Books › Musical Courier 1928-12-13: Vol 97 Iss 24, 1928 › scan 31
Scan 31
Musical Courier 1928-12-13: Vol 97 Iss 24, 1928
59 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 32. See the scan on archive.org.
1MUSIC IN THE SCHOOLS and COLLEGES
2A Departmental Feature
3Conducted by Albert Edmund Brown
4Dean, Ithaca Institution of Public School Music
6Essential Qualities for All School Music Materials and Present Supplies one of two readings
7Essential Qualities for All School one of two readings
8Music Materials and Present Supplies one of two readings
9By Will Earhart
10Director of Music in the Pittsburgh Public Schools
12In this article Dr. Earhart discusses more than the title indicates. In appraising music material for use in the schools he also appraises the children in the schools—those who are to use the music—and he shows that the chief fault in the past of those who selected school music material was not that they did not understand music but rather that they did not understand children.—THE EDITOR.
14The discussion which I have in mind, of qualities appropriate to educational musical material, may perhaps be most easily approached from the basis of musical aesthetics. Certainly, I do not expect to contribute anything new to this subject, upon which countless volumes have been written. It may be, however, that such knowledge of musical aesthetics as we possess has never been sufficiently applied to our educational theories and practices. Indeed, I am convinced that many of the imperfections of our work have been due to the fact that we have not, before beginning to teach music, answered to ourselves, with a tempered finality, these questions: What is music? What is it good for? Yet only after some sort of answer, spoken or implied, is returned to these questions are we fully prepared to answer that third question, which has primarily and almost wholly engrossed us: How shall we teach it?
16Now the field of musical aesthetics is generally regarded as vague, and many of my friends appear to believe that every element in it is controversial. Nevertheless, I find writers generally in agreement upon a few simple but basic conclusions, and these are, fortunately, sufficient for our purposes. They are, briefly, that music has two elements of beauty, namely, Beauty of Tone and Beauty of Tonal Design. Of these, Beauty of Tone is a sensory element, corresponding to color in graphic art. It invades, charms, "subjugates" us, like the perfume of flowers, without any effort upon our part. If we step into the church on Sunday morning and the organ is pealing, the place is transformed for us. It may be but a chord, sustained and vibrant, but the effect is immediate and powerful. But if, as we take our seat, the chord is continued unchanged, we soon become weary, even irritated. The tones must go somewhere, must describe some sort of a coherent, balanced, interesting design, or they soon lose their compelling power. What they do, where they go, is a matter of interest because we have memory and coordinating power. What happens in measure two is significant only in relation to what happened in measure one. This appeal is not to the senses, but to the mind.
18Music also arouses mood, feeling, emotion. There is no time to discuss this deeply, but I should like to point out that our response to beauty of tone or to beauty of design is in itself an emotion, and that beauty is not neutral in color. There is a beauty of the lily and a beauty of the rose, a beauty of the California mission and a beauty of the Gothic arch—and we do not feel the same way about all. The chord heard as we enter church may be robust, or celestial, may have any one of a hundred colors; the design upon which the tones embark may be spirited or grave, solemn or jubilant. In short, it may be beautiful or un-beautiful in a hundred moods. I venture to say, however, that the emotions of which most persons think in connection with music are associated emotions. This is particularly true with respect to vocal music, for vocal music has words, and these words tell a story, picture a scene, set forth a human situation. Let no one confuse such interest with specific musical interest or appreciation of musical beauty. My long continued desire to see instrumental music developed in our schools is directly due to my feeling that true appreciators of music, patrons of chamber music, recitals and concerts given over to the older classicists, could never be developed so long as the children, by reason of our wholly vocal program, were trained to think of music as being characteristically and properly of operatic or ballad interest.
20The two factors, beauty of tone and beauty of design (including under the latter term all that the tones are and all that they do, simultaneously and consecutively) are compatibles, are markedly congruous, and one predisposes toward the other. We can sing Oh Yes, She's My Baby in a raucous tone of voice and no one sense incongruity, but we can not sing Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes in such a tone of voice. Similarly we can pour out some Carolina Blues on the most tinny and out-of-tune piano, and none who hear will be angered; but we cannot treat a Chopin Nocturne that way. A beautiful tone thus predisposes us to receive a beautiful thought; beauty and nobility speak to beauty and nobility.
22Santayana, in his book, The Sense of Beauty, says significantly: "Form cannot be the form of anything." Continuing, he pleads eloquently the necessity for beauty in the material out of which the forms of art are wrought. "The Parthenon not in marble, the king's crown not of gold, and the stars not of fire, would be feeble and prosaic things." And again: "Taste, when it is spontaneous, always begins with the senses." . . . "The beauty of material is thus the groundwork of all higher beauty."
24The material of our art is tone, and unless and until it be beautiful there can be no worthy musical art. Kreisler might play for us the most lovely and noble composition by Bach, but if he played it upon a cheap, squeaky, and scratchy violin, its beauty and nobility would be lost to us. No artist has ever disregarded this necessity of spinning a musical design in the finest and most ravishing tone which he could coax from his instrument.
26But if tone, flawlessly beautiful tone, is indispensable to the adult, the musician, the artist, it must be of still more engrossing importance to the child. The child is in a sensory stage; his senses are acute and delicate, and he is largely absorbed with the impressions they convey to him. Moreover, his span of attention and his coordinating power are insufficient to enable him to hold before his mind in unity, and appraise in its relationships, of part to part, a piece of any considerable length. He can, however, attune his ear to accuracy, purity and beauty of tone, and be taught to seek these qualities in all his musical efforts; and let us not forget that when he thus seeks beauty of one kind, he is predisposed, toward and made receptive to beauty of a larger kind.
28The mistake we have made, as it appears to me, is that we have conceived musical education in terms of conquest of special forms or specific musical pieces instead of growing fellowship with those musical graces that must invest any and all music that is fit to listen to. Progress in repertory, we may call it; but what does progress in repertory amount to if one piece after another is performed in an unmusical manner, without the slightest advance in musical taste or power becoming evident? That way leads to musical ruin. Yet many a chorus has sung from September to June, and the only difference between the last lesson in June and the first lesson in September was that they were singing at the end on Page 217, and at the beginning on Page 3.
30School music material reflects our unformed or imperfect aesthetic and psychological notions. Once the interest in pieces, imagined or real, is given precedence over interest in musical effect, a host of evils appear.
32The first tendency is to make pieces interesting or "popular." Rote songs for kindergartens and primary grades are supplied with jiggly and unvoical rhythms and with unlovely and literal texts of narrative or recitative character; songs for upper grades and high school similarly deal with commonplace or exciting events, the very nature of which is incompatible with a fine musical atmosphere, and which can consort only with a musical style that is empty or vulgar. Since no genuine musical satisfaction and no genuine musical endeavor is present, since the passing interest of a new tune or a new set of words is the sole stimulus, a progressive decadence is likely to set in. It becomes necessary to purvey more and more crude excitements, rhythmic and textual. A world of dreams, of pure imaginings and transports, into which the tiniest infant, with wide and wondering eyes, may enter—nay, does enter, till shrewd and world-bitten adults dissipate the wonder—is so forever lost, and a very present and very clanging world is substituted. In a word, the poetic feeling which exists in every human being's breast is disregarded and a crude literalism is cultivated. Music, of all the arts the most incorporeal has made no contribution toward the fulfillment of its particular mission.
34But apart from the effect on character, we have to think of the effect upon strictly musical education. If anything distinguishes the musician from other persons, it is that he has ears to hear; and he listens, listens intently, almost prayerfully, and does hear. If he is anything more than a tonal freak, he listens, moreover, not only for tonal facts but for tonal beauty. But what happens to the ears of pupils when their attention is fastened upon words, texts, scenes, and their voices are employed on fast-moving and snappy rhythms in which not only tonal beauty but tonal accuracy is of little importance or concern? How is it possible, in connection with such methods, to imagine that we can reap rewards, either in results upon the right feeling of the student or in terms of his development in sheer musical power?
36Instrumental music is saved from the vulgar realism that words not coordinated with musical effect may possibly introduce; but instrumental music in our schools is only lately beginning to come into its own. Not many years ago our beginning orchestras were forced, for lack of better material, to play the most abominable trash. Not only was it lacking in the atmosphere proper to children and youths, but if it had been especially designed to dull the ears and distort the technical form of playing of the students, it could not have attained those ends more successfully. The second violins, for instance, were provided with double-stops in "after-beat" rhythms. If they played them in time (which was doubtful) it was with stiff, short strokes and abominable tone. And they were so certain to be out of tune that we were afraid ever to stop the orchestra and listen to them. Our only hope was to cover them up with the piano, which clearly announced what they vaguely aimed at. How could their ears be trained by playing those short and obscure tones? Tone must be held a little time to register; the ear must have time to discriminate, appraise. As well expect a real orchestra to tune by a staccato puff from the oboe, answered by sixteenth-note fragments from the other instruments. Instead, as we all know, each player holds his tone long and makes it as pure and true as possible. Why will we not, in our school music, similarly render to the ears that which is aural?
38This obsession with pieces, instead of with musical effects and factors, growing fellowship with which would open out a whole world of musical development and appreciation, has extended to our music appreciation work. I am not opposed to formal instruction—if that is the word!—in music appreciation, but I do declare that advance in repertory and growth in real musical feeling are not the same thing. I have seen groups of children who were deeply and beautifully musical, and who sang in a way to make one weep, whose knowledge of classical repertory was very slight; and I have seen other groups of children, and also numbers of adult laymen and even numbers of adult musicians, whose knowledge of classical repertory was quite extensive, but which did not appear, as far as one could discover, to have done them any good.
40No, appreciation of music is pleasurable response to the beauty that is in music; and Santayana is right in affirming that "the beauty of material is (thus) the groundwork of all higher beauty." If a child has been led to a love for beautiful tone and beautiful musical effects through his own everyday practice in music, he may then extend and apply his appreciation to other and different music that is reproduced for him. Even then the process must be delicately guarded, for unless this reproduced music is really lovely in tone—especially at an early stage, before the child has learned to reach back of the sounds to the form which they describe—he will not be charmed, no matter how much veneration his teacher counsels. To require an attitude of appreciation in such case is to invite hypocrisy. The least harmful thing that can then be done is to fill the intellect—since the heart is to remain empty; but "knowledge about" is not "response to" and can never fill equal place, either musically or spiritually.
42(To be continued).
44* * *
46The Town Band in St. Helena
47Lieutenant-Commander John Phillip Sousa is quoted as having said: "A generation ago the town band occupied a position in the average community comparable to that now occupied by the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce and the Country Club."
49St. Helena, Cal., has just such a "town band" as referred to by the great Sousa; and, while they have a Chamber of Commerce that is active, it is a question which organization they could best spare should one be taken away. The St. Helena Concert Band has held together longer than any other similar organization in our town; and it is rather surprising when it is considered that the organization has received but little assistance other than twenty-five dollars a month from the Board of Town Trustees. But the young men who are members of the band are also music lovers; they are among the best citizens and enjoy the clean and uplifting entertainment; they want to see St. Helena have a bright place on the map. And so the St. Helena Concert Band has persevered and the members have paid their leader and other expenses out of their own pockets except for the "lift" that is given monthly by the municipality.
51We hope to see the Board of Town Trustees, before another tax-period, find a way to include in the levy a more liberal allowance for this band. It should have at least seventy-five dollars a month.
53If the merchants could get together and hold monthly cooperative sales and have the band give concerts while they were in progress it would stimulate business and liven interest in the band. It pays for a town to get behind its band.
55* * *
57National Association of Music Schools Elects Officers
58The National Association of Music Schools met recently at the Stevens Hotel, Chicago, and elected the following officers for the coming year: President, Harold L. Butler; vice-president of the southern zone, Adolf Hahn; vice-president of the midwest zone, C. M. Dennis; secretary, Burnet C. Tuthill; treasurer, Charles N. Boyd; advisory committee, Peter C. Lutkin; commission on curricula, Dr. Howard Hanson, Edgar A. Brazelton, John J. Hattstadt; commission on ethics, Charleton L. Murphy, Frank A. Shaw, Donald Swarthout; commission on publicity, William MacPhail, William Boeppler, Frederic A. Cowles. Kenneth M. Bradley, retiring president, was elected to fill the new office of honorary president.
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