Books › Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937 › scan 88
Scan 88
Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937
17 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 66. See the scan on archive.org.
1AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 14
3The American Book Company was incorporated in New Jersey in 1890. This company was succeeded by American Book Company, incorporated in New York in December, 1907. Its headquarters are in New York. It has maintained an office in Boston from the beginning of the original Company.
5When the company was organized it purchased from another school book publisher, among many important school books, "Loomis's Progressive Music Lessons," which contributed to musical progress. This series of five books which for many years were generally used in schools throughout the United States did much to create the demand for new methods and new books in school music.
7In 1895 American Book Company brought out the "Natural Music Course" by Ripley and Tapper. Its editors were Frederic Ripley, headmaster of the Prince School of Boston, and Thomas Tapper, the well-known authority on music pedagogy. The basic principle was the scale drill sight reading method for which it contained many exercises. It was prepared at the request in 1877 of Julius Eichberg, then Director of Public School Music Instruction in Boston, to consider the presentation of music from the standpoint of the grade teacher. 15
9This course omitted much earlier technic such as hand signs, ladders and intervals as a study, with the aim of having the notes mean something definite to the pupils. The rhythm was joined to melody and the rhythm building scheme common in France was hit upon. This meant adopting a certain note as a standard and tying it with other notes to produce all the higher note values used. 16 This course made an important contribution to music education and was long and widely used in many parts of the United States. 17
11In 1908 the "Eleanor Smith Progressive Music Course" was published. The idea of this course was to teach music reading and the principles were similar to those of an earlier course which she published under the name "Modern Music Series."
1314 Parts of the copy of this write-up were prepared by George W. Benton, a Director of the Company.
1415 Birge, Edward Bailey. History of Public School Music in the United States p. 117.
1516 Ibid p. 120.
1617 Ibid p. 121.
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