Ti racconto in musica la storia del Mugnaio. : Die schöne Müllerin nella Scuola dell’infanzia

Abstract

This article proposes an educational project aimed at preschool children from three  to six  years old, focusing on the listening of a selection of eight pieces taken from the lieder cycle Die schöne Müllerin by Franz Schubert. Composed in 1823 on a cycle of poems by Wilhelm Müller, it is a work with a strong emotional impact that tells the story of a young miller's heartbreak and his imaginary relationship with a stream.

In the project, the cycle is turned into a serial narrative whose didactic leitmotif is the search for the interweaving between verbal and musical language: through the narration of the story on the one hand and the listening of the Lieder on the other, the teacher guides children to grasp both narratives – verbal and musical –  in parallel, in order to find within the musical discourse "the dramatic web that underlies Müller's Liederspiel" (La Face, 2003, p. 13).

The approach is informal, yet intentionally aimed at developing various educational areas, in particular cognitive-cultural, critical-aesthetic, affective-emotional, linguistic-communicative and relational-social skills. Children are gradually introduced to the practice of attentive and reflective listening, whose basic foundations can already be laid at this age; moreover, they undergo an important aesthetic experience, which brings them closer to art music and helps them interiorize the meanings and values of our civilization.