Every Dad Can: Providing Good Music in the Home

Special memories with my Hannah and inspiration from the family lives of J.S. Bach and Philip Glass

Good Music

The children of Johann Sebastian Bach were blessed by constant immersion in the greatest music the world has ever known. They were just feet away as masterpieces still revered today were invented, arranged, and rehearsed. When asked late in life to what he attributed the success of his oldest sons among his many pupils, Sebastian said:

Because they had, from their earliest youth, opportunity in their father’s house to hear good music, and no other. They were therefore accustomed early, and even before they had received any instruction, to what was most excellent in the art.¹

Just as it had for Sebastian in the home of his father, Ambrosius, and for Ambrosius in the home of his father, Christoph, and so on, the musical development of the Bach children began well before their formal instruction thanks to the music they heard from their father. And, as Sebastian points out, this was no second-rate music. Only the best was heard in the Bach home, representing the highest art that could be achieved in sound.

Sebastian was an avid sheet music collector, applying his discerning taste to everything he brought home. We can see a well-deserved confidence in that what he calls “most excellent in the art” would have included his own works and the works of his extended family. A shared quest to experience and develop great music would take the Bach family on road trips together, but the home was the foundational environment.

As I write my book on Bach’s family life, I am enjoying the process of lining up the works he was composing and performing around the times he welcomed each of his children into the world. I am also exploring the resulting creative endeavors of his children, including the compositions of Sebastian’s oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann.

Hannah Playlist

When we were expecting our first daughter, I was so excited to share great music with her. I wrote to her about my favorite composers while she was still in the womb, and I was thrilled at the knowledge that she could hear my practicing and the music we listened to over speakers. I could not wait to sit with her on this side of the womb and see her reactions.

I made a playlist called “Hannah” with some of the most profound and calming classical music I knew. It included several lesser-known works I had discovered over the years—pieces that had administered peace and healing in my life, in many cases. I hoped she would learn to recognize the underrated beauty of such music. The performers were chosen carefully from both young and old generations who captured a unique purity of tone and expression, from Oistrakh to Ehnes, Hassid to Hadelich. None of this careful curation was because I wanted Hannah to have an early start toward a musical career like the one I pursued in college. I just wanted her to enjoy the beauties that inspired me and perhaps gain something positive from my journey in music.

It was surprisingly tricky to find pieces for that playlist that did not have some dark middle section or sudden dynamic changes that might startle or unsettle her in those quiet, early days after the birth. Vladimir Spivakov playing Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel was the first recording I included, and it calmed her down and put her to sleep many times when she was crying in the car. Next came a hushed Russian choral rendition of the, “Our Father,” the middle movements of violin concertos by Haydn, Vivaldi, and Mozart, and short pieces by Debussy, Strauss, and Schumann.² I also included the slow movement of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 6, which I studied years before in college and which has an important family connection I will write about here sometime.

Bach Cantatas

When my wife Angela returned to her 9-5 research job, I would stay home practicing and caring for baby Hannah while she was gone and then teach private lessons and play gigs in the evenings and on weekends. Hannah and I began each weekday morning with a Bach cantata. I knew Bach had written more than 200, and I remembered my Bach professor saying that each was a masterpiece, yet I had only heard perhaps a handful. What artistic benefits might come to a child who listened to them all, when few professional musicians take the time to do so? I found that Masaaki Suzuki had recorded every Bach cantata with the Bach Collegium Japan, so I found their BWV 1 on Spotify on day one, and we worked our way through from there.

I let Hannah react to the cantatas at her own pace and began to see how she would be pensive in a somber movement but begin kicking along on my lap to a more joyful and bouncy movement. Soon she was dancing along in her walker, especially during some of the exultant choruses with trumpets and timpani. She began singing and humming along early as well. I could not believe it when, at just one year old, she began finding and matching the key center of each new cantata in her sweet voice.

Movements she and I reacted most strongly to, whether choruses, arias, recitatives, or instrumental solos, were added to a “Bach Cantata Faves” playlist for revisiting. During this special season with Hannah, we also went for many walks where I would pause at each tree so she could reach out and feel its bark. She learned to spot deer, geese, squirrels, and foxes.

I believe our intentional time with Bach and nature fed the creativity in her early drawings and paintings. I taught her just once how to hold a marker and she never forgot. I decided to try teaching her to use watercolors at 18 months, thinking perhaps I was being a bit ambitious, but she understood immediately, going from water cup to paint to paper. She showed great intentionality with the mood of each painting; she would paint one picture of all long strokes in warm colors and then ask for a new piece of paper, painting the next with all short strokes and dots in cool colors. Another would be a mix of browns and greens. She was pleased with her creations, and her love for artistic expression has only grown since. Along with the Bach cantatas, we listened through all of Beethoven’s string quartets and explored Brahms trios, Haydn symphonies, and more.

I like to imagine that Hannah’s early immersion in Bach’s cantatas has contributed to her ease in learning German—an ongoing project for us both on DuoLingo that quickly had her walking into my office each morning saying, “Guten Morgen, Vater. Wie geht’s?”

We listen to typical children’s music as well, but Bach remains a favorite. The other day, she asked, “Dad, can we listen to something beautiful… like the Coffee Cantata?”

Live and Recorded Music

There is something extraordinary about live instruments in the home. Even with a dry acoustic, you can bring the whole atmosphere to life, gaining sympathetic vibrations from the light fixtures and floor joists under the carpet with gentle reverberations from the walls and mantels. Music penetrates your soul differently at close range, and baby Hannah would watch me practice from just feet away for hours every day. When preparing for serious auditions, I would record my list of excerpts as she danced along, then listen back with headphones as she napped, then practice and record again. Her smiles and singing were the best encouragement.

My brother James has also enjoyed sharing live music with his son Elijah from the womb onward. When Elijah was a newborn, he would let him nap in the curve of his guitar as he would play and sing. He now has this way of playing cello with Elijah on his lap helping pull the bow. You can hear more about James’s journey here:

Podcast Interview: Cellist James Hettinga

Not every dad will be able to provide professional-level live music in the home, but technology has extended the benefits of having a musical father to anyone with a father who has the dedication to develop their ears and taste. The countless folks who have come up to me after performances with the classic dad joke, “I only play the radio,” should not discount their ability to provide good music in their homes. Anyone can listen closely, learn about what they hear, and share this with their children. What Shinichi Suzuki says about learning the violin, “Every child can,” is true about supporting and inspiring children in music, “Every dad can.”

Philip Glass and His Father Ben

One of today’s most prominent classical composers, Philip Glass, grew up in Baltimore, Maryland with a musical father whose only instrument was a record player. Ben was a member of “the greatest generation” and the very picture of a man’s man, yet he applied his tender side to parenting his three children and being an intentional father figure to neighbor children and cousins who did not have fathers in the home. A World War II Marine veteran and auto mechanic turned radio repairman turned record salesman, Ben Glass developed his ear for music to support and grow his small business. In his memoir, Words Without Music, Philip says:

My father was self-taught, but he ended up having a very refined and rich knowledge of classical, chamber, and contemporary music. Typically he would come home and have dinner, and then sit in his armchair and listen to music until almost midnight. I caught on to this very early, and I would go and listen with him. Of course, he had no idea I was there. At least, at that time, I didn’t think so. Until I was nine years old, we lived in one of the row houses with the marble steps that were the rule in the downtown Baltimore residential neighborhoods. The children’s bedrooms were only one floor above the living room where my father sat for his evening music listening. Somehow, I would find myself awake and would quietly sneak part way down the stairs behind him and, sitting there, join him in listening. My childhood nights were spent with him in this way from a very early age. For me, those years were filled with the music of the great Schubert string quartets, the Opus 59 quartets of Beethoven, piano music of all kinds, and quite a lot of "modern" music as well—mainly Shostakovich and Bartók. The sounds of chamber music entered my heart, becoming my basic musical vocabulary. I thought, simply, that was how music was supposed to sound. That was my base, and quite a lot of everything else eventually became layered around it.

Philip worked in his father’s record shop from an early age, learning from his father’s consistent work ethic. Both of his parents supported his budding interest in music and made financial sacrifices for him to be able to take lessons on the flute. While Philip’s decision to pursue a full-time music career was his own, he followed in Ben’s footsteps by becoming an uncommonly devoted father. Sharing pregnancy and birth stories of his children in his memoir, Philip writes, “The beginning of a life and the end of a life are both huge transitions. There’s nothing greater. I didn’t know much about the ending of lives at that time, but I learned about beginnings with my children.”

Philip’s memoir is one of rare quality, and I see a theme of family running through it, even if his family—like all families—was not perfect. The record shop of Ben Glass, and, more importantly, the music brought home from the record shop, shows us how sharing music in a family can inspire both a devotion to music and a devotion to family. Given Ben’s love of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, Philip dedicated his first violin concerto to him and wrote it in a style he thought his father would have enjoyed had he lived to hear it. The main violin theme in the first movement begins with the three notes: D–A–D.³

Family Listening Activities

A simple way I have found recently to enjoy music with Hannah (now 6) came from buying her the Dover Great Composers coloring book. As she colors each composer with colored pencils, I have been working on my own drawings—though any parent could easily just color along. We always start by reading the blurb about the composer. Then, we listen to music by them for thirty minutes to an hour, enjoying conversation about it as we color and draw.

I like to share recordings of complete works rather than playing highlights from a “greatest hits” album. The soloists and ensembles on collection albums are often not the best available, and the “hits” are the same tunes Hannah will hear in Super Bowl commercials anyway. Listening to all of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in one sitting at an early age is an accomplishment—something she may remember, something we can build upon—as opposed to hearing a spattering of stray movements out of context. Try this with your child and let them pick their favorites, adding the works that get them excited to a playlist you can revisit.

While Spotify and other streaming platforms have tremendous variety, CDs have better sound quality. I used to joke that I invested in the wrong kind of CDs when I was a teenager, but I learned so much from those CDs and the notes in their inserts. Having kept the best ones, I can now enjoy them with Hannah and her little brothers, telling them about the concerts where I had CDs signed by my favorite violinists.

LPs bring even more to the table, and it is fun to explore and compare these different mediums together. I once played the same solo Bach movement by Milstein through our speaker system, first via Spotify, and then from an LP on our turntable. We were all amazed by the difference. There is something captivating about the sound of vinyl; it is no wonder this drew the very young Philip Glass into the world of classical music. As you share an LP with small children, the care it takes to handle it sends the message that music is precious. A record player does not follow you around like a phone in the pocket. It provides an anchor to enjoy one room of your house, together.

My second-born, Henry, is 2 and always responds well to organ music, including one LP of Bach that we found at our local thrift store for 25 cents. Writing this post has challenged me to come up with a listening plan for all of Bach’s organ works that will provide us with some good father-son time in the coming months.

Great music is a true blessing and something any dad can provide. How do you enjoy music in your home? What kind of music might your children remember hearing in their early years, and how can you be intentional in this area?

1. Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician.

2. Recently, we revisited Hannah’s playlist with our third child Jonathan as he was crying in the car when we were out for his first check-up. He calmed right down to Kedrov’s “Our Father” just like Hannah used to. It amazes me how sensitive Jonathan is to music. Even when I listen with one earbud in so as not to wake others at night, he reacts to sudden dynamic changes as he sleeps in my arms. His breath will quicken and he will stir as the music grows in intensity. I wonder if after being so attuned to Angela inside her for nine months he can feel the changes in my heartbeat and blood pressure.

3. Violinist Gidon Kremer, who made the premiere recording of the Glass concerto in 1993, got his start in music thanks to the influence of his forefathers, studying violin from age 4 with his father and grandfather—both professional violinists. He later studied with the legendary David Oistrakh, my teacher’s teacher. While you are listening to Kremer, visit his eccentric but profound 2005 recording of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin, which I just discovered. After listening to such a raw, almost aggressive interpretation of the Grave and Fugue from Sonata No. 2 in A minor, I was stunned and moved by the softness of the Andante. This movement was my first inspiration for this whole research and writing project, and it caught me off guard emotionally as I rocked my newborn son Jonathan. Kremer just received a Lifetime Achievement Award in the 2025 International Classical Music Awards (ICMA).