Musical Education in the Classical Homeschool

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In a classical education, music is more than just an extracurricular activity—it is an essential part of cultivating virtue, order, and harmony within the soul. In this post, I’m sharing about musical education in our classical homeschool.

And how we incorporate music into our home atmosphere, and some of our favorite resources, too.

The Poetic Mode of Education & Music

The poetic mode of education focuses on wonder, imagination, and contemplation rather than just technical mastery — and instead of treating music as a subject to dissect.

The poetic mode of education, as emphasized in Classical and Charlotte Mason methods, approaches music as something to be loved, experienced, and absorbed rather than merely studied analytically.

Now, I’m not going to dive too deeply into musical education as it applies to the poetic mode here. But Amanda Faus does cover this it two parts on The Wonder Years podcast if you’re interested.

Charlotte Mason, who also embraced a poetic approach, recommended composer study. This is done by selecting one composer at a time (usually per term), listening to their music, and learning about their life in a gentle, natural way.

We have dropped formal composer study, but take a more poetic approach and have made music a part of our everyday culture. We do keep this handy book, the Complete Book of the Great Musicians for reference and informal readings.

In our home this looks different everyday. But some days it may include enjoying the works of classical composers, singing traditional Catholic hymns as part of worship and prayer routines, playing Palestrina in the afternoons, learning a variety of instruments, singing folk songs together, etc.

Singing Hymns & Folk Songs

As a Traditional Catholic, the Latin language is big part of our daily lives. Whether it is through the Holy Mass, daily prayers like the Office or other vocal prayers, Gregorian Chant, and hymns, etc.

And so as a part of our family culture, we include Traditional Catholic hymns as a part of our morning prayer time.

A great resource for beginners if you’re new to Latin hymns is Lingua Angelica. I would just use the sheet music and music CDs or streaming version and avoid the workbooks to keep in the poetic mode.

If you can find a vintage copy of the St. Gregory’s Hymnal — another personal favorite with both English and Latin Catholic hymns.

Each term, I print out or photocopy sheet music for seasonal hymns for us to sing together as a part of our morning time. This will look different based on the Liturgical Year.

So, for example, it is Lent right now and we are singing “Ubi Caritas” (Holy Thursday hymn), “Stabat Mater”, and we also have been singing “Hail Holy Joseph, Hail” for the month of March.

Next month we will sing the “Regina Caeli”, “Veni Creator Spiritus”, and either “Pange Lingua”, or “Tantum Ergo”.

But this is basically what I do each term. I pull a few different hymns to sing together based off of the liturgical season and put them in the children’s “morning time” books.

I do the same for folk songs — I print different folk songs that we will sing together each term and place them in our morning time books. And I also create a playlist of folk songs on Spotify for ease. If you’re new to folk songs, Ambleside Online has great options to choose from.

Singing of folk and other cultural/traditional songs connects children (mother-teachers, too!) to cultural heritage and tradition. And they are so much fun!

Gregorian Chant in the Home

Again as Traditional Catholics, Gregorian chant is a huge part of the family culture. We learn the chants together in home by listening to them based on the liturgical year, and at church during the liturgies, ceremonies, and high masses.

I’ve recently discovered this program for learning Gregorian chant for children and have signed up to be on the waitlist. This program begins in the Fall time (perfect for the new school year!) and follows the church Liturgical Year.

We have been using The Children’s Tradition as a guide for our curriculum and homeschool philosophy. In this curriculum, there is a recommendation of singing the Psalms together. This is taken from the classical (medieval) tradition of Benedictine schools teaching singing of the Psalms through Gregorian chant to their pupils.

John Senior was a huge devotee of the Benedictines and it shows in his writings and works. Personally, I’m more partial to the Carmelites. Both are contemplative orders, but I’m more drawn to the Carmelites and their spirituality of contemplation, silence, solitude, and a deep desire for union with God. 

So for this school year, we have just been slowly reading through the Psalms each day. I have been pondering how we should incorporate singing or chanting them together in our home.

But, as I begin to work through this, I think that we may build up slowly by learning a few Psalms through Gregorian chant. Just like as found in the Divine Office or the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

But still to be determined.

Musical Instruments

We live very rural and in home lessons from an instructor is just not an option for us.

We’ve been using Hoffman Academy as our method of piano instruction for several years now. I highly recommend this program to those looking for options to work through at your own pace. Mr. Hoffman is very engaging and a lot of fun for the children.

My children have been very interested in learning string instruments and so we will be including guitar, violin, cello lessons within the next school year or two based on the age of each child.

This resource has been recommended to us for learning string instruments online.

Practical Musical Education in the Home

The ancients saw music as deeply connected to mathematics, astronomy, and the order of the universe. Plato, for instance, believed music shaped the soul and character, making it integral to forming a virtuous person.

“Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul”.

Plato, The republic

Music trains the affections by exposing children to beauty and order and helps shape how students perceive goodness and truth.

The Restoration of Christian Culture

I want to share a fairly lengthy quote from John Senior from The Restoration of Christian Culture. But it is SO good!

“Our Lord explains in the Parable of the Sower that the seed of His love will only grow in a certain soil–and that is the soil of Christian Culture, which is the work of music in the wide sense, including as well as tunes that are sung, art, literature, games, architecture–all so many instruments in the orchestra which plays day and night the music of lovers; and if it is disordered, then the love of Christ will not grow. It is an obvious matter of fact that here in the United States now, the Devil has seized these instruments to play a danse macabre, a dance of death, especially through what we call the “media,” the film, television, radio, record, book, magazine and newspaper industries. The restoration of culture, spiritually, morally, physically, demands the cultivation of the soil in which the love of Christ can grow, and that means we must, as they say, rethink priorities.

John senior, The Restoration of Christian Culture

He continues, “What I suggest, not as the answer to all our problems, but as the condition of the answer, is something at once simple and difficult: to put ‘the touches of sweet harmony’ into the home so that boys and girls will grow up better than we did, with songs in their hearts; so that, singing the old songs all their lives, they may one day hear Him sing the Song of Songs:

‘Arise, make haste, my love, my beautiful one, and come. For winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land, the time of pruning is come: the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig tree hath put forth her green figs; the vines in flower yield their sweet smell. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come.’

“I fear no girl will ever that song again from some young man in the spring of her life whom she might marry, or boy or girl, in the autumn, from Christ.

“First, negatively, smash the television set. The Catholic Church is not opposed to violence; only to unjust violence; so smash the television set. And, positively, put the time and money you now spend on such entertainment into a piano so that music is restored to your home, common, ordinary Christian music, much of which is very simple to play. Anybody can learn the songs of Stephen Foster, Robert Burns, the Irish and Italian airs, after even a few hours of instruction and practice.

“And then families will be together at home of an evening and love will grow again without thinking about it, because they are moving in harmony together. There is nothing more disintegrating of love than artificial attempts to foster it in encounter groups and the like: Love only grows; it cannot be manufactured or forced; and it grows on the sweet sounds of music.”