For Every Music Lover | Page 9

would bore her to listen. If the work bores the mother it is not

surprising that the child attacks it with mind fixed on metal more
attractive and eyes seeking the clock. Occupations which are repellent
in early life leave behind them a memory calculated to render them
forever distasteful. It is therefore a grave mistake not to make music
study from the outset throb with vital interest. An appeal to the intellect
will quicken the æsthetic instincts, be they never so slender, and almost
any one will love work that engages all the faculties.
Those pupils are fortunate who come under the influence of a teacher
with strong, well-balanced personality and ripe knowledge, and are
treated as rational beings, capable of feeling, thinking and acting. Too
many music teachers learn their business by experimenting on
beginners. It has been suggested as a safeguard against their blunders,
and all ignorance, carelessness and imposture, that music might be
placed under the same legal protection accorded other important factors
in social life, and that no one be permitted to teach it without a license
granted by a competent board of judges after the applicant had passed a
successful examination, theoretical and practical. This would be well if
there was any certainty of choosing suitable persons to select the
judges.
A practical Vienna musician, H. Geisler, has recently created no little
sensation by asserting that the pianoforte, although indispensable for
the advanced artist, is worthless, even harmful, in primary training, and
that the methods used in teaching it are based on a total
misapprehension of the musical development prescribed by nature.
Sensual and intellectual perceptions must actively exist, he feels, before
they can be expressed by means of an instrument. It is a mistake to
presume that manual practice can call them into being, or to disregard
the supremacy of the tone-sense. He considers the human voice the
primitive educational instrument of music and believes the reasonable
order of musical education to be: hearing, singing, performing.
This order is to be commended, and might readily be followed if
primary instruction was given in classes, which being less expensive
than private tuition, would admit of more frequent lessons and the
services of a competent teacher. Classes afford the best opportunity for

training the ear to accuracy in pitch, the eye to steadiness in reading
notes, the mind to comprehension of key relationships, form and
rhythmic movement, and the heart to a realization of the beauty and
purport of music. In classes the stimulating effect of healthy
competition may be felt, an impulse given to writing notes, transposing
phrases and melodies, strengthening musical sentiment and refining the
taste.
Both the French Solfège method and the English Tonic Sol-fa system
prove the advantage of rudimentary training in classes. Mrs. John
Spencer Curwen, wife of the president of the London Tonic Sol-fa
College, and daughter-in-law of the late Rev. John Curwen, founder of
the movement it represents, has applied to pianoforte teaching the
logical principles underlying the system, which are those accepted by
modern educators as the psychological basis of all education. From her
point of view the music lesson may be made attractive from the
moment the pupil is placed at the instrument.
Time is taught by her as a mental science, with the pulse as the central
fact. She proceeds rhythmically rather than arithmetically, making
constant appeals to that within the child which is associated with music.
As the ear is expected to verify every fact, whether of time or pitch, she
deems essential to profitable practicing the daily supervision of some
person who understands the teacher's requirements.
Many times a child who can readily explain the relative value of every
note and dot will stumble in the time movement when confronted with
a mixture of the same notes and dots. This is because no mental
connection has been established between the mechanical time sign and
its sound, which is the outgrowth of instinctive impulses. Time
confusion may also be caused by confiding too implicitly in loud and
persistent counting, instead of trusting to the intelligently guided
rhythmic pulse.
The keenness of musical perception in the blind is a subject of frequent
comment. It is due to the fact that neither outer nor inner ear is
distracted by the organ of sight, and the mind is compelled to
concentrate itself with peculiar intensity on the tone-images aroused for

its contemplation. When one of the senses is weakened or lost, the
others become strong through the requirements made on them. This
shows how much may be gained in music study by throwing
responsibility on those faculties it is desirable to develop.
There are numerous promising schemes for class work in operation in
our own country, some of them offering excellent advantages to the
student. From the music study in