Making music doesn’t start when you pick up an instrument. Bruce Millar finds a school set up to get the very youngest in tune...
Every child is a musician – and so, logically, is every adult. “We all sing before we can talk,” declares Rachel Erdos, director of a remarkable music school that meets every Saturday in premises rented from Kingston University.
Introduce your child to music with Colourstrings
Colourstrings Music School takes toddlers as young as 18 months on a journey from their parents’ knees, beginning with clapping, singing, and stepping in time before they take up the violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano, guitar, or flute at the age of five or six. The school then guides them all the way through to the highest levels on their chosen instrument until they are 18.
Founded on methods formulated a century ago by the Hungarian composer and educationalist Zoltán Kodály, Colourstrings aims to teach children the full arsenal of musical concepts – rhythm, pitch, melody, dynamics, tempo, character – through play, imagination and the “drip, drip, drip” of repeating familiar songs which are then used in instrumental studies.
This internalisation of music helps the children become fluent in ‘relative sol-fa’—the transposing of keys that can intimidate much older students learning music through more traditional methods. So, by the time they start an instrument, playing it is just an extension of what they already instinctively know.
Learning is largely free of technical terms: each string has its own ‘voice’ and is denoted by a specific colour – hence the Colourstrings name – and the children improvise and compose from the start.
“It’s not just technical or even musical,” says Rachel. “It’s entering a magical world.”
And it’s a magical world of the very highest order.
Many pupils go on to glittering musical careers
Among recent triumphs, violinist Isabell Karlsson led the National Youth Orchestra in 2023, while her younger sister, cellist Inez, won the Polar Star Prize (Nordic Edition) in Gothenburg; guitarist Zahrah Hutton has just joined the Mela Guitar Quartet, a leading professional ensemble; and Gabriella Köhler, violin, has been awarded a scholarship to the Royal Northern College of Music.
James Marshall, another violinist, won a place at the Menuhin School near Cobham, while Neo Millar took the Pearl Prize at the British Flute Society’s annual competition. But for Rachel, music education is about more than technical achievement. At Colourstrings, there is no selection by talent: pupils progress at their own speed, without labels or ranking.
“We’re not trying to produce perfect instrumentalists,” she says. “We want to fill our pupils’ lives with music in an environment without pressure – something rare in education today. We aim to nurture them emotionally. Successful adults, in any sphere, are often those who are emotionally rich and well-rounded from childhood.”
Rachel's background
Rachel struggled with her violin teaching until she came to the Kodály methods. In a nice twist of family history, Rachel’s Hungarian violinist grandmother, whom she never met, studied under Kodály in the 1920s.
Yet while Kodály is a familiar name in music education, Colourstrings Music School (CMS) – established 50 years ago in Finland by Géza Szilvay, and in the UK in 1994 – is rare in offering a full programme based around his philosophy and taught entirely by specially trained teachers. As part of the Szilvay Foundation – a charity with no public funding – it runs on a relative shoestring, keeping fees to a minimum and offering bursaries when possible.
The parents are involved too
While there is no selection by musical ability – would that even be possible at 18 months? – there is one important qualification: parental commitment. Fail to involve the parents, warns Rachel, and you risk losing the children too. Happily, many share their child’s joy and join the parents’ choir. Some continue to attend Colourstrings concerts long after their children have left.
Rachel’s one regret is that the school is limited to 40 new kindergarten pupils a year. The dream is to expand into the week, enabling the school to serve any family willing to commit. Ideally, there would be a generous bursary fund to help those unable to afford the fees and to help the school acquire its own building and more fully trained teachers.
As the autumn term commences on September 7, Rachel hopes that a wealthy philanthropist may be out there who would like to help the school fulfil these worthwhile dreams. Let’s hope so.
Learn more at colourstringsmusicschool.co.uk; colourstrings.co.uk.
More music classes for toddlers and babies in Surrey
- Jo Jingles; jojingles.com
- Monkey Music Classes; monkeymusic.co.uk
- Hartbeeps; hartbeeps.com
- Caterpillar Music; caterpillarmusic.com
- Molly Moocow; mollymoocow.com
