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Musical Courier 1894-08-29: Vol 29 Iss 755, 1894
51 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 22. See the scan on archive.org.
1ways of viewing the same unalterable facts they may be easily committed to memory and not easily forgotten, or if they are, may be recalled; and not by "cudgelling the brains," but by performing certain mental operations. We do not burden our memories with the fact that three times twenty-four are seventy-two, but reason out the multiplication, and similarly transpositions into foreign keys, and all that relates to tonality in this sense should be so taught, that from the known we may with certainty find the unknown.
3In military bands in England the soldiers who learn the bass parts are taught to play in seven flats first, because the music is very often in keys with several flats. Piano pupils begin with the key of C, because it is easiest. Hence arises the idea that it is the first key, whereas it stands midway between the sharp keys on the one hand and the flat keys of the other. In learning theory or grammar it is best to begin with the scale of seven sharps, and take away the sharps one by one until the key of C is reached, then proceed by adding flats one by one until that of seven flats is found.
5We shall thus exhibit the scales in the order that is preferred, because it is that used in the harmonic sequence used by all composers since Bach.
7Ask a child to think of a man whose name is G. C. F. Bead, or J (oseph), C (harles), F (rederick) Bead; or, if preferred, "Jo" (equal to "G"), "Se" (equal to "C") and "Ph" (phonetic also for "F"), and repeat several times the letters G, C, F, B, E, A, D. This will give the order in which the sharps are taken away at the signature, and the flats are added, beginning each time with "B." This orderly succession gives also the following sequence of keynotes:
9B sharp, E sharp, A sharp, D sharp,
10G sharp, C sharp, F sharp.
11B natural, E natural, A natural, D natural,
12G natural, C natural, F natural.
13B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat,
14G flat, C flat, F flat.
16And so on for double flats, or previously for double sharps. This paradigm may be gabbled off at great speed, until it is repeated mechanically. Then, later, when it becomes necessary to extemporize at the keys the mere thought of "Joseph Bead" will enable the player, while dealing with elaborate discords and their most highly elaborated inversions, to keep a clear head. The roots will be, as it were, on the tip of his tongue while his mind is fully absorbed with the figuration, melodic forms and other designs which are being carried out. In such sequences, if chords of the ninth be used, the roots are often omitted. When these are supplied all may be identified, however highly elaborated. If it be merely pointed out that the fifth sound of each scale is the first of the following, enough is said to help a pupil to discover the order, should it not be remembered, and also point to the fact that the succession is orderly, consistent, unbroken and has a definite direction. The inference may be also drawn that if this progression is a fundamentally coherent one a series of harmonies based upon it cannot prove incoherent.
18Efforts such as these should be made in all new didactic works on music, and one need not be ashamed to own that we ourselves may be gainers by them, for we are ever ready to confess that we still often have to say "Thirty days hath September," &c.
20The time has arrived when it is no longer sufficient to put forth a text book which simply echoes the statements of its predecessors. In acoustics, for instance, all conclusions must be verified anew and certain statements modified, for our long distance telephones teach even children that spoken tones may be converted into a force, which if not labelled with a special name behaves very much like electricity, certainly travels along the wire in a mode similar to this agent and at the other end is reconverted back into sound, and with such surety that the inflections of familiar voices are identified. The answer to the question, What is sound? has therefore to be reconsidered, and similarly here, if mathematics are brought in, to explain ratios of scales; whatever is said on this matter should be veritable and capable of immediate application, and not lead a student into distracting doubt and difficulty. Were it not so very serious a matter that young students should be spared mortification or even unnecessary trouble (now that so much has to be absorbed) all this space would not be accorded a subject which to some persons may appear unworthy such painstaking care.
22There is no more direct necessity for teaching minor scales to children during the first year, than of teaching Hungarian scales, or the Dorian, Phrygian or other modes of the Church, all of which make up a considerable portion of music heard nowadays. First, because the scientific minor scale has a peculiar harshness due to the interval of the augmented second. To accustom a child to this painfully overstrained interval before the beauty of natural progressions has been fully experienced, is to foster a taste for strange progressions, or at least to render their employment less significant. Second, if the scales are to be played with rapidity all becomes worse. Thirdly, it refers to a form of anguish altogether foreign to a child's nature. Fourthly, to teach all possible minor scales is to overtax the pupil. But if minor scales must be learned, let them not be taught as relative minors, but as parallel minors, and especially if mathematics are, as here, introduced. A knowledge of exact proportions is valuable to a philosophical chemist, trying to transmute crude substances into gold or its equivalent; but of doubtful use to the cook or practical chemist of the kitchen, daily converting raw meat, &c., into palatable and nutritious food; or to children, who merely wish to translate musical signs into songs and nursery dances. If, however, we must apply mathematics to the minor scales, it is better to form, say, C minor from C major, than from E flat major; for the bearings are unchanged. That is to say, the theoretically immutable notes, (the tonic, dominant and sub-dominant) remain fixed, and prove invaluable as standards of measurement. Only the mutable notes have to be changed, from major to minor which is readily done; but to take a relative minor is to lose all such advantages, and hopelessly befog all students. It is also to introduce another minor scale, as regards altitude (or pitch). Hence we are driven into the study of temperament, and to take up problems of which (in common with other matters), children are best kept in ignorance until the knowledge sought to be acquired is to be acted upon.
24This book may, however, repay adult musicians who wish to fortify their knowledge of our notation, and especially those who are instructors; for, although one would not wish to teach children five kinds of F clefs or five kinds of C clefs and present them with excerpts from Händel's scores with soprano, alto and tenor clefs for voices, a knowledge of all these has value.
26Elaborate rhythmic designs by Beethoven, such as those on page 23 (here bass part has the wrong clef, a compositor's error) and on page 29; yet these studies of syncopation should always be supplementary to ordinary courses of instruction. Such matters as the difference between diatonic semitones and chromatic semitones, between such notes as B sharp and D double flat (page 56) and elaborate enharmonic changes generally, which cannot possibly be rendered clear in a primer on "things in general," are better suppressed; for unless they are made comprehensible a young pupil cannot say he really knows his lesson, and an older student must seek elsewhere for the needed information.
28The chapter on transposition specially deserves great praise because practically and immediately useful, and because the subject is ignored for the most part in our musical instruction books.
30How We Think of Tones and Music.
32IT is seldom that one has the pleasure of reading such an interesting, lucid and subtle article on the vexed question of the different way in which music affects different individuals as that contributed by the well-known writer Mr. Richard Wallaschek to the current number of the "Contemporary Review." He has original views to put forth, and it will therefore interest our readers to have a brief and rough summary of the article under discussion. Mr. Wallaschek's opening paragraph sounds the keynote of the whole article, as it is his aim to show that men may have great knowledge of musical tones, but no real appreciation of music as a whole, and vice versa. Here is the paragraph to which we have just referred:
34"Psychologists as well as musicians have many times been misled in their judgment concerning musical ability in persons who seemed to possess a perfectly clear idea of the tones, chords, harmonies and modulations of a musical piece, without, however, truly comprehending the music as a whole; they may even enjoy each chord or interval by itself, may be delighted with the sound they hear, without finding any peculiar edification in an artistic musical performance. A closer examination often shows that in these people the ability is wanting to comprehend the mass of tones and chords as one connected whole, to find out the organic union in the succession of sounds. Such persons may be usually skilled in the science of tones, but are nevertheless absolutely unmusical. Who knows how many people who daily astonish us by their clever talk on the most complicated compositions and by the most thorough analysis they are able to give of them do not belong to this class, and are not at bottom quite deaf to all the beauties of the divine art? But, whether we can in all cases exactly distinguish such people from real musicians or not, an insight into the psychical structure of their minds will facilitate our reaching a definite conclusion."
36We do not all think of tones alike: "One associates it with the written note of the keyboard, the other with the motion necessary to play it on an instrument, the third is satisfied with the sound alone." The first of these Mr. Wallaschek terms a "visualizer" in tones, and remarks that such a one may be able to write the most remarkable exercises, in which not the slightest mistake shall be found; he will take great pleasure in reading notes without playing them, and yet as a performer he will be as naught, and as a listener cool and indifferent. Our author naturally hastens to add that this music writing ability is in no way opposed to musical ability or appreciation of music as a whole, but that it should be found separated from these qualities, and vice versa, is a remarkable fact.
38Mr. Wallaschek instances himself as an example of a music lover who yet could not write down music. As a boy he was once asked to write down the note A, but though he had studied the piano for nine years he found, much to his surprise, that he did not in the least know on which of the five lines to place the point. He thinks this might be due to the fact that in playing we do not recognize the notes each by itself, but also—and sometimes chiefly—by their respective positions.
40Another type of the musical mind is that which only thinks of tones in connection with the movements employed in playing such tones on an instrument. A strange instance is given of an individual who astonished his friends by playing the different themes from Meyerbeer's "L'Africaine" immediately after the first performance of the opera in a provincial town. Of course his friends were much astonished at his wonderful memory, but as they got to know the opera better they subsequently found, on his repeating the performance, that his "examples were not quite correct, and that he only played just the beginnings of various motives, all else being his own combination of them." It was afterward found out that he could scarcely repeat singing the music he had just played. "You set him down before the piano, and his fingers were at once set in motion over the keyboard, always producing the most pleasing harmonies. An artist of finger movements, but not a musician."
42Another example is given of a man who was a most wonderful extempore player, even so that great expectations were attached to his future career. But he never composed anything, had limited inventive powers and lived continually amid the sea of harmonious sounds his fingers called forth. "His musical ability was overpowered, as it were, by his skill in the movements of tone production." A third type of the musical mind "is satisfied with the tone as such, and associates nothing with it." Mr. Wallaschek thinks that those persons who possess a remarkable memory for the pitch of tones may belong to this class. This accurate memory for pitch is quite independent of a memory for melody, and has been designated as memory for timbre.
44"Which we really recognize or judge of is not the height of tone as such, but the peculiar timbre it assumes in certain pitches, by which timbre we indirectly recognize the height or depth of a tone. This fact has been brought to light by Professor Kries, through observations which showed the manifest difference of judgment according to the variety of timber produced by different instruments. Thus, a person who recognizes the pitch of a tone on a trumpet may fail to recognize it on a violin. We all know that the tone, say E, sounds much higher when sung by a bass voice than sung by a tenor; it sounds higher on the F trumpet than on the C trumpet; higher on the G string than on the D string of a violin, and it is significant that, while speaking of these examples, we involuntary call the timbres high and low sounding; although the height is always the same, the tone only sounds as if it were different. In no instrument is this so clearly shown as in the clarinet, where even musicians of little experience will easily recognize the pitch by means of the different timbre, which may be divided into three quite distinct regions."
46It is evident, continues our author, that unless the tone in its pitch is fixed somehow, the judgment of it cannot be made. The human voice admits of all tones and intervals, and is therefore insufficient. But a fixed toned instrument settles the tone in its pitch, and serves as the required starting point for definite judgment. In learning to sing the voice is nearly always accompanied by an instrument, and the mind therefore becomes acquainted with a long order of definite tones, and can remember them quite distinctly.
48"Now the elaboration of a whole system of tones wholly depends upon our clear ideas of them (Tonvorstellungen), and as these ideas in their clearness and definiteness depend upon the use of instruments it is evident that the facts of our tone system are a practical product based on the nature of instruments. This system has grown out of the structure of the player's hands and lips rather than of the ear and voice or the laws of sound. Only in so far as the production of tones by instruments depends upon the natural laws of sounds and vibration does the system also indirectly depend upon them, but it modifies the abstract, rules of physics according to the practicability of the instrument."
50Having shown that the ability of mentally representing tones does not make up the musical mind for music, as a whole, is something more than all the tones taken together, and we may be able to have tones in our mind without having music, our author then proceeds to deal with the question whether we can have music in our mind without tones. Mr. Wallaschek's point is that it is possible to understand and remember music without having clear ideas of the tones of which it is composed. He gives an instance of a friend of his who tried to remember the opening theme of Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci," but could at first only describe it by "moving his finger in a straight line in the air, suddenly finishing the motion with a zigzag movement, accompanying the whole performance with an indiscrimi-
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