The three approaches of Carl Orff, Zoltan Kodaly, and Shinichi Suzuki to early childhood education can be successfully fused to provide a foundation for a total music curriculum from the nursery to secondary school. Basically, Orff suggests that rhythmic patterns should be experienced in children's natural language as they improvise melodies and harmonies from nursery rhymes and supplement their musical awareness with simple, Orff-designed musical instruments. Kodaly approaches the understanding of musical concepts through the human voice and suggests a broad curriculum based on children's singing, playing, listening, moving rhythmically, and creating their own music. Suzuki, whose approach to violin playing can be transferred to other instruments, suggests that children should be provided with a controlled musical environment from birth, with their parents and teachers guiding them through graded materials which progress parallel to their linguistic development. Such a learning program can meet children's musical needs by developing their aural sensitivity, pitch discrimination, and rhythmic responses at each level of their understanding. (JB)