Mom asks strangers on TikTok to play her daughter's sheet music, inspiring a beautiful symphony
A mom in Pennsylvania found sheet music her 10-year-old daughter wrote and shared it on TikTok, and now the internet is making beautiful music together.
Mimi Wallace's daughter Olive loves playing the violin and the clarinet at school, and writes music in her spare time. Last week, she was practicing a new song she hoped to upload to her fantasy-themed blog, writing down the notes as she played.
The next morning, Wallace found her daughter's sheet music on the kitchen counter.
"I come from a family of music teachers and I can read music but I don't have perfect pitch," Wallace tells TODAY.com. "I wanted to know what Olive's music sounded like, so I asked TikTok."
In Wallace's video, now with more than 4 million views, she asked, "So my 10-year-old daughter wrote this. Could somebody play this? I need to know — I need to know if it's any good or if it makes any sense."
TikTok musicians began playing Olive's music in beautiful stitches.
One music teacher performed Olive's song on the violin and the piano, split-screening her performances.
"This is so fun — I swear that I see a couple sharps here indicating a key signature so I assumed it's in D Major," she said in her video. "Mine is going to sound a little different. I hope she likes it!"
Someone else played Olive's song on the clarinet. Another took to the bass.
"Always happy to help budding composers," a harpist captioned their video.
Conductor Dr. Christopher T. F. Hanson, an assistant professor of music and the director of music education and orchestral activities at Seattle Pacific University, shared a group interpretation.
"It is a beautiful testament to creativity and connectivity through the arts," Hanson tells TODAY.com. In his video, music educators from Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming play Olive's song at the National Association for Music Education's Northwest Conference.
"As a music educator, I am passionate about supporting artistic expression," he says. "I saw this TikTok exchange as a perfect opportunity to connect with a young composer."
Hanson hopes to publish the performance as a PDF, so others can download it, and donate the proceeds to music educators in the Pacific Northwest.
Olive tells TODAY.com that the attention on her music is "amazing and incredible but a little overwhelming."
Wallace says strangers said they've shed tears over Olive's song.
"A violinist who hadn't touched her instrument since her car accident said Olive's song inspired her to pick it up again," she says. Another person sent the family a blank notebook for sheet music.
Olive admits to one oversight: Her staff had six lines instead of five. Although, as Wallace points out, "The song is still playable."
The little girl, who dreams of being a violinist one day, has just one request for TikTok: Could someone please play her song on the bagpipes?
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This article was originally published on TODAY.com
