Classical Kids: Brava Victoria!

One nothing-out-of-the-common afternoon, at a downtown book fair I put my name on the mailing list of The Bach Concert Series, aka free concerts of masterpieces by the great JSB.
Since that day I have been receiving their newsletters via e-mail. Usually they consist of upcoming concert announcements and pledge reminders. However, this morning a very special interview about ( it is safe to assume) the youngest Bach fan in the world caught my attention and I am dying to share this interview with you all, my dear readers.

Enjoy. Get inspired. Teach your kids. Learn from them.

A Very Special Interview

By offering our monthly performances of J.S. Bach's cantatas as a gift to the community, the Bach Concert Series attracts a widely diverse and loyal audience. Here, we present an interview with one of our most unique audience members. Young Victoria Pita is 14 months old and attended her first Bach Concert Series performance when she was ten days old. I recently spoke with Victoria's father, Gonzalo Pita, about his experiences and feelings about Bach's music.

BCS: What made you decide to bring Victoria with you to the Bach concert?

GP: We're so happy to come to the concerts. The performances are wonderful and Maestro Dimmock's explanations are very enlightening. We're practicing Seventh-Day Adventist Christians, and although we aren't Lutherans, we deeply admire Martin Luther's history, ideas and his theology. To me, Bach's cantatas are so much more than beautiful music; their role is much more profound than a just nice melody. The combination of the words of the Gospel and music in the cantatas is the most perfect and beautiful way to express Luther's theology. The profound message conveyed magnificently by Bach's music is what I think is important to teach Victoria.

BCS: Does she listen to classical music in other ways?

GP: We play a lot of classical music for Victoria, especially Baroque Protestant music. There are studies that prove that early exposure to classical music helps children's brain development. I play a lot of recordings of music by Bach and his contemporaries, such as Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, Dietrich Buxtehude and Telemann. We've also shown her a video of the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah. She loves it and she started to say "Hallelujah" along with the singers.

BCS: Can you tell if all this exposure to music is benefitting her?

GP: Victoria listens to classical music and doesn't watch TV, and I think it is definitely benefitting her. She is always well-behaved when I take her to the concerts and church; she's calm, quiet and always happy at the same time. I can see that she enjoys the music at the Bach concerts. The most important thing for her mother and me is that she be exposed to the beautiful and profound Christian music in combination with Luther's inspiring biblical theology. That's what will benefit her most throughout her life.

Much in the spirit of this blog, I am starting a new sub-chapter, called "Classical Kids".
If you would like to be my guest blogger and share a story of your own or somebody else's kid, who started enjoying classical music early, and tell us about how music influenced/changed that kid's life, shoot me an e-mail and I will be happy to publish your work here, on Mandolin Vision. 
Cheers!