Art & Music

Art & Music Programs

There is no better way to cultivate a love for beauty than by learning to create beauty for oneself.

Art Program
Music Program
Classical schools understand the importance of truth, goodness, and beauty, and there is no better way to cultivate a love and appreciation for beauty than by learning to create beauty for oneself. When a student learns to make music or draw, they also learn to see and enjoy the details and skill in someone else’s music and art. The fine arts also overlap, perhaps inextricably, with the liberal arts. For instance, the fine arts of painting and music also express ideas — (and expressing ideas is the goal of rhetoric).

Aside from art and choir classes themselves, The Classical Academy also makes an effort to make every day a beautiful experience. From hanging great art, paying attention to aesthetically tasteful classrooms, to wearing standard uniforms, we are awakening and cultivating beauty within our students. This “hidden curriculum,” in concert with our full classical, Christian curriculum are part of the million little things that cultivate virtue and a lifelong love for the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Grammar School Art Program

Lower School Art

The foundation of the grammar school art program is imitation and focuses on the teaching and development of specific skills related to various aspects of art. We believe that for children to develop into good artists they need mature, trained guidance and an opportunity to imitate, practice and explore within a controlled fundamental situation.

Instruction is teacher-directed sensory exploration and learned appreciation in the context of a God-centered love for the variety of creation as seen in color, light, and texture. Special attention is given to teaching correct posture and hand position, formation and identification of geometric shapes and spatial relationships such as perspective and using the entire sheet of paper.

Picture Study

In addition to visual arts, students also develop art appreciation through picture study. Just as literature introduces students to the thoughts of great writers, picture study introduces students to the ideas of famous artists. Picture study increases the power of observation. It develops a child’s sense of beauty, and it teaches students to value the contribution that famous artists have made to that which is beautiful and worthwhile in our world.

Logic & Rhetoric School Art Program

Upper School Art

The logic and rhetoric art program addresses teaching the names and major works of the artistic masters. The students are taught to recognize similarities and differences between artists through evaluating the works themselves and then sorting appropriately. At the same time they continue to imitate a variety of works while seeking to master the concepts of proportion, shading, depth, color, contour, balance and positive and negative space.

After students learn the basic skills and imitate masters (as young apprentice artists have done for centuries in Europe), they are far better prepared to construct their own, unique renderings.

Here is a sampling of artwork from our Academy students:

 

Music Program

The worship of God is a joy-filled calling for all Christians.

In the study of music, there persists an age-old question: Are we training capable worshippers of the Holy Triune God or are we simply mastering material for a fabulous performance? The worship of God is a joy-filled calling for all Christians. While a well-done performance of high-quality and tasteful music should never be overlooked or viewed as a waste of time, we seek to impart to our students a knowledge that music is a gift of God to His people to be used for His worship, as well as our own enjoyment.

Music Program

Choir & Music Appreciation

All grades participate in a choir course designed to train students vocally through the singing of masterworks. Participation in Christmas and spring musical performances provide students with an opportunity to offer the fruit of their labor back as worship to the Lord and enjoyment for the school community. Choir also includes the basics of vocal skills, rhythm work, theory exercises, and music history. Throughout the year, students also have the opportunity to participate in optional ensemble work before and after school such as handbells and handchimes.

In addition to this choir course, students also develop music appreciation through studying the life and works of famous composers. With music appreciation, students gain a broader exposure to beauty and are allowed to think and feel within a creative realm that they might not otherwise directly encounter. Music appreciation stimulates spatial-temporal reasoning which is the brain function behind difficult, complicated tasks like math or chess.