Costa-Giomi 1
Young children’s identification of simple harmonic accompaniments
Eugenia Costa-Giomi, McGill University
Children have difficulty in perceiving harmonic changes until the age of eight or nine (Bentley, 1966; Franklin, 1956; Hufstader, 1977; Imberty, 1969; McDonald & Simons, 1989; Merrion, 1989; Moog, 1976; O'Hearn, 1984; Petzold, 1966; Schultz, 1969; Shuter-Dyson & Gabriel, 1981; Simons, 1986; Taylor, 1969; Vera, 1989; Zimmerman, 1971). Young children do not react adversely to dissonant accompaniments to a melody (Antochina, 1939; Believa-Exempliarskaia, 1925; Bridges, 1965; Moog, 1976; Rupp, 1915, cited in Funk, 1977; Revesz, 1954; Sloboda, 1985; Teplov, 1966), or dissonant chords and intervals (Valentine, 1913, Yoshikawa, 1972) and are inconsistent when identifying dissonant and consonant stimuli (Zenatti, 1974). They often fail to perceive the difference between a theme and its harmonic variations (Hufstader, 1977; O'Hearn, 1984; Pflederer & Sechrest, 1968; Taylor, 1969)) and in identifying the number of tones present in a chord (Vera, 1989). They also have difficulty in expressing their perception of harmony verbally (Hair, 1981) or through the use of visual representations (Hair, 1987). These findings have often been taken as an indication that young children are incapable of perceiving harmony. However, studies have shown that kindergarten children can recognize simple chord changes (Costa-Giomi, 1994a, 1994b) and 6-year-olds can identify a chord that is different between pairs of short progressions (Zenatti, 1969). First graders readily discriminate between pairs of chords (Hair, 1973) and seem confused when asked to sing a familiar song with unfamiliar accompaniments (Sterling, 1985).
Research has provided little information about how to help young children learn harmonic elements. Are there any factors that affect children’s harmonic perception and understanding and that teachers can manipulate in order to teach harmony to children effectively? The present study addressed this question. The purpose of the study was to identify developmental trends in young children’s perception of simple accompaniments to familiar songs and musical factors that affect their harmonic perception.
Methodology
Children attending kindergarten through 3rd grade at a public school in Montreal participated in the study. The school had no formal music program. The classroom teachers, who developed singing activities, did not teach harmonic concepts to the children and did not use any harmonic musical instrument to accompany the children’s singing. There were 18 children in kindergarten, 30 in first grade, 22 in second grade, and 21 in third grade.
Children were provided with 10 weeks of music instruction. The 30-minute weekly lessons were taught by a music specialist and focused on harmonic elements. The goals of the short music program were for the children to learn to identify and play a simple chord progression (I V I) on the omnichord, to sing short songs with an accompaniment of tonic and dominant chords, to identify chord changes in more complex chord progressions, to perceive the difference between chord changes and chord position changes, and to learn that most songs end in a tonic chord. Children learnt songs based on I and V including three songs used in the posttest, played the accompaniment to these songs individually on the omnichord, wrote the accompaniment of the songs on the board, played games based on the aural discrimination of chord changes and chord position changes, and practiced how to identify the chords in simple progressions played in the omnichord.
The posttest had two parts. The first part was a paper and pencil group test and the second one was an individual test requiring singing, the performance of a simple accompaniment on the omnichord, and selected perceptual tasks. The present manuscripts reports the results of the first part of the test only.
The first part of the test consisted of two different tasks, one requiring the discrimination of various accompaniments to familiar songs and the other one requiring the identification of the chords of a simple accompaniment. First, the music specialist sang a familiar song to the children in four different ways accompanying herself with the omnichord. For each rendition of the song, children were asked whether the song sounded right. The rendition considered to be correct was the one children had heard during the treatment and that was based on the conventional tonic and dominant chords. One of the incorrect versions presented the chords of the accompaniment in the reversed order, that is, tonic chords were replaced with dominant chords and dominant chords were replaced with tonic chords. In the second incorrect version, the accompaniment was transposed a fifth higher in the middle of the song while the melody was sang in the original key throughout the performance. In the third incorrect version, both the melody and the accompaniment were transposed a fifth higher in the middle of the song. Kindergarten children were presented with the four renditions of only one song: “Firilalala.” The other children were presented with the corresponding renditions of two additional songs “Blue Bird” and “Row Row Row Your Boat.” The order of presentation of the four renditions was different for each of the three songs. All children listened to the stimuli in the same order.
To complete the second task, children were asked to identify the eight chords of the accompaniment of a familiar song. Children listened to the music teacher sing the refrain of the song “Firilala” six times with a simple omnichord accompaniment. While they listened to the stimuli, they wrote the I and V chords in the answer sheet which included the drawings of eight birds representing the eight chords of the refrain (the song “Firilalala” is about a bird wedding). Kindergarten children were not asked to complete this task.
Results
Task 1
Children’s responses to each of the four renditions of the songs were considered correct and given 1 point or incorrect and given 0 points. Because kindergarten children only listened to one song, two analyses of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures were performed with the data. One ANOVA included the responses of first-, second-, and third-graders who listened to the four renditions of three songs. The other ANOVA was based on the responses of children in kindergarten, first, second, and third grade to the four renditions of the song “Firilala”.
The results of the first ANOVA showed that grade level and song affected children's responses, F[2,438] = 5.20, p < .01 and F[2,438] = 13.68, p < .01 respectively. Three interactions were significant: grade x song, F[4,438] = 5.24, p < .01, grade x rendition, F[6,438] = 2.49, p = .02, and song x rendition, F[6,438] = 2.32, p =.04. Analyses of simple effects indicated that song affected the responses of first graders but not those of the older children. While first graders responded more accurately when presented with the renditions of "Firilala" than those of the other songs, second- and third-graders responded quite evenly to the three songs. The analyses of simple effects also showed that grade affected children's responses to two of the incorrect renditions of the songs, the one in which the dominant and tonic chords were switched and the one in which both melody and accompaniment were transposed. While these two renditions elicited the lowest scores from first graders, they elicited the highest scores from children in second and third grade. Further analyses of simple effects indicated that song affected children's responses to the two incorrect renditions that included transpositions. While these renditions of "Firilala" elicited the highest responses from most children, the same renditions of the other songs elicited the lowest scores.
The results of the second ANOVA performed with the data from the song “Firilala” showed that children's responses differed according to grade and rendition F(3,270) = 4.17, p < .01, F(3, 270) = 4.85, p < .01 respectively. The interaction between grade and rendition was significant, F(9,270) = 2.66, p < .01. Analyses of simple effects indicated that grade affected children's responses to two of the rendition, the one in which the dominant and tonic chords were switched and the correct rendition. The comparison of means showed that rendition affected the performance of kindergarteners but not those of the older children. Further analysis determined that kindergarten children provided more accurate responses when presented with the two renditions which included transpositions than when presented with the other renditions.
Task 2
The data from the second task was analyzed in order to see developmental trends in the way young children perceive chords. An idea that was stressed during the training was that the accompaniments of most songs usually end in the tonic chord. I found that 60% of the children in first grade identified the last chord of the accompaniment as I, 95% in second grade did so, and 91% in third grade identified the last chord accurately.
The last two chord of the accompaniment were tonic chords. I found that 27% of first graders, 32% of second graders, and 62% of third graders were able to identified these chords accurately.
The first four chords of the accompaniment were I I V V. I found that 20% of first graders, 64% of second graders, and 86% of third graders identified this simple progression accurately.
The last four chords of the accompaniment were I V I I. Only one child in first grade, two in second grade, and two in third grade identified the chords of this more complex progression accurately. The five children who were able to do so, also identified the first four chords of the song accurately. These five children were the only subjects who identified all eight chords of the accompaniment correctly.
Discussion
The results of the study indicate that there are certain factors that affect children’s performance in harmonic perception tasks and show developmental trends in the way children perceive simple harmonic progressions. Children’s familiarity with a song affects the accuracy with which they discriminate among various accompaniments to its melody. Although children learnt the three songs used as stimuli during the training, they were more familiar with one of the songs (i.e., “Firilala”) than with the others, because “Firilala” was sang every week for 10 weeks while the other songs were only introduced during the fifth week of instruction. Children were more successful in discriminating between an incorrect and a correct rendition of “Firilala” than in doing so between the renditions of the other songs. This was particularly true for the younger children. Perhaps, by listening to and singing the same song for many weeks, children become more aware of the various features of the song including those on which they would not spontaneously focus their attention. It is known that young children tend to focus their attention on musical elements other than harmony but that they may be prompt to focus on this element if presented with simple stimuli (Costa-Giomi, 1994a, 1994b). The results of this study suggest that teachers can direct students’ attention to the harmonic features of the music more successfully by using the songs that are most familiar to the children. This practice might be effective especially when introducing complex accompaniments. In this study, the stimuli that were most difficult to discriminate were two renditions of the less familiar songs; in fact, the same renditions of the most familiar song elicited the highest scores.
Only a few students could identified the eight chords of the accompaniment to the refrain of “Firilala” accurately indicating that the identification of chords is obviously a difficult task for young children. Even in third grade were children usually unable to identify the tonic and dominant chords of simple accompaniments.. However, children were able to identify chords with different degrees of accuracy depending on their grade level. Older children were more successful in identifying the chords than were second graders, and in turn, second graders were more accurate in their identifications of the progressions than were first graders. The accompaniment children were asked to identify was composed of two phrases. The first phrase, which was quite simple (I I V V), was identified by 86% of the third-grade children and 68% of the second graders. Despite its apparent simplicity, only 20% of the first grade children could identify the four chords accurately. The second phrase of the accompaniment was more complex because it presented two chord changes (I V I I). The difficulty of this progression was reflected in the low number of children who identified it accurately. Interestingly, the five children who were able to do so were distributed among the three grade levels indicating that even first graders may be able to identify the chords of a tonic-dominant progression.
Although children in general applied the knowledge they had learnt during the lessons when taking the test, the younger ones were not as consistent as the older students in their use of new knowledge . For example, most children remembered that the last chord of the accompaniment was likely to be the tonic but 40% of first graders failed to do so. It is clear that young children benefit from the repetition of simple concepts, especially those that are more foreign to them.
Teachers should be aware of the difficulties young children experience when presented with simple harmonic tasks and are recommended to consider carefully the inclusion of harmonic concepts in the early childhood music curriculum. It seems important that they provide children with opportunities to apply of harmonic concepts through performance activities in addition to perceptual tasks.
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