Spirit and Music | Page 4

with his instrument. The melody and rhythm float out and call to the music lying hid in their hearts, and their self responds. Something within them demands instant expression, and they forget their slums in dancing their merry measure, till the music stops and the Italian passes on to raise Fairyland in the next slum. Music has given them a glimpse of something outside their dull and prosaic surroundings, it has touched their hearts with a glamour which is a glint of spiritual sunshine in a drab world.
It was our privilege a dozen years or more ago to have a small share in the active work of the Art Studies Association of Liverpool. This organisation, due to the zeal of the Director of Education, existed for the purpose of introducing the joys of Music to the children of the various elementary schools. Concerts of different types were given for their benefit in their own schoolrooms in the evenings, and as admittance could not be given to all it was considered a privilege to be able to attend. The pathos stills echoes in mind when we recall how some of these children, boys and girls, would trudge out in the wet evenings, often ill-nourished and insufficiently clad, to taste the joys of music. Never was there any question of attention, for they were eagerness personified, and it seemed as if they found there something that their souls had missed. Too little do we realise that food and clothing do not suffice us, young or old. We cannot live by bread alone: our stomachs may be full and our souls empty. The spiritual side of our nature demands sustenance and, as in the case of these hungry and often wet little school children, it is the province of Music to minister to that need. "A love of music is worth any amount of five-finger exercises, and the capacity to enjoy a Symphony is beyond all examination certificates."[2]
[Note 2: "Everyman and his Music." Scholes.]
A brass band will fill a whole street with glamour, and the normal person finds it quite impossible to be out of step with the rhythm of the march. Watch the way in which, as the Pied Piper of Hamelin drew the children after him, the band draws the elders to the window and the children to the street: the appeal is never in vain. Marching in time with the music tired feet forget their weariness, and new strength comes from the reserves of the greater self, liberated at the unspoken appeal of melody and rhythm. The Salvation Army with its sometimes quite excellent brass bands ever attracts a crowd of interested listeners. Their enthusiasm is quite as real as, and perhaps even more real than, that of a fashionable audience in the Queen's Hall: more real, because if the Salvation Army fails to please it is always possible to walk away. If a person is bored at the Queen's Hall a lack of moral courage will probably detain him to the end of the performance. There is magic in a bugle call, there are whole volumes of countryside history in a posthorn's blast as the four-horse coach swings past. The beat of the drum and the shrill pipe of the fifes carry a "come-along" atmosphere with them, and if we fail to answer the call it is most likely with a lingering feeling of regret that the days of adventure for us are past and gone.
All this is the incidental music of the highways and byways, but as a perennial stimulant for the emotions we call for Music's aid in many circumstances. Does not the villain of the piece enter and take the stage to a suggestively diabolic tremolo in the orchestra, and is not the lovemaking also conducted to an appropriately sensuous accompaniment, sufficiently subdued, to keep the emotions susceptible and fluid? Could the villain enter with the same éclat to a stony silence, or the lovemaking thrill in the same way without the moral support of a few well-chosen harmonies? It may be that in heightening the emotional element we correspondingly diminish the appeal to the intelligence, and thus render ourselves less critical both of stage-villainy and of fictitious lovemaking.
Nothing can be accomplished without music of some sort. We must have it in our churches and our chapels, in our moving pictures, in schools, at banquets and dinners, and in the restaurants. Could any bride feel the same satisfaction in walking down the silent aisle of the church, after the most important ceremony in the world, as if the organ were pealing out its good wishes in Mendelssohn's Wedding March? Oh NO. Music we must have, for it has wedded itself to all our pomp and ceremony, and if we may not have it in any other