musicians, but it's a home that should be filled with good music, because every home should. It’s music that encourages our kids to be good and to enjoy the richness of classical music. So tell us about, first of all, why have you made this your mission? And how are you going about that?
Sadie
Yeah. It's so challenging because everything you said, I'm not a mom, actually. So I don't have hands-on in-the-home experience. But I am a teacher, of course, to many kids. And I have lots of nieces and nephews. And I see the ramifications of so much screen time, and I think that's ultimately what it all comes back to, that's a whole other issue. And you asked why is it important? And then how am I doing it right?
Carly
Yeah.
Sadie
Back to what I was saying before. I think kids are suffering ramifications of this time period with so much visualization of everything in this alternative reality. I'm not saying video games are bad, but just being fed complete images, they don't have as many outlets for creativity. So they're born naturally creative, like we are all born natural artists. And then I feel like, especially right now, that's squelched over time through instant gratification. So, I mean, of course, the child is going to want to turn on pop or what’s most popular.
I actually like Taylor Swift, but I'm just going to use her as an option. So I think she's really fun. But of course, they're going to maybe want to listen to people like that and other pop artists versus a practical piece that takes just a little bit more work because you have to engage and you have to participate. So it's going to be a struggle at first, probably with most kids, and they might even say it's boring. They hate it. Like, who knows? But I just firmly believe that the payoff is so great and that it will have an effect on them whether or not they realize it in the moment. I think disengaging from screens blasting and taking that beautiful piece of music and giving them an opportunity to draw what they hear is so helpful for them to process emotions that they don't even know how to articulate.
And, as you said, it cultivates virtue in the home. They hear that intuitively in the music. When I think about myself growing up in a Christian home, I was taught really good virtues and all that stuff. But I don't know, I just feel like classical music gave it to me on a sensory level, and I just kind of intuitively heard this is what it means to really be a truly good person and follow these virtues. So I've made it my mission because I feel like not enough people understand why you should listen to classical music.
It's sort of this antiquated or privileged thing where it's something that you dress up for. You go to the Symphony on a date with your husband, or it's like a Museum piece, we're going to study the works of different musicians. And you learn this guy wore a wig, and it's unfortunately too often removed from the home. I just think it's important that, as you said, we fill our homes with these reminders of what it means to be a good person. I really think classical music can do that in a really powerful way. I love to say I like to bring the Symphony Hall into people's homes and the way I'm doing that is by creating a lot of free resources to get the word out there as fast as possible. And then eventually I'm hoping to create a music listening Journal for kids where they can be doing this on a daily level. But sitting down more often and having prompts to engage their imaginations and to encourage them to articulate a response is my goal. It's in the works right now. I'm just focusing on free resources.
Carly
Since the pandemic, we've had this rethinking of how we educate our children in the home and what good resources are out there and what can be created for parents in the home. So when I saw you were doing this, I was like, this is perfect. This is perfect timing. People need this, especially making it so that they can do it in the home. So it doesn't have to come from a music teacher. Or maybe it's initiated by the music teacher, but then the teacher is helping the family and the parents learn together. Is that right?
Sadie
Absolutely. And I think it's so important that it actually starts with the parents, because as we all know, the ramifications from that are amazing. If you get the parent excited about classical music, it will become a family affair, and it will be a home affair instead of another assignment for the child. It might need to start this way, but ideally, it's not just a homework assignment, but you're getting the whole house excited and you're filling that house with the beauty and power of classical music.
Carly
Yes, I love it so much. So I had another question and I want to know as a piano teacher for you, what do you do or what are some tips you might have for teachers when a student is just straight up not interested in classical or that's really turning them away from the instrument? Do you have any tips or tricks?
Sadie
I'm laughing because I have a lot of students and I've been wondering the same thing myself. No, I do have some tips. First of all, I make sure that I am doing stuff that they love, so I don't force them to only play classical and the things I want. Or say I’m sorry you hate it, let's just keep going. So I definitely try to find pieces of more popular music. Usually they want to learn a pop song or a video game theme, which has been a really cool experience, seeing how awesome some video game themes are. So in addition to classical music, I try to make it so they have their own project that they're really passionate about, and they decide what it's going to be. And I okay it. And then in addition, we have a classical piece, so it kind of goes hand in hand, and then they feel like they have some say in the matter in terms of how I get them to hopefully love it more.
I try to really get inside the minds of both the composer and the child playing the music. So instead of just like, play that staccato, are you playing these articulations? Why are the articulations there? What image was the composer trying to create with those articulations? What shapes emotions? All of that. So let me go into the composition process. Also, theory wise. And I'm always surprised by how the kids do think that's pretty cool. Like, what was the composer doing? Let's look at the chord progression here and then, Whoa, change of key. Look, he's going to a whole new area, and I think that theory comes alive when you bring it into the piece of music you're working on. So I try to do that. But then ultimately asking the child questions makes them realize they can really make this their own. This can truly become their own piece of music by their interpretation. So just asking them what stories do you hear? What colors, what emotions, what character do you assign this piece? Then they really can start to get excited about it.
I think ultimately, if the teacher is excited about it, and you convey that, and remember that that speaks so much on its own, like the child consents. If the teacher is excited, that will be intoxicating and they'll catch some of that. And then the other thing I just want to add is that I think that there's unfortunately, a lot of dry classical music. So I would say maybe we shouldn't play anymore. It's just really not that interesting. And just because it's old and in the classical Canon doesn't mean you have to teach it. Because I know for myself, I learned some pretty boring pieces, and it seemed like it was just because I needed to learn a certain technique or something very specific. And I don't think that's necessary. I think we should just assign the really great pieces, the really inspiring, exciting, beautiful, truly great pieces, so that children see, like, this is great stuff. This is not just like a classical textbook.
Carly
That's such a great point. I'm thinking about the typical 16 year old who's been taking lessons since they were eight. It's like how many songs will they really learn? Maybe 30 to 40, really well. And if they're not learning, like books and books and books like someone might do once they get to College or later on in their life. But as a kid, that's such a great point that we really can focus on really good arrangements of songs that we love that might be really fun with different rhythms from a variety of composers with a variety of imagery.
And you just kind of bundled up for us a number of things we can do with our students to bring classical music alive. And I just want to tell teachers we should never just be handing them a song, putting a date on it, circling some things and expecting that student to come back fully practiced. I think that's on us as teachers, that is where we are at fault. If we're wondering why they don't like classical music, it’s because they're surrounded by screens and a lot of other music and movies and games that are way more entertaining.
So we need to be more creative. We need to think about how we can connect with the students on their level and talk about things that matter to them in the music and bring it to life. Like you've mentioned, one thing I wanted to add to all of the suggestions you gave is demonstration in a variety of ways. YouTube is such a great tool, a database of many people playing these classical works. And I would even look up that song and find someone their age playing it at a recital or playing it on stage in a competition.
Even if it's a slightly different arrangement, they're still learning the tune. They're learning the melodies, they're learning how it goes and they're going, oh my gosh, that twelve year old is so good. I want to be like him. And I can remember as a teenager, I don't even know that YouTube was around yet. I don't know, like 15 years ago, 16 years ago. I don't know, but I can remember listening on iTunes to the music that a teacher had given to me and just listening to it during the week and going, wow, this is really beautiful. This isn't just boring.
Sadie
Absolutely. I'm so glad you mentioned the listening component and the fact that we have so much at our fingertips right now, living in this century with all these brilliant pianists. I have been doing that as well. What you just mentioned is such a good idea in terms of asking them to listen to different performances by different pianists out there. I remember I asked a 16 year old to listen to four different pianists playing the same piece and asked her to tell me which was her favorite and why. And she loved that assignment. She could see the slight variations and nuances that each pianist brought to the same work, and it really inspired her. She kind of decided which she wanted to take, which aspects of each performance she wanted to learn from. And listening is a huge component that we could be tapping into. I think we sometimes want to apologize for assigning too much, but assigning listening is a really fun, easy assignment that'll bring so much life to their play.
Carly
Yes. And teachers shouldn't be scared to bring it into the lesson either. Sometimes we need to use lesson time to scroll through YouTube and just watch 20 seconds of some different videos to show them, because sometimes kids won't do it. And that's okay. I don't think we need to be hard on them about it, but demonstrating it for them with them. I want to hear about your resources first. I want to hear about the resources you have that teachers can send to the parents of their students. So what's your website and what are the resources that they can be using for their lessons?
Sadie
Yeah. So my website is just my name, sadiehoyt.com, and on the free resources page, there is a really pretty printout that the parents can print out for home use. It's listening charts. It's called 30 Days of Classical Encounters. So the idea is one classical encounter per day for a month, and it's divided into five weeks. So each week there are six tracks and there are barcodes for Apple Music and Spotify for each track.
There's a way for them to rate each track so they can really personalize it and decide which ones are their favorites. It tells them the date that it was written, the country of origin, of course, the composer's name, and it provides a timeline. So it's like an aesthetically pleasing and practical way to start to introduce classical music more regularly into the home. And I think just visually seeing it helps a lot. It'd be awesome to start spreading that to families, then the whole family gets involved, like we said earlier.
Then I have another resource that's going to be coming out in time for this podcast release. It is going to be a child focused one. So it actually goes hand in hand with the resource I just mentioned. You can compare it with that. When you turn on those orchestral tracks, it brings a whole different mood. My idea is to eventually do all the subgenres of classical music. But I thought, of course, I started out with a bang with the orchestral masterpieces.
The second resource is going to be a printout that the child can complete while those tracks are being played. And it comes with a musical timeline of all the eras in music and asks them to shade in the timeline that the composer belongs to. Then I asked them five different questions. It helps them articulate a response to the music. And I think a way to talk to parents about this, too, is talking about how this will also just help them. It will help them engage their imaginations and help them be able to articulate a response.
I provide an adjective glossary on the page so that the child is using really good descriptive words when they're listening to this music and hopefully learn the art of articulation as well. So yeah, this resource will be out soon. I'm hoping a lot of families will start tapping into it and start having their kids listen to more practical classical music on a regular basis.
Carly
It's so good. As I'm hearing it again I want to use it for my 4- and 3-year-old. I think this is such a great way to do it. As a parent, I'm thinking, I love music so much, and it's been interesting as I've been raising these tiny people. It's not easy. I thought they would love the piano and I thought I was going to do these weekly classes with them for, like, music and movement, and they're going to love the classics. I had all of these hopes and dreams and goals, and I think more than anything, it's time, and it's finding good resources. Really. It's finding good resources that I feel like resonate with me as a musician that I know my kids will love. So I'm really excited about it. And I also wanted to mention to teachers, this is kind of a fun way. You could actually use your 30 days of listening or 30 days of encounters musical encounters could be really great for social media.
It could be a great opportunity for teachers to say for the next 30 days, I'm doing these 30 classics, orchestral classics. And how fun would that be? It's already a curated list of works that they could tap into. So just another thought on how they could use that resource. They could even do it with their studio all at once through social media.
Sadie
That's a great idea. I love that. Yeah, my whole thing is, I know I've talked to mothers many times about this, and I've heard the struggle is real with time management in the home. Kids have so much they're supposed to be doing for homework and for piano practice and all of their extracurriculars and everything. And my goal is to make resources as easy, as simple as possible to use. And so I can't wait to hear your feedback. Carly, I'm hoping you can test it out on your kids and let me know it it works.
Carly
I will. I definitely will. I also had this thought, and maybe this could be something you could look at creating down the road when you have extra time, but as you've been talking about imagery, I thought “I want to get online and print out some imagery to put on the fridge with these songs” so I can relate it to them by saying, “This song sounds like the ocean”. That's how my kids remember things, with some kind of an image or a story. And a lot of these classical songs already have story books to go with them, or that sing through the song. So I'm already kind of thinking of ways I can do this. I can find ways to introduce the classics. And my goal would be to have them ask as we're driving to Grandma's house if we can turn on some Mozart.
Sadie
That's a dream, actually.
Carly
My brother and his wife and their kids, that's them. They prefer listening to books in the car and classical music. And their oldest is only nine, so they're on their way. His wife raises them to read and to listen. And I thought, she's just such a great example to me. You can do it. It really does take being intentional and not just letting the world happen to our family, because if you let that happen, there's no way they're just going to suddenly be interested in ballet and in playing violin and all these really wonderful good things. We have to create a plan and actually do it. I'm motivating myself right now.
Sadie
Yeah, it's so good to hear from a parent about all these struggles. Oh, man, I'm just hypothetically creating these, but I'm testing it out with real parents. So I'm getting feedback, and I'm trying to make this an actually doable thing in the home. And I think connecting dots is such a great idea. And eventually it would be really cool to create more resources that tie together with images. Or maybe you look at the country where the composer is from, and what was happening in the world of Mozart, stuff like that, because as you said, that'll really stick with the child.
I will say I did teach at a school a long time ago, and I taught K-5, I believe it was. And one of the coolest things I did with them, or just one of the coolest things I saw happen, I should say, is that I just asked them to create a story they thought of or assign a title to the piece they were listening to. Like, what do you think the composer was writing about when he wrote this? Or if you were in charge of creating a title for this piece, what would it be?
They got so excited about that. And then we did the big reveal at the end. So it'd be like they would listen to a piece and it's about a river running from the mountains to the ocean, but they didn't know that. But just hearing all the different ideas for what this piece was about, then you talk to the kids about isn't that cool? This is what music can be. It can be a different story inside the heads of everyone here. But then when they hear what it is, they're like, oh, that's awesome, I hear that too.
Carly
I love it. There are endless possibilities when we start thinking about it and planning in our minds what could work for our own children, for our own students and teachers have this ability to mentor kids, and they will think about those moments for the rest of their lives. I often think about my mentors and teachers that introduced some of my favorite composers to me or simply played some pieces for me that maybe I didn't end up learning, but just watching them play something that I know is really hard or took a long time to learn, like how encouraging that was to just witness that.
I think that's one of the huge benefits of going to a live Orchestra is you're in this room at this moment you won't relive again. Being in the acoustic experience and watching these musicians on their instruments, working together harmoniously. There's just so much benefit to introducing that to our kids. And I am cheerleading and rooting for music teachers everywhere to keep it around in ways that are creative. Like you said, maybe we do both. We do pop and classical, but by the way, I do the same thing. I've always done that because we need to compromise. I think we need to compromise with our kids, unless they love classical music. I do have one student who loves classical music, and it's always such a treat, when we get that one who doesn't want to do anything else. It's amazing.
Carly
Okay. We could keep talking, but I want to ask one more question before we go, because this is an online teaching podcast. I want to know, how was your transition to teaching online during the pandemic? Are you fully teaching online now? Is it a hybrid? What's your experience been?
Sadie
Yeah. So it was a funny experience. I will say for one, I wasn't completely new. I used to live out in Portland, Oregon area, and then I moved from Portland, Oregon, to DC to actually get my master's in music. And when I moved, I had to say goodbye to about 30 students, a full studio. And it's incredibly sad. As you all know, we build up Studios and just leave them behind. It's terrible. So I ended up keeping actually a family from the West Coast online. They contacted me a year after I moved and said they missed me, which was such an honor to hear, and they wanted to take lessons from me online.
So I gave it a try before Covid, which made it so I'd already had a little bit of experience with it, but I wasn't totally set up for it. I didn't have the right organization for it and stuff. So it was definitely a huge challenge at first, because I was also living in a cramped space with two other girls on Capitol Hill during 2020. By the way, 2020 in DC was quite eventful. It was really cramped and claustrophobic and I was on Zoom and honestly, I was really going crazy for the first year or nine months. But within those nine months also, I was growing a lot and I found you during that time, I was finding online groups and it was so wonderful to just know there's a huge support network out there of people doing this worldwide. So I started doing research and looking up ways to improve it. And gradually over a span of about a year, I just learned all the ways to make it better.
I started using musicology, which is so much better than Zoom, and started looking up a lot more resources. So yeah, I'm still actually fully online. It's crazy. I moved from DC back home to Ohio, where I'm from, and I was honest with my students about what I was doing. I said I wanted to be closer to my family, and I wasn't sure if I would come back. This might be indefinite, and I didn't know if they would leave me or not. But I tried to really talk up my studio. I've listened to your podcast about group classes and about adding value to your online studio, and I really tried to introduce extra workshops, like in composition, in 2020.
We do a lot of extra stuff. And so when I moved home, I tried to build up the whole online studio. I decided we were going to have a thriving online studio with options for their children to play for their peers and connect with young pianists around the world. And I switched to a price. So the parent isn't just thinking about what price they're paying for each lesson, but it's like you're part of Sadie's Studio. You get access to all these benefits, and it's been really a dream, honestly. I can't believe that I was able to move home and keep all 30 of my students. It's crazy. I mean, coding, and I love it also. It really helps us transition to a whole new way of living and working.
Carly
Yes. And the creativity that comes from hard situations is always amazing and can be life changing. I've watched teachers who claim to be like the most tech inefficient people on the planet who now have multiple cameras and microphones and are editing videos for students. And they love it. They really love the ability to create a multimedia experience for their students versus sitting next to them on a bench. And that will never go away, it is a wonderful way of teaching. But there is so much potential and possibility with online teaching. Thank you so much, Sadie. Such a pleasure to chat with you today.
Sadie
Yeah. It's so wonderful to chat with you too. Thanks for having me.
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