Bach for primary school pupils

Bach for children? That's not exactly obvious. After all, Bach's music is complex and can quickly become overwhelming. In the workshops as part of "Discover Bach! - The Bach Festival for Children", however, it is important to project manager Sophie Ehrismann to involve children in the workshops. She has a lot of experience with children's choirs and dance workshops and, as a sought-after dance teacher, also runs further training courses in "Music and Movement" at the Zurich University of the Arts.

And now discover Bach through "beatboxing" or "action painting". How is that supposed to work? A visit on site - the workshops took place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Schaffhausen Music School - opened up interesting and intuitively playful approaches. Miguel Camero, who incidentally made it to the quarter-finals at the first Beatbox World Championships in Leipzig in 2005, was responsible for the beatboxing.

You can see how beatboxing works on YouTube, Camero explains it clearly: you "only make sounds, noises and rhythms with your mouth", i.e. with your mouth, nose and breath. This is how you imitate a drum kit. Camero admits right at the beginning of our conversation that beatboxing with Bach's music is impossible and that his music is too difficult for children. "But I told them about Bach and how he worked." Bach invented music, he says, and they are now doing the same. After the beatboxing, which Camero combined with the piano, one girl said spontaneously: "I like that. Now I know that I want to learn to play the piano!"

Another workshop offered action painting to Bach's music. For Sophie Ehrismann, the combination of music and movement is an important pedagogical element. So it was all the more surprising that this workshop was led by Linda Graedel, a well-known illustrator and draughtswoman in Schaffhausen, who has never done action painting before and is the wise old age of 81.

Drawings by Graedel hang in the stairwell of the music school; they are full of movement and show musicians in action. The studio is located in the attic. A large "color board" is set up in the middle of the room, an oversized paint box, and there are three large brushes next to each pot of paint. Linda Graedel gives clear instructions: "You are only allowed to pick up one identical color at a time with a brush and then paint your fantasy pattern on white paper. The colors must remain pure, they must not be mixed, a change of color also means a change of brush."

The tables, at which the children work standing up, are set up in a circle. The children walk back and forth between the color board and their white sheet and are completely free to choose what they want to paint. Bach's music is played over the loudspeakers: a piece for piano, a concerto grosso, a choral work. There is silence, no one speaks except the teacher, who occasionally gives technical instructions on brushwork.

The children move intuitively to the beat of the music, even as they walk to the board. They paint with large brushes, the page fills with wavy lines and dabs, one boy guides the brush very rhythmically in a zigzag line and says: "I've assigned a different color to each instrument I hear: I use green for the strings, violet for the piano and blue for the harpsichord." His jagged lines look like an abstract counterpoint. It's amazing how calm and absorbed the children are, the time flies by.

The most elaborate school project took place a week before the actual Bach Festival: "SingBach" at the Schanz elementary school in Stein am Rhein. Principal Vreni Winzeler turned it into a project week for the whole school. Friedhilde Trüün launched "SingBach" with the support of the Stuttgart International Bach Academy and acts as artistic director. Her main aim is to get schoolchildren interested in Bach's music.

Trüün spent a week rehearsing with the 350 children, in the morning with the first to third graders and in the afternoon with the fourth to sixth graders. In the semi-public final concert for relatives in the Stein am Rhein town church, they then sang - together with their teachers and accompanied by a jazz ensemble - Bach's best-known pieces, carefully selected chorales and arias from Bach's passions, as well as instrumental "hits" with lyrics. These were arranged for the children by Frank Schlichter.

The texts that Trüün set to the instrumental pieces are crucial for the children's enjoyment and understanding. In the minuet, for example, they sang: "Ring, my little melody, swing upwards like never before. Bach invented you and made the song that everyone likes. So everyone sing along happily, because this little song is a hit ..."