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Amadeus Way

by Christine Shin

Go here to find out how New Mozart's early childhood music program began!

The Next Evolution of Early Childhood Music at New Mozart 

A richer and more comprehensive musical foundation for young children

Created by New Mozart Founder and Director Christine Shin, The Amadeus Way is an original early childhood music program shaped by decades of experience in piano and vocal pedagogy and early childhood music education.

Learning Music as a Language

Would you stop your child from speaking until they could read?

Then why do we so often teach music this way?

Children learn spoken language first by listening. They imitate sounds, experiment with their voices, recognize patterns, and gradually begin to communicate. Reading comes later, after they have already developed an understanding of the language they are learning to read.

Music can develop in much the same way.

Before music becomes something children read on a page, it can be something they hear, sing, move to, play, and create. These experiences help children develop an intuitive understanding of pitch, rhythm, phrasing, and musical expression before those ideas are represented through notation.

This principle has increasingly shaped the way I have approached early childhood music education throughout my years of teaching.

Over the years, I found myself continually adapting and expanding the curriculum I was teaching. I added new activities, wrote additional music, reconsidered the sequence in which concepts were introduced, incorporated more singing and movement, expanded the piano component, and developed new ways for children to experience and understand musical ideas.

The Amadeus Way grew naturally out of that experience. It gave me the opportunity to develop an entirely new curriculum around what I had learned from teaching young children over many years and to address areas where I felt something was still missing.

Drawing from Many Traditions

There is a proliferation of approaches to music education for young children: Orff, Dalcroze, Kodály, Suzuki, Montessori, and many more. Each has strengths, and each emphasizes important aspects of the developing musician.

My background as a piano and voice teacher has always kept instrumental and vocal development closely connected to my work with young children. Over the years, my additional studies in Orff, Dalcroze, and Kodály have broadened that perspective and influenced the way I approach early childhood music education.

Rather than following any single methodology, I became interested in what might happen if the strengths of these different approaches could be combined for a more comprehensive musical foundation.

The Amadeus Way incorporates the child-centered exploration associated with Montessori, the singing and aural development central to Kodály, the rhythm and movement emphasized by Dalcroze and Orff, and the high level of parental involvement found in Suzuki. At the same time, it remains a piano-based program in which children gradually develop real piano skills alongside their broader musicianship.

The Four Elements of the Amadeus Way

The Amadeus Way curriculum is organized around four interconnected areas: piano discovery and skills; solfege singing and ear training; rhythm and movement; and improvisation and composition.

The piano gives children a visual and physical way to explore pitch, patterns, harmony, and eventually music notation. Singing develops the ear and helps children internalize pitch relationships before reproducing them on an instrument. Rhythm and movement allow musical ideas to be experienced physically rather than only explained intellectually.

Beginning in Amadeus Musicians II, improvisation and composition are introduced more intentionally as another dimension of musicianship.

The creative act, not just performance, was once an integral part of a musician’s education. In the early nineteenth century, musicians were routinely expected to improvise as well as perform written repertoire. As the Romantic period progressed and the technical demands of instrumental literature increased, music study became increasingly focused on developing the skills necessary to perform written repertoire at a high level. Gradually, reproduction began to eclipse creation.

By bringing improvisation and composition into the learning process, we want children to understand that music is not only something written by someone else for them to perform. It is also something they can explore, shape, and eventually create for themselves.

The goal is to develop not only capable performers and readers of music, but whole musicians who can hear, understand, perform, and create music.

Development Before Notation

The Amadeus Way is rooted in a philosophy of music education that recognizes music as an essentially human activity and every child as a musical being.

Each level is designed around the developmental abilities of the children in that age group.

Technical work and notation are important parts of musical study, but when they become the primary focus too early, children can begin to associate learning music mainly with finding the correct notes on a page. For very young children, there is much that can develop before notation becomes the center of instruction.

They can learn to sing in tune. They can feel and maintain a steady beat. They can recognize changes in pitch, dynamics, articulation, and tempo. They can hear musical patterns, coordinate movement with sound, explore the keyboard, reproduce melodies by ear, and begin creating musical ideas of their own.

Notation then has something meaningful to represent.

Amadeus Explorers I & II: Ages 3–4

Children ages three to four begin laying this foundation in Amadeus Explorers through ear training, solfege singing, movement, piano exploration, and activities that develop pitch and rhythm awareness.

At this age, the emphasis is on experiencing music actively. Children sing, listen, move, play, imitate, and explore. Musical concepts are introduced through activities appropriate to the way young children naturally learn.

The piano is present from the beginning, but it is one part of a larger musical experience rather than the sole focus of instruction.

Amadeus Musicians I & II: Ages 5–6

As children progress to Amadeus Musicians, the same foundational elements continue, but the level of skill and musical organization increases.

Piano study becomes more substantial, and children begin connecting what they have learned through listening, singing, and movement with increasingly sophisticated piano playing and music reading. Their understanding of pitch and rhythm expands, while improvisation and composition take on a larger role.

The four areas—piano, ear training and singing, rhythm and movement, and creativity—continue to reinforce one another rather than developing as separate subjects.

A child might sing a musical pattern, move to its rhythm, find it on the keyboard, recognize it in notation, and eventually use the same musical idea as the beginning of an improvisation or composition.

That connection between hearing, doing, understanding, reading, and creating is central to the program.

The Role of Parents

Like the Suzuki method, the Amadeus Way places considerable importance on parent involvement.

For children ages three to six, a parent or caregiver participates in class and continues to support the learning process at home.

This involvement is not simply about supervising practice. Young children learn through modeling. When a parent sings, moves, listens, and participates alongside a child, the child experiences music as something that is valued and enjoyed together.

Over time, the parent also becomes familiar with the language and activities used in class and is better able to reinforce them naturally at home.

Building a Foundation for What Comes Next

The purpose of the Amadeus Way is broader than preparing children to begin private piano lessons.

The hope is to develop a foundation that supports whatever direction their musical lives eventually take. Children develop experience in keyboard playing, singing, ear training, rhythm, movement, music reading, improvisation, and composition.

For some, piano will become their primary instrument. Others may eventually study voice, strings, or another instrument. Some may pursue music seriously, while others may simply carry an understanding and love of music throughout their lives.

The early years offer an unusual opportunity. Before children begin thinking of music primarily in terms of correct notes, practice assignments, or performances, they can experience it as something they naturally hear, sing, move to, play, understand, and create.

From Early Musical Experiences to Lifelong Musicianship

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to watch many children who began in my early childhood music classes continue their musical development well beyond those first years.

Some have gone on to win competitions, perform in musical theatre and opera productions, appear on national television including Nickelodeon, become professional musicians, and perform at venues such as Carnegie Hall and Vienna’s Musikverein.

These accomplishments are wonderful, but they are not the purpose of early childhood music education, nor are they the measure by which every child's musical experience should be judged.

What has been most meaningful to me is seeing how the musical foundations established in those early years can continue to support children as they grow—whether they eventually pursue music at an advanced level or simply carry music with them as an important part of their lives.

The Amadeus Way grew from many years of observing that development: seeing what children responded to, where they struggled, what helped concepts become meaningful, and what allowed their natural musicality to flourish.

It represents the next evolution of early childhood music at New Mozart and the culmination of what I have learned through many years of teaching, observing, adapting, and learning alongside my students.

© Christine E. Shin

For more info on how children learn music, read Developing a Musical Language for Young Children written by Dr. Paul U. Lee, Stanford educated cognitive psychologist.