In this chapter, I will investigate the role of musical instruments in children’s
lives. A musical instrument is a thing which has the capacity to produce a variation
of sounds perceived as music when the musician follows certain conventions
and rules. The child who learns to play a musical instrument involves
him/herself both with music as a cultural field and with the steady technical
and expressive requirements from the particular musical instrument. However,
whereas music accompanies very many activities in everyday life of children,
fewer children have such an active relationship with a musical instrument. The
more so when what is practiced by the instrument is classical music. This gap
between music as consumed (listening to) and music as practiced (playing) is
interesting from a developmental perspective: what does it mean for a child to
play a musical instrument? And in which ways may the gap between consuming
music and playing music be relevant in children’s live in the recent historical
period of advanced liberalism? In the chapter, I will investigate the role of
musical instruments for children who practice classical music.