Art and Music and the newly-2-year-old

Fiona came to orchestra rehearsal this week, with her tote-along package of paper, crayons and markers. She sat on the floor behind me (I'm the conductor) and scribbled away. At one point we were practising a piece called Toccatina with driving eighth-notes (quavers) running all the way through. Everyone loves playing this piece, and visually it's neat to watch with all the bows going back and forth together.

Apparently Fiona was quite struck by the rhythmic element, because when we stopped one of the teens in the orchestra mentioned that she'd been drawing using the same physical movement, matching the rhythm of the piece. I asked Fiona for her sketchbook and looked at what she'd been working on ... and there was the unmistakable pattern of the eighth-note rhythm on the page. Very cool! Normal she draws either loops and O's, or tiny, discrete letter-like scratches, so this was quite distinctive.

So I was reminded of the fun of 'drawing what you hear in music' which is a lovely process-oriented form of art that we did a fair bit of three years ago in preparation for the musical puzzle project. We'll have to do some of this again.