Music education today: “Anyone who can speak can also sing”

“Anyone who can speak can also sing,” says Julia Renöckl, a singer and music teacher in Vienna. For students who struggle to match a note, she believes the answer is practice and the development of the necessary neural connections.

Renöckl teaches at the Sir Karl Popper School for highly gifted students and at Wiedner Gymnasium. She also sees positive examples in Austrian music education, including youth programmes at major stages, free dress-rehearsal concerts and school workshops. Through the Austrian Agency for Education and Internationalisation, artists can be brought into schools. Renöckl herself offers an upper-secondary dance module, inviting guests to teach Lindy Hop, Klezmer, salsa and Five Rhythms, a form of improvised dance.

Her teaching career began in France, where she spent three years in Strasbourg developing musicals and operas. She recalls highly committed teachers and support from companies such as Bosch, although teachers had to organise that backing themselves. That approach can create opportunities, she says, but it places a heavy burden on educators.

At the start of each school year, Renöckl conducts an individual vocal assessment. Students come to her in small groups while others work with headphones. She checks whether they can repeat pitches, how wide their vocal range is and whether they can hold a note. Some students initially cannot reproduce a tone they hear on the piano. When they lean over the instrument and feel its vibrations, however, they may succeed.

Singing in front of others can be embarrassing, but Renöckl says students become more comfortable when everyone takes part and the purpose is support and discovery. She keeps trying when students need to learn pitch, and says only a very small number of people have amusia, meaning they cannot distinguish sound from pitch. Even students who never sing, she argues, can change the way they speak through music lessons.

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Anyone who can speak can also sing.