Books › Musical Courier 1928-12-20: Vol 97 Iss 25, 1928 › scan 43
Scan 43
Musical Courier 1928-12-20: Vol 97 Iss 25, 1928
64 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 44. 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
10(Continued from last week)
12[This is the concluding part of the article by Dr. Earhart on the subject of qualities of school music and the present supply. The first part was published in this department of the MUSICAL COURIER last week, December 13. The entire article discusses more than the title implies, for in appraising the music material for use in the school Dr. Earhart also appraises the children. The article is valuable to all those who handle children, as it takes up the great problem of understanding them.—The Editor.]
14The condition of public school music material in general may, perhaps, best be traced by comparing it with our English readers. Gradually our educational literature in English has been built up until we now have, for every year of the child's development, a rich supply of genuinely educational material, nicely adapted to the child's technical powers, intellectual comprehension and heart interests. With respect to vocal music, there was a time when the more familiar and simple (and often more vulgar) pieces of the adult repertory were brought over into the schoolroom and constituted almost the whole of musical literature for children: but little by little, through the years, this has been changed, and today an educational song literature is available that is equal to the educational literature for English.
16When we turn to orchestra music, we find the development much less complete, but making rapid progress. Instead of being limited to the easier pieces from a commonplace theatre orchestra repertory, we can now find appropriate music judiciously selected from the masters, and beautifully and skillfully arranged for three or even four melodic violin parts, as well as for all other instruments. There is not yet half enough of such material, it is true, and some one will some day receive the blessings of us all, and much financial reward in addition, if he will undertake extensive researches and bring out from old suites and dances by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart and others, delicious bits of pure music, untainted by earthly program, and exactly matching the fresh hearts of the young, but the material is coming, if not here in abundance now.
18With respect to band, however, the provision of suitable material has hardly begun. Valiantly, and with a zeal deserving of a better cause, do our alto and tenor horns, like our second violins of old, supply "after-time" (and no recognizable tones, or no tones that we like to recognize) to shoddy tunes that owe their little lease of life solely to the fact that they can withstand such brutal attacks and at least be none the worse. Valiantly do our players and directors attack Chamande's Scarf Dance (selected by some one as the contest piece in a recent band competition) in happy innocence of the fact that that piece requires a light hand at the piano, grows clumsy in orchestra, and is as remote from the idiom of the sonorous and slow-moving band as could well be imagined. Yet even here there are signs of improvement. A recent course for beginning bands, for instance, provides the players, as soon as each is possessed of a few notes, with a Bach chorale. Nothing better could be asked. The slow movement, the long-sustained chords, the sonority, breadth and dignity of style, all are appropriate to band and excellent for the technical and musical development of the players. Indeed, slow movement, brief length, and emphasis upon the aesthetic creed which supports absolute music, are the essential factors, as I see it, in providing a proper musical education for the young or for beginners of any stage; and these are in contrast to rapid and obtrusive rhythms, strong programmatic intentions, and attention to the character and interest of a long composition as a whole.
20That public school music material must be technically easy goes without saying, and few editors have been insensible to this need. That it should lend itself to the proper form of technic has not always been seen with equal clearness, as we observed when we were speaking of second violin parts. In general, however, technical fitness was the first, and for a long time was the only requirement considered.
22The second requirement, that public school music material, no matter what degree of technical ease or difficulty is necessary, must possess genuine musical value, has slowly gained recognition. That recognition is not yet complete and universal, but progress is so rapid that we can all take heart.
24But music may be technically appropriate and may be worthy music and yet be ill adapted to the students to whom it is assigned. The possibility of such further maladjustment is due to the fact that there are not only "degrees" of good in music but "kinds" of good as well; and we do not always have enough of sensitive sympathy and power of divination to enable us to penetrate the child's world and know whether what is good in general is also good for him at that particular stage of his development.
26The error of this kind that is perhaps most extensive I have already mentioned. Because we have conceived the child to be literal minded, have not believed that wonder, imagination, the capacity to lose himself in beauty, were his portion, did not know that his senses could be charmed by musical tones long before he could comprehend a musical design, or that he could become so engrossed in music that the literal meaning of a song-text hardly penetrated his consciousness, we have, at times, given him long songs, dramatic or declamatory texts, rapid rhythms, story, picture, dramatization, and analysis of long and programmatic instrumental compositions reproduced for his appreciation—not to mention names of composers, descriptions of orchestral instruments, etc. Most of these have their place, even at the beginning of the child's school life, and all have place at some period; but this is subject to the condition that the essential musical hunger of the child, which is for something other than these, is first appeased, and that his feet are thereby set upon the path of a right understanding of the whole nature and function of music. Could we only have known that brevity and simplicity of design and tonal and melodic beauty were the prime essentials for the child's early development, how much error might have been avoided.
28Among other qualities that our material should possess, I should place, also, downright sincerity. There is an unwavering integrity in the heart of a child that is seldom matched by an adult. Even in his make-believe, the child is whole-hearted. To approach his clear-eyed presence with cloying saccharinities and coquetries of expression that disclose the sophisticated adult trying to be sweet and ingratiating to children is little less than an insult. Tunes (with congruous texts) that are cute, or that have an affected and incredible sprightliness, belong to this same category of the insincere. Only folk-tunes and the works of the masters are unfailingly immune to such contamination.
30It is not difficult, at least comparatively, to judge whether a text deals with factors that lie within the experience or native understanding of a child or youth, but it is difficult to judge whether music itself similarly falls within his range of aesthetic understanding and interest. The moods of music and the subtle rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic factors that differentiate them, are infinite. To some of these moods and styles children and youths respond sympathetically; to others, that are, perhaps, almost indistinguishable in type from the first, they respond but little or not at all. No one without almost infinite prescience can forecast infallibly the reaction of any given group of pupils to a particular piece of good music, however carefully it has been considered; but long experience may, and doubtless has, developed a higher degree of intuitive judgment than appears at times to have been employed. Any person with such experience who will devotedly study the proposed repertory and prayerfully try to penetrate the child's consciousness will be able to discriminate fairly well between music that is foreign to the moods of pupils of a given age, or that insincerely "plays down" or "plays up" to them, and that which is in beautiful accord with the highest possibilities of their unspoiled minds and hearts and with their modes of musical utterance. The glorious discovery, when this is done, is that the teacher finds himself tending steadily toward the adoption of ever higher standards of music and ever greater conscientiousness of performance—for the child will reveal that, at his best, he is a little artist—genuine, if not highly developed—who is to be led into the realm of music only by those who approach it with clean hands and hearts as true in artistic feeling as his own.
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34Efficiency in Music Teaching
35In the electrical field, seekers for truth had to dig out and compare thousands of detached bits of knowledge about electricity before men learned that high voltage currents can be carried long distances on comparatively small wires with but little loss.
37The boy learns this in fifteen minutes of hard study. It not only gives him the essential knowledge about all the experiments the original investigators made, but it forms the basis of thousands of new practical applications. This wonderful short cut to knowledge is a statement of principles.
39Similarly you can find short cuts to skill in teaching, in the presentation of music to the children in our public schools.
41It has taken a long time to work out the principles and experiment with them in thousands of classes so that their value can be measured, but from all the experiments and experiences it is fairly well known among progressive supervisors that if they have the proper instruction and are well grounded in the logical progression of the principles contained in the science of music and then have practice in the teaching of principles which are presented through lesson plans, which are properly graded and pedagogically sound, it is just as easy to use one series of books as another. The day is fast passing, if it has not already passed, when children can be brought up musically on the material contained in one set of readers. The day of exercise in the text book has gone. Music educators should have all the good texts on the market. The days of teaching a certain page in a certain book on a certain day in a certain month have gone the way of the "time-names" and the other devices of our musical forefathers. The progressive teacher of today is teaching principles. There is no other real way of presenting any subject properly.
43"Efficiency" is a very much over-worked word. But of all the subjects that are taught in the public schools, music needs the efficiency expert. Efficiency does not mean hurry. The effective planning and despatching of music lessons so that they will produce the maximum in results means a right about face with a great many supervisors who plan unwisely, or worse, do not plan at all. Consequently all force is lost. Have you ever seen the supervisor of music go into a class room and say to the regular teacher "Well, Miss Jones, what have you been doing since the last lesson?" The room teachers say: "We have been singing on page thirty-six and thirty-seven." "Let me hear it children," says the supervisor, and the children sing, and very soon the fifteen or twenty minutes allowed for the lesson is up and the supervisor leaves the room with a very pleasant "Well, let them review the same thing." Music education, in many schools, is too sugar-coated and there is too much of adherence to formula, spending time and energy and wasting both. Such teaching is inefficient. It is well to remember that cessation of unnecessary motion conserves force. Our schools ought to have more learning of music and less teaching of it.
45That is all we wanted to say just now about efficiency in music teaching, and we hope that we have offended no one, for we, ourselves, live in the first glass house on the right.
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49Music a Moral Law
50Music is being enjoyed by millions today who never had any opportunity to enjoy it a decade ago. It has taken a far more important place in the child's education, which is as it should be, if education is to fulfill its one great function—preparation for life.
52The idea that music is a luxury, which only the over-refined can relish, and that the study of music is fit for boarding-school girls only, is rapidly disappearing. The few that still hold to it—usually men of, or beyond, middle age—have had the tremendous unifying and uplifting power of music brought home to them through the recognition of music where they may have least looked for it, namely, by our great military and naval leaders. Though these serious men referred in their commendation of music principally to the simpler types of it—to the songs of a soldierly and patriotic character,—yet even these simpler types serve as stepping stones toward music of higher and highest order. Their—and the government's—recognition of the spiritual influence of music is an additional confirmation of the view of it which has been held and forcefully expressed by every great philosopher, from the earliest times to the present day.
54When the question arises to which kind of sounds the ear should be trained, we must, relying on the experiences of many millenniums, concede that there is no sound in existence that combines with its physical and mental advantages to humanity so strong and so direct an influence upon its spiritual life as the sound of music. What Plato has said of music has never been controverted, nor even questioned, by serious minds and by the greatest educators in the world's history, namely: "Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything else. It is the essence of order and leads to all that is good, just and beautiful—of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, passionate and eternal form."
56Shall we wait until maturity for music? Wait until the learning of it becomes a difficult task, when we can give it to the children while they are, so to speak, at play? Surely we must not delay.
58* * *
60The Singing Tone
61The pure singing tone is one that may be used to express all normal healthful emotions, such as joy, freedom, courage, affection, sympathy, reverence, etc. These are all mental qualities, and the tone necessary to express them must be firm, steady, full, rich, resonant, and sympathetic. To the trained ear these things are not elusive and intangible. On the contrary they are as definite as words.
63The refined, sensitive ear is the voice teacher's most val-
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