Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. – Colossians 3:16

The tradition of singing schools dates back to New England in the early 1700s. At the time, most church singing consisted of a leader singing out a line of a psalm or hymn, and then the congregation would repeat it. Pastors and church members wanted to sing new songs and wanted to sing them together as a congregation, but the church members needed to be taught how to read music and how to sing harmony parts, so singing schools began.

We hope to continue the tradition of teaching people to sing praises to God together in harmony. We believe that music is a gift given by God to man and that its highest and best use is when it is used to praise God or to build up his people. We believe that music’s complexity in unity mirrors the way God has designed his world to function. When his people sing together in harmony they display the way the church is made up of many parts, but is one body.

While singing is a gift given by God to all, singing well is an art that can only be developed through training and practice. We hope to use the Capitol Hill Singing School to teach children how to read written music, how to breathe well to support their voice, how to project their voice so they can be heard, and how to sing basic harmonies so that they can learn to hear their parts as they sing.

That is a challenging list of goals, but we think children are capable of accomplishing them. Not only do we think these goals are attainable, but we think that children can enjoy the process of accomplishing them. If these sound like goals you would like to set for your children, we hope you will join us.