Music As A Language | Page 5

eager attention. Such people are rare, and it must be our task now to give a few practical suggestions to those less fortunate people who do not possess the innate gift, but who are willing to learn.
To begin with, the teacher of songs must have real personality; and if she does not possess this by nature, she must do her best to develop what she has. She must be full of vitality, she must understand children, and, above all, she must be genuinely fond of music, in such a way that she cannot do without it. The last qualification often implies a certain sensitiveness, which finds a difficulty in accommodating itself to a workaday world, where people have little time, or inclination, to study the 'moods' of others. Very artistic people are a well-known difficulty to the authorities of schools. In order to excel in their art, they must not only have a 'capacity for taking pains', but a reserve store of emotional force, on which they draw for self-expression through their art. Now the possession of such a reserve store does not always imply a power of keeping it in reserve! During the course of training the attention of such people should be directed to the high ideals underlying all true educational work; they should realize the real function of music in education--that it is not to be taken as a mere accomplishment, or technical art, but as a means of self-expression.
We will now consider a special case. Let us suppose that a new mistress is taking a song lesson with a large class of children, who have the reputation of being troublesome to manage. On entering the classroom it is a good plan to go straight to the platform, without speaking a word to the children on the way, whatever they may be doing. From this vantage ground the teacher should look the class over for a few seconds, still without speaking. There is nothing more impressive to a restless class than the sight of a mistress not in the least disturbed by their doings, yet taking everything in. If the mistress has cultivated a sense of repose and self-confidence this action on her part will produce the feeling of a centre of force in the room--and the force will radiate from her. The children, without knowing exactly what has happened, will feel different, and will be pliant and easy to manage. Directly the mistress is conscious of this change of atmosphere she can start the lesson. But she must now gradually merge her personality into that of the class--she must work with them, not outside them. It is difficult to put this idea into words, but all real teachers will see the meaning. There is no driving force to equal that which works from within a community--not from without.
Now for the lesson itself.
It should start with a few simple exercises in voice production. Excellent suggestions for these will be found in a little book called Class Singing for Schools, with a preface by Sir Charles Stanford, published by Stainer & Bell, also in the Board of Education Memorandum on Music. A special point must be dwelt on. Children should never be allowed to use the chest register. Their voices should be trained downwards. In the singing of scales there should be a leap to, or a start on, a note high enough to be out of the chest register--such as the high E[b]. The descending scale should then be sung. Breathing exercises should be taken at the beginning of the lesson. A good exercise is to exhale on the sound 'sh'. The children will stand in easy positions for this, the hands on the ribs, so that they can feel the ribs expanding and contracting during inhalation and exhalation. The shoulders should be kept down. The advantage in using the sound 'sh' is that the teacher can thereby tell how long each child makes its breath last.
When these exercises are finished, and a few scales and passages have been sung, the class should sit down while the teacher speaks about the new song to be sung. In schools where sight-singing is taken as part of the regular curriculum it is not necessary to work at this in the song class. In beginning a new song the chief thing is for the teacher to get the class to seize the spirit of it. If difficult words occur, they may be explained later, but it is absolutely essential that the children shall get hold of some idea which they can express in singing.
Mr. W. Tomlins, who came over from New York in order to show some of his methods for dealing with large classes, produced some admirable results. He worked up the enthusiasm of his classes to such an