Of course it is good for children to be exposed and led to varied styles of music including Mahler's if they are interested in.
What I meant by this elliptic "Mahler is not for children" is that many aspects of his music like for example ambiguity and second degree are IMO hardly accessible to young minds.
SB
Wow!--you certainly nailed that one! Very rare are children who can understand ambiguity and irony or sarcasm.
Barry is also quite right that we should not "spoon-feed" children only pabulum and bland, boring, too simplistic music.
Dr. Bruno Bettleheim in his tome, "The Meaning and Uses of Enchantment," comments on how today's children have been allowed only to read "cleaned--up" fairy tales. Well-meaning adults wished to avoid having them be frightened by the terrors of death, starvation, or the loss of a parent. Thus they have been deprived of a relatively safe way of confronting these fears.
Mahler's music includes such "scary" and many beautiful images too. If children are exposed to it, they can take it for what they are capable of understanding. They will probably not understand the ambiguity or irony. Perhaps they will even learn that age and experience can lead them to appreciate something more each time they hear it.
When I first heard Mahler, I was dazzled by the imagery--beautiful, powerful, and sometimes frightening.
Then later, when curiosity led me to follow closely THE WORDS, I came to appreciate better the philosophical and spiritual nature of Mahler's works.
We are all children...still learning.
This is life. Let us enjoy the adventure!
