Music therapy class strikes a chord with autistic children in Beijing

Standing confidently in front of the class, a teenage girl starts singing in a pretty voice: “High on a hill was a lonely goatherd/lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo.” Before long, the rest join her in yodelling the chorus to The Lonely Goatherd. 

Generations of children have learned the song from The Sound of Music. But in this rented room at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing   the students are teenagers with autism and other intellectual disabilities.  Every Sunday morning, they gather for a few hours of singing, dancing and piano lessons.

“I always pick easy,  happy songs for them. The whole point is to get everyone involved and to enjoy it,” says their music teacher Jiang Dufang.

Beyond enjoyment, the lessons serve as therapy to stimulate mental development.

The programme  was founded 12 years ago by Yu Huigeng,  a former principal of a high school affiliated with the conservatory.

Yu, 88, had been struck by the remarkable progress of children who had taken part in a pilot scheme in 1984.

She had organised  18 months of violin lessons and pitch training at a kindergarten for about 30 toddlers who had no musical background, and   made follow-up visits  10 years later. She found most of them excelled at their studies.