CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES ITHACA, N. Y. 14853 Music Library Lincoln HalJ Cornell University Library MT 4.C98 Transformation :a brochure on the teachi 3 1924 016 959 300 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924016959300 TRANSFORMATION A Brochure on the Teaching of Music to Children lb by HARLOW D. CURTIS (M. A. Harvard, 1907) SYRACUSE, N. Y. Lyman Bros. Inc., Printers 1922 Copyright 1922 by Harlow D. Curtis Note: — Extra copies of this brochure may be had by ad- dressing the author, Box 462, Syracuse, N. Y., or simply MaHlius. N. Y. Contents Foreword Page 4 Visitors - - 10 Transformation - _ - - II Notes 29 Excerpts from Mr. Gale's Article 33 Program Apr. 17, 1922 36 Program May 22, 1922 40 Program June 12, 1922 43 Afterthought - - - 45 Illustrations - - - . . 46 Programs given at the Mizpah, Syracuse FOREWORD /t~¥TER leaving college my natural desire to teach was (J_^^^ frustrated by my unwillingness to put up with certain restrictions, especially in the way of initiating innova- tions, imposed by the entrenched system of secondary education. So many were the features I had no patience with, that I saw a lifetime of unsuccessful agitation staring me in the face. Since then I have beenhappy to read, principally in the Atlantic Monthly, article after article pointing out the very faults that dissuaded me from joining the ranks of the teachers in the secondary schools. The teaching of music offered the chance for initiative and inde- pendence, but it was a question whether my limited ability as a performer would interfere too much with the realization of my teaching ideals. I was well aware that financial success is easily obtainable by any of a hundred advertising methods as this profession is more full of successful quacks than any other, but the financial side alone never made any stronger appeal to me than technic alone does. Josef Hofmann once said to me: "Technic is to the pianist what financial resom-ces are to a business man; money does not improve the mental quality of the latter." If there ever was penned a more trenchant sen- tence, I have failed to find it. It took but a very short time to discover that the teaching of music is in about as chaotic a condition as possible and that my limited ability as a performer need cause no uneasiness. I have been in home after home where the music teacher has failed and gone away. The first thing I do is to go to the music cabinet and find out what she has left. And right here is the surprising thing: I find stacks of the conservatory's pedagogic material bound in the familiar yellow paper covers of the Schirmer Library; almost invariably Czemy, and much Burgmiiller, Loeschhom, Bertini, Clementi, a sonatina album and a scale book. Then there will be a few pieces by men who should have been strangled soon after birth — music that is a mute witness to the ineffectiveness of the con- servatory's stuff and to the desire of the teacher not to lose the pupil. Thus have hundreds and even thousands of people been "stung" by never getting any inspired music by the great composers, never getting an3i;hing for their money except disappointment. This is all wrong. It is the purpose of this article to show why. This teacher failed because she couldn't make a pianist. Bless your soul, you don't have to be a pianist to play the inspired works of the great composers, you simply have to be a musician. A child may have such a tsrpe of hand that it will never be able to play piano solos of any difficulty. Its sense of rhythm or sense of pitch may be so undeveloped that the usual pedagogic material will result in immediate failure, but if the teacher has sense enough to throw this stuff away and sit down with the child and play some of the simplest chamber music, like some of Schubert's,* these serious difficulties will melt like the snow in spring. The wealth of material for this purpose is astonishing. Neither will it be necessary to carry on any separate work in ear training, rhythmic drills or specious and spurious transposition exercises. Transposing pieces of considerable difficulty into remote keys is no child's play and the playing of simple and silly child's music by ear or otherwise in half a dozen keys "by request" is not going to lead one single step in that direction. Time is all too short and alto- gether too precious for this kind of thing when better results can be secured without deflecting the child's attention for a single moment from inspired music by simply playing with the pupil. Now if it becomes clearly evident that piano solo work of any great promise is to be impossible, the child will still have left the conviction of the worthwhileness of great music. This alone is a precious heritage. I have seen this heritage work miraculous changes in an almost hopeless hand that all the Schmidt and Pischna never could equal, simply be- cause the heart had been touched with the power of desire and the mind convinced of the value of effort. It is extremely difficult to accomplish anything with a mature hand of the wrong tjrpe coupled with a mind that has had no experience with great music, but, if the hand can be made over while it grows, still more wonderful changes can be wrought in the mind if the teacher will play good music with her pupil. To hear in your mind the music of strings while wrestling with the difficulties of expression that this percussion instrument, the piano, imposes, is another priceless heritage. How many agile * See illustration on page 47 performers on the piano are eternally smoothing music with their foot! Why not play with your pupil and run the pedal yourseK and thus make him smooth it with his fingers? It is a wonderful way to lay a foundation for a musician; much better than the umbilical strangulation of your pupil's nascent talent with the groundwork of the prestidigitator's art. Many a musician can be developed at the pianoforte to whom the major piano solos are and always will be a closed book, and many a pianist there is who never was and never will be a musician. Let us have more musicians. Everybody gains. Nobody gets a stone for bread. Real pianists get a broader and more finely adjusted technic at the sacrifice of precocity only, and teachers will retain many more pupils and will take real delight in playing good music WITH them all the tim^. Such would be the immediate gain, if all teachers who under- stand and love the works of the master composers would play nothing but their works with their pupils until the fifth or sixth year of piano study. The ultimate gain, on the other hand, would be to confer upon the art of music teaching the greatest boon possible — ^the elimination of the quack. The quack does not fatten on the masterworks of genius; except for a few pieces, usually very well known by the public at large, which she has acquired by imitation, these master composers are a closed book to her. To put her hms de combat it is only necessary for all her opponents to use this music which is Greek to her and use nothing else. She can teach scales, and old sonatinas (not the splendid new ones of Sibelius and X. Scharwenka) and the transparent Czemy and his ilk; theory, ear training and rhythm exercises are her delight. I do not mean to imply that all teachers who use this material are quacks but that many quacks are quite adept in using this material. If all teachers would play with their pupils nothing but the works of the great masters, they themselves would see less use for this material and they would put the quack out of business. They would discover the nearest thing to a panacea that I know of. I speak with the conviction of years of experience with young children when I say that if you will start your own pupils yourself at seven to eight years of age and play nothing but the greatest music with them for five or six years, you will discover that there is only one thing left to do, viz. lead them to play the same composers' works for two hands. You can bum your scale books, throw away your Czemy, forget about ear training, rhythm, etc., and your pupils in Mo will be superior in musical intelligence and appreciation to the pupils of any other teacher. With such material such a result stands to reason. That they will be able to sit down and play from memory a more brilliant piano solo than certain few pupils of other teachers is very doubtful, as you will learn from the article "Transformation." However, you will discover the profound truth that it is not necessary to study technic so as to have good w/wsic, hut it is necessary to study good music so as to have a technic. You will easily establish a correct technic and you will never have to correct an established technic. The refinement of advanced technic should be left to the initiative of the mature player. It should be his delight to discover etudes by the great composers that appeal to his mind and at the same time improve his means of self-expression. The only confirmation of this method that I can offer the reading public is the perusal of the three typical programs at the end of this booklet and the data that accompanies each pupil's work. No one can do this work and have any connection with a school of music, because you must start your own pupils. The longer you refuse to start little children, the more distorted will your ideas of what should be taught them become. The ideas of a man who cannot or does not succeed with his own little pupils are not wortti a fig, no matter whether he is a professor of music at this or that college, or a concert pianist, or the main contributor to a musical magazine, or all three to- gether. As a concrete illustration of a small part of that music which has been going through the minds of two of my pupils, I here append their record of public performance. Both started in 1915 at eight years of age with Jos. Low's little book of duets "Teacher and Pupil" and a book of folksongs with words and a little book published by the book publishers, Appleton & Co., called "Songs the Children Love to Sing" which contains all the well-known nursery songs, patriotic songs, hymns, etc., arranged so that the melody is at all times in the right hand of the player. The first year they learned their notes and also how to read readily without watching their hands, and you will notice that in the second year they were in the chamber music of a great composer. As soon as possible music perhaps not quite so splendid but decidedly more difficult in technic was introduced. Every opportunity was taken advantage of to tax their weakest fingers without causing muscular strain. Let me say here that Moszkowski's four hand works (something besides the Op. 12 Spanish Dances) are incomparable for this early work, because he is invariably pianistic, rather difficult and not too profound. From that point on the strongest appeal has been to the mind of the pupil. In neither of the following two cases do I think that transformation has been completed and that which will further the transforming process best is unquestionably chamber music. They should play much of this with me during the next three or four years. It is of no great moment if piano solo work has to suffer a partial and temporary eclipse because of the great pressure of very necessary school work, as they both have the tools of expression ready to use later, but what kind of piano solo work they do take up later depends in large measure on what influence I can exert on their minds during the next few years. If they become pianists, I would rather see them trying to play Chopin's "Fantasie" Op. 49 than to see them succeeding with the A major Polonaise. I would rather see them imwilling to play Liszt's "Rigoletto Fantasie" and many other things of his, but it would please me to see them trying to play his great sonata. I would not be disappointed if they were weaned from Moszkowski and even ignored Saint Saens. I hope they will like Beethoven's Op. 90 sonata better than his earlier ones. I hope they will come to understand just what Debussy has done and not, like some critics, assume that music before him has only antiquarian interest. Most of all would I have them aware of the rarity of that quality in a composer which shines so effulgently in Mozart and Schubert and, strange to say, in the chamber music of Brahms. It is these two precursors that I see in Brahms and not Bach and Beethoven. Perhaps this is due, however, to his versatility and not to any musical acumen that I possess. Finally, I would be satisfied if they didn't play any of these well-known and difficult things, but found new music of merit that was not so difficult, because I want them to keep on playing until they die. The following is a record to date of what they have played in public: Beginning: Summer of 1915. March 1916— Pupil A: Schytte's "Vienna" Op. 131, No. 8. Folksong duet. Pupil B: Schytte's "Catalonia" Op. 131, No. 5. Folksong duet. May 1916— Pupil A: Mozart's "Romance" from "En kleine Nachtmusik" Chamber Music. Pupil B: Mozart's "Allegro" from "Ejn kleine Nachtmusik." January 1917 — Pupil A: Moszkowski's "Polonaise" Op. 55, No. 3. Original Duet. Pupil B: Ph. Scharwenka's "Heimath'' Op. 109, No. 2. Original Duet. April 1917— Pupil A: Tschaikowsky's "Hobby Horse" Op. 39, No. 3. Piano solo. Pupil B: Amani's, "The Brook" Op. 15, No. 12. Piano solo. (These last two are from children's albums in which good com- posers wrote music for children). Pupil A: Rachmaninoff's "Valse" Op. 11, No. 4. Original Duet. June 1917— Pupil A: Moszkowski's "Kaleidoscope" Op. 74, No. 4. Original Duet. Pupil B: Schubert's "March" Op. 27, No. 1. Original Duet. November 1917 — Pupil A: X. Scharwenka's "Walzer" Op. 44, No. 1. Original Duet. Pupil B: Moszkowski's "Mazurka" Op. 55, No. 2. Original Duet. Pupil B: Chaminade's "Hindoo Dance" Op. 55, No. 5. Original Duet. March 1918— PupD A: Sibelius's "Andantino" from Sonatine, Op. 67, No. 2. Solo. Pupil B: Sibelius's "Allegro" from Sonatine, Op. 67, No. 2. Solo. April 1918— Pupil A: Moszkowski's "Humoreske" Op. 33, No. 2. Original Duet. PupD B: Max Reger's "Hi^moreske." Rano Solo. May 1918— Pupil A: Raff's "Die Fischerinnen von Procida" Op. 82, No. 12. Duet. Pupil B: Moszkowski's "Spanish Dance", Op. 65, No. 2. Original Duet. June 1918— Pupil B: Moszkowski's "Tarantelle" Op. 33, No. 3. Original Duet. December 1918— Pupil A; Grieg's ^'Norwegian Dance", Op. 35, No. 1. Orchestra. Pupil A: Grieg's "Sailor's Song" Op. 68, No. 1. Piano Solo. PupD B: Max Reger's "Walzer" Op. 22, Nos. 4 and 6. Original Duet. Pupil B: Max Reger's "Melodie." Piano Solo. February 1919— Pupil A: Dvorak's "Legend" Op. 59, No. 3. Original Duet. Pupil B: Tschaikowsky's "The Witch" Op. 39, No. 20. Piano Solo. Jime 1919— Pupil B: Dohnanyi's "Walzer'' Op. 3. Original Duet. Pupil B: X. Scharwenka's "Polonaise" Op. 16, No. 1. Piano Solo. Pupil A: X. Scharwenka's "Bolero" Op. 41, No. 4. Original Duet. December 1919 — PupU A: Brahms' "Academic Festival Overture" Op. 80. Orchestra. Pupil B: Brahms' "Intermezzo" Op. 119, No. 1. Piano Solo. April 1920— Pupil A: Dvorak's "Legend" Op. 59, No. 6. Original Duet. Pupil B: Tschaikowsky's "Capnccio Italien" Op. 45. Orchestra. June 1920— Pupil A: Chaminade's "Hindoo Dance" Op. 55, No. 5. Original Duet. Pupil B: Tschaikowsky's "Reverie" Op. 9, No. 1. Piano Solo. Pupil A: Moszkowski's "Walzer" Op. 15, No. 5. Piano Solo. Pupil B: Moszkowski's "Krakowiak" Op. 55, No. 4. Original Duet. May 1921— Pupil A: Moszkowski's "Arabeske" Op. 61, No. 1. Piano Solo. Pupil B: Moszkowski's "Esquisse Venetienne" Op. 73, No. 1. Solo. April 1922— Pupil A: Josef Hofmann's "Mazurka" Op. 16, No. 2. Piano Solo. May 1922— Pupil A: Brahms' "Tragic Overture" Op. 81. Orchestra. Pupil B: Dvorak's "Silhouette" Op. 8, No. 12. Piano Solo. June 1922— Pupil B: Smetana's "Polka" from String Quartette. Chamber Music. Pupil A: Grieg's "Romance" from String Quartette. Chamber Music. VISITORS Visitors! The word itself means to look. My pupils, one and all, do not want visitors — spectators; they try so hard not to make either an exhibition or a spectacle of themselves. Steady contact with such music as they play with their teacher — music unknown to other music pupils — ^has developed in them a humility, a forgetfulness of self in the re-creation of the greatest music. My pupils and I want intelligent listeners to share our enthusiasm with us, not spectators to look and applaud. There is too much real vaudeville in music now and not enough real music in vaudeville. Intelligent listeners are indeed welcome, but how few they are! The greatest problem in all the difficult art of advertising is to learn how to shoot with a rifle and not with a shot-gun. The pupils and I can develop a real listener — many are the parents who, after a few years, sometimes in- advertently, sometimes willingly, testify to this fact — hvi how to find the parent that is already one, ah! that's the problem! I am persuaded that there is some subtle connection between him who reads intelligently and him who listens, hence the following analysis of music pupils, music teachers and music teaching material. 10 TRANSFORMATION 7' HERE is an old sajnng that you can lead a horse to ^^^^ water but you can't make him drink. There is an analogy uke a between the horse in the adage and a piano pupil. There h<""s,^' are piano pupils — Dorothy Ticklekeys, I call them — ^that drink drink when led to the water. There are other piano pupils, and they are the vast majority — ^Mary Missouris, I call them, because, to borrow a forceful figure from American political parlance, they are bom in Missouri and so, have to be shown — that when led to the water not only don't drink but sometimes balk. Now as a teacher of music with rather unusual success with Mary Missouris, I was interested to find my way of teaching again corroborated in an article "Musical Education" in the January, 1922, Musical Quarterly. (At the close of this brochure I print some excerpts from this article which is written by Mr. Harlow Gale, of Minneapolis, Minn.) The article finds fault with the current way of teaching music as exemplified by all the conservatories, their few graduates and their more numerous "certificated" students. Can it be possible that there is a fundamental error in the way music is taught? I think there is and I think I can briefly show this error and explain my success with so-called "unmusical" children. The fine art of making Mary thirsty is little understood. Make This is because those responsible for the present pedagogy of the thirsty art never come in contact with Mary at an age when she could How? have been made thirsty. Consequently all their deductions are as wrong as their methods. Mr. Gale voices this idea in other words when he says that teachers spend too much time teaching an instrument without teaching music. The palliatives for the disagreeable technic of the instrument usurp the importance of the greatest music in the teaching material for the young. The works of such men as Burgmiiller and Loeschhom, who never Discard wrote a thing the world cherishes as beautiful, should be con- music signed to perdition; but instead the whole teaching profession not only condones their stuff but even advocates it, simply because in these men's works a certain necessary technic is 11 found interlarded with artificial music pleasing to the unformed taste and half -formed predilections of children. Whattechnic is it that is to be found in these men's dead works that cannot be found in the inspired works of the master composers? None. Let us take, for example, the playing of scales evenly with both hands at other intervals apart than the octave. Good original four hand music and also arrangements of orchestra and chamber music of the greatest composers is replete with f^ page after page of this technic, and it is shot through and through music with the inspiration of genius. It is no trick at all to win the with her allegiance of Mary to good music, and why teachers throw away this golden opportunity for Burgmiiller and his ilk I cannot see. Like Mr. Tarkington's Willie Baxter, I stand nonplussed and can only exclaim "Ye gods!" Besides, it is a joy forever to play vnth Mary. Just see the happiness that all the teaching profession miss! Playing an occasional duet such as is found in the usual "magazine-with-music" is worse than useless because this stuff isn't music, it is silly rot. Playing the very few real duets known to many teachers such as Mosz- kowski's Spanish Dances, Op. 12, won't do either. Playing "'time g^'s^^s^ music than this with the pupil should be the larger and major part of the business, not a momentary diversion for sight- reading purposes. The teaching profession needs to wake up and get rid of its thrice foolish attitude toward two performers on one piano. ^f Twelve years ago Mr. John Jay Chapman, in an article entitled "Learning" in the July, 1910, Atlantic Monthly, said: "It is familiarity with greatness that we need — ^an early and first hand (the italics are mine) acquaintance with the thinkers of the world, whether their mode of thought be music or marble mu^c °^ canvas or language. Their meaning is not easy to come at, converts but in SO far as it reaches us, it will transform us." Let me add that it is before the age of twelve that the bent toward music occurs and it is then that the desire to express it is coupled with the greatest aptitude in gaining control over the means of expression. Josef Hofmann once printed a graph, I think in the Etude, to illustrate this fact. If Hofmann and Chapman are right — ^that to win over and convert the great majority of people to good music we must make them experience some of the power of it (I use the language of the revivalist purposely) before the age of twelve — ^then the way music is being taught is wrong. 12 Let me digress to say that it will not do to surround children ^ ^^^. with good music, phonographs, radio concerts, orchestra con- not certs and so forth simply because you as a teacher do not know ^^^^^ " whether they are listening. Listening and merely hearing are vastly different things. But a child cannot play the inspired works of genius without paying attention and listening. So, surrounding your so-called "unmusical" child with good music is a dubious procedure not to be relied on at all by any sensible teacher or parent. In fact a child who reads readily can even play without listening carefully. The better the music, the closer attention required. That is why I am not so enthusiastic about taking children where they can hear good music. More damage than good may result, especially with the child whose musical talent is dormant. This is not the point of view of men who are selling pianos and to whose propaganda the columns of the daily press are always open. When trained listeners confess the difl&culty of grasping the significance of great orchestral music on first hearing, it is the height of folly for well-meaning parents to imagine that their child is by some hocus-pocus going to absorb good music through his skin by merely sitting in it, when that child's previous musical experi- ence is dementi's Sonatinas, Bach's Inventions, Czerny's Studies and a modicum of piano solos of some brilliancy and no real depth such as the regulation music teacher hands out. He may be bored to death and lie about it to you without the slightest compunction or really think he enjoys it when it is not the music he enjoys at all but the novelty of an orchestra with its many varied interests. However, there is no reason on earth why your twelve-year-old child shouldn't play Brahms' Tragic Overture with his teacher and then go and enjoy hearing it played by an orchestra, instead of being bored by it. It is one of the greatest compositions for orchestra, not difficult in technic, requiring merely two musicians, one more developed than the other. See an article in the May, 1918, North American Review by Vernon Lee, entitled "Varieties of Musical Ex- perience." To return. In the March, 1916, Atlantic Monthly, Mr. Thomas W. Surette said that American children were musical but their parents were not. This is simply another confirma- tion of the same truth that the conversion must take place when the child is young. Children are willing; they have the open, inquiring mind and the precious power of acquisition. 13 But your unmusical parent fails to realize the necessity for conversion, fails to realize that the transformation is not nearly completed, and, in their desire to see the child 'perform' for their own selfish edification, they figuratively throw a monkey Parents wrench in the machinery and put the child with the professor ""-^ththe ^* *^® university— the professor who is looking for Dorothy machinery Ticklekeys trained his way, on whom he can superimpose Ms interpretation of some of the major piano solos of the great composers, those things he delights to play and does play with splendid technical finish. The child cries. Certainly, why Everything not? It is to be expected. If she doesn't cry, a sullen apathy ***' up seizes her and perhaps splendidly trained by her parents to accomplish diflBicult tasks that she doesn't like, she slowly acquires a mechanical dexterity pitiful to behold. Professor Is there any possible way of making the professor see that P'ays his way of teaching — so successful with the Dorothy Ticklekeys but so disastrous with the ninety percent Mary Missouris — ^is wrong? It is doubtful. "In almost any line of human endeavor the greatest opposition to progress comes from the experts in that line; the learned men, the academicians, or in yf . other words the conservers of the traditions respecting that his hands particular line of human endeavor. * * * Now the experts, . "'*'' who are especially trained in any liarticular line of human innova- ^ ■ tions activity — ^as music, for instance — ^are those who know the most about it; those whose minds contain the greatest number of ideas relative to it, and who, owing to all their knowledge are most sensitive to any change from the traditional form of that activity. The majority of them are therefore peculiarly liable to be attacked by those prejudices which, while helping to maintain certain standards of excellence, are inimical to progress." — Henry P. Gilbert, in the Musical Quarterly for j,j,g July, 1916. For this very reason, then, the conservatory death exercises a kind of mortmain over our children. They do not conven- ^^"^^ ^ suffer extinction for failure with our Mary Missouris tion for there is always a new crop of Mary Missouris to pay them makes jjjojjey ^nd a few Dorothy Ticklekeys mixed in to be exploited. jyiajy The Mary Missouris can be deflected into "Normal Music" pick up and so further stultify the public school system. The vicious cross circle continues. Nothing but a chancellor with a larger vision and a broader humanity can stop it. But the product of the conservatory, the graduate or her more numerous sister, the "certificated" teacher, can exercise 14 no such mortmain, she must hold her pupils; she cannot have a class of selected Dorothy Ticklekeys like the professor who taught her, she must succeed with Mary Missouri or suffer financial extinction. What this product of the conservatory does out in the world of teaching where she must sink or swim is a clear indication of the error of the conservatory method and places the blame exactly where it belongs — on our conserva- tories. One graduate gets married and then decides to teach a few The pupils but she says she is not interested in any but talented ""gJiJf pupils; she does not wish to exhaust her patience with any ancially Mary Missouris. This woman is trying to do in a small way pendent what her professor did — ^teach none but young Dorothy teacher Ticklekeys. She has dodged the problem and can do so because her husband or her inherited wealth gives her the same protec- tion from failure as the mortmain gives the conservatory. She isn't doing any real teaching at all and need not detain us. The Another graduate, after failing to feed a few Mary Missouris 4^3^^^"" on the pap that fattens Dorothy Ticklekeys, is ripe and ready to "fall for" an advertisement in the back of some of our so-called "music magazines" — magazines that are published primarily to grind the axe of publishers or performers or both — which tells her how with their paraphernalia she can teach beginners "theory" or "rhythm" or whatnot in classes of six to ten at a time and hold her pupils for three or four years and get ten dollars an hour doing it. This "listens well", as the slang phrase goes and above all "saves your face" as the Chinese have it. It looks erudite. It vdll camouflage. And she can "pass the buck" for failures. (I am forced to invoke the power of slang.) What if Mr. Surette in the March, 1916, Atlantic did show up the fallacy of this way of teaching! What if Mr. Cripps in the January, 1917, Musical Quarterly in "The Study of Theory in 'Theory' Music Teaching, Is It Sound?" did answer his own question with "No."! What if Mr. Gale in this last Musical Quarterly again says the same thing! It doesn't matter. This teacher doesn't read the Quarterly nor does her victim read the Atlantic, so the camouflage theory business goes on, and she, like all teachers, gets a few Dorothy Ticklekeys and she tells her: "Now, Dorothy, after a year or two more with me you will be ready for Professor Superimposem at the conservatory" and then she trots out that show piece, that Mendelssohn's "Capric- cio" that they exploited her with at the conservatory and she 16 ing' type "works" Dorothy on her program for all she is worth. That's the game and if she plays it right, she can keep her head above water for a long time simply because of P. T, Bamum's reason: "There's one bom every minute." She is not swimming, she has a life preserver on. The Another graduate, with too much brains and too much .^rewnit- conscience, both of which are a credit to her, refuses this course, but, confronted with the army from Missouri, adopts a different policy. She pays a great deal of attention to recruiting. She takes a very active part in all musical affairs. She knows everybody and talks a great deal and cherishes the prestige that the approbation of the conservatory confers, hut among her pupils the deadly percentage of loss goes on just the same. She keeps afioat by violently kicking her feet where a little head- work would work wonders. The Another graduate with less initiative takes up with a 'Series" "Series" edited by some concert pianist whose ignorance of the art of teaching is most profound but whose knowledge of what equipment a concert pianist must have is equally profound. This "Series" is nothing but a well-correlated mass of Dorothy Ticklekeys music carefully graded and edited with ridiculous prolixity and all published by one concern at a fearful waste of fine white paper as a money making scheme which they back with paid advertisements in the daily press. This advertising is accompanied by mailed propaganda so abjectly crude, so lacking in finesse, that one suspects a German mind behind it. Teachers that cannot find their own material or are too lazy to do so, will be found using this because it is convenient. But the percentage of loss with Mary Missouris is precisely the same as with the other teachers simply because the concert pianist- editor hasn't put into the earlier stages of the series any of the masterworks of the great composers so as to touch Mary Missouri's mind with the originality that transforms. He thinks it cannot be done. This is because he doesn't know any great music that would do it. I once sent such a pianist-editor a long program that contained a large number of such pieces by Brahms, Grieg, Mozart, Schubert, Dohnanyi, X. Scharwenka, Tschaikowsky, Dvorak, Moszkowski and so forth and I received the accompanying letter from him. A man who has never played ensemble music with children and who is not acquainted with music that must be thus played is the last person in the world to be editor-in-chief of a series of 16 67:j , ■ " 1 ,ry 'l^th, lO'^S . 1 ;'y u.eiV Mr. Curtis ;- 1 I v/as very pieapeci t,o rvn-eive yo^ir l^-tter I and to lerir t: „ yeJ t^o ""inia- H fu'f -" " . -«u';h. lb „c., . . 1 v.;; i- ^H ''i ^^ .P3 'r i I ; I ,., jU ^1 -^ se., ' - i , .„ h.'.vt 1 Die playi- ; til I have written the "Min~ l:/lures% 1 I a^:i ju::t on the eve of my clt :;,ri.urf fur H th-i Ea:. '^ :^ xyrct to r&acE "-/ "'.:';- in ^1 about ;:.',„ ,_;,,. I T^ould b:-- , :. ,. .:.Gecl ^B ■ to hear froi;i ^ou any ti.::e i liae ^H '■'^ '''■■'' ■ tj ;;:e . ".- .. ■ ' ; .■ .;.■ ch me by H ;■ a ■ '■■- ■. .. : , ones , ^H uilding, : :.ory. City. H a.a:0..-l.^ jo-'in,, 1 Q^e^1-/y^/A^ 1 ^■^H^B^B 1 progressive studies for the ninety, per cent of Mary Missouris. te ch*^ '^^® ^^^ ^^^ °^ graduate excites my pity most of all. It is who necessary that she succeed financially; she also loves good lowers music, but all the good music that she loves and plays well standard enough to enjoy is far too difficult for children. It is painfully evident to her that the material she had in her childhood or that her professor at the conservatory advises her to use will cause the loss of most of her Mary Missouris. It is vitally Elaine i^^cessary to her that this shall not happen. The way the conservatory has left this girl to her own devices in this genuine and sometimes tragic dilemma is disheartening in its outlook for the future. The girl does not know any music by the great composers that she could play with her pupils. Nobody ever played with her for the sheer joy of the playing. In her quand- ary she turns left instead of right. Instead of going to the great composers she seeks help from a legion of people who think they are composers. She casts her whole future on the lady behind the sheet music counter. "I want to find a little easy teaching piece about Grade 1 that is real pretty and still ,. very simple." It will be simple but in another sense, and also 'music both original and good, good where it isn't original and original fo' where it isn't good. E-\^ry city has its 'composers' of this stuff, described their name is legion, and graduates of conservatories will use their piano pieces to teach with, and even grand opera singers will sing their songs in a sort of tacit acceptance of the low level of appreciation in the average audience, and reputable publish- ers get out pamphlets of one-page excerpts from their works simply because so many teachers turn to the left. One such pamphlet recently came into my hands and for a week or two I tested my pupils with it to see if they could spot the common- place. This pamphlet showed six or seven silly-pretty pieces beginning in exactly the same way: chord of the dominant seventh, chord of the diminished seventh, chord of the dominant seventh, fortissimo, then followed the same thing an octave lower played pianissimo; after this introduction there followed a driveling tune that anybody who knows anything about good music would realize at once to be worthless. The children sur- How wdl- prised me in the quickness with which they spotted this stuff up child- as valueless. They saw that the man's mind who wrote it was ren "en- ^ mere soundingboard throwing back an echo of all the cheap tricks of the poorest light opera music. Trained to delight in the splendid creations of our greatest ' composers this stuff 18 amused them. Many of them laughed outright and rarely did I have to divulge the fact that I myself considered the music worthless until after they had passed judgment on it. How many people there are who discover that they can Pseudo- string notes together in agreeable sequence! "Surely my little tunes will do for children" they think. Here is the professor at the conservatory doing this very thing. So does the improvis- ing organist, and many, many teachers all over the coimtry. One and all fail to realize that the very quality of originality that ^®*' 1 • V. .7 . . 7, T . T , composers limits the great composers to a very small number is the one and only thing that will transform Mary Missouri. No amount of ear tickling will work this miracle. Their/meaning is not easy to come at (what a splendidly simple phrase is 'come at'!) says Mr. Chapman, but the trouble with all these teaching pieces that the stores here in SjTacuse and everywhere else are filled with is that in each and every case their meaning IS easy to come at. Genuine originality is often displeasing to a typical Mary Missouri. That is one strong reason why you, her teacher, J^^^^^ay better sit down and play with her. Ler her see you become be 'queer.' genuinely enthusiastic over what seems to her ' queer.' That is ^Jh^tiem her favorite word. When you play with her she will have to both of go forward and through that which seems queer to her. She ^j|^ ^^ will not do this alone. By so doing she is compelled to hsten them unta and then the transforming process is sure to begin and, probably *|Jg slowly, there dawns on her mind a new heaven and a new earth and Brahms, let us say, becomes a musical Savior. That is what can happen if you quit teaching an instrument and begin teaching music. Can it be done with the violin? Rarely. A The violin class or school orchestra cannot cover enough ground to effect a genuine transformation. Though astonishingly effective ensemble is possible with children, I doubt if life-long allegiance to good music is secured. Can it be done with the voice? What, The voice after sixteen years of age? The question answers itself. This is why singers are frequently lacking in musicianship. That great technical progress on these two instruments, voice and violin, can be made in later years is not the question. How parents in their right minds can fail to see that the self-suffi- ciency of the piano dwarfs into insignificance every other instrument is beyond comprehension. That the violin or voice can come closer to the spirit and genius of a composer is undeni- able, but the mind behind the voice or bow must also be close 19 Crista- ^° ^^^ spirit and genius of the composer. Now the voice and ality is violin are, by their splendid limitations, absolutely unfitted for ""•y* the transforming process. It is indeed surprising that the part of piano which puts more stumbling blocks between the spirit of **"s^t" ™^^^*^ ^^^ ^^ expression than any other instrument should be the one instrument best adapted to the transforming process. The reason is that great originality is almost invariably poly- phonic, and the only polyphonic instrument easily accessible in every home is the piano, and four hands are better than two simply because they afford polyphonic originality more scope with less technical effort. A mother who says "Well, I don't know whether to have my child study violin or piano," or "Some day I think Helen will have a sweet voice," is simply not awake to the true situation. (Let me digress to say that parents must be on their guard in reading G. Stanley Hall's Song is chapter on "The Pedagogy of Music" in his "Educational * i^g'of Problems." Remarkable as his work is, it is vitiated to some poetry extent in that it fails to make a distinction between absolute and music ^^i^. ^n^ ^u othgr kinds.) The major part of this paper has dealt with Mary Missoxiri because as a teacher it is my delight to win her to good music. I am not interested in building a pianist, I am interested in developing a musician. If a child is developed into a sound musician when young, the form that musicianship will take is not of paramount importance, neither is the time of its flowering. In fact the forced flowering of it between sixteen and twenty-two years of age at the sacrifice of other educational opportunities is unwise. Dorothy This leads me to talk a moment about Dorothy Ticklekeys. when led I said a moment ago that genuine originality is often displeasing to the to Mary Missouri. I want to say here that the originality that is really pleasing to Dorothy Ticklekeys is often very restricted Drinks jn its scope. More often than not it is melodic originality that pleases her most. This sort of originality may be found in Melody, certain popular song-hits but surrounded with every sort of experience musical barbarity and vulgarity. I repeat; real melodic with originality — some turn or twist to the melodic line only that marks it with distinction — may exist in the song-hit of the hour. Therefore it is to be regretted that the writers of such stuff Harmonic couldn't have had a decent musical education. Harmonic origin- originality — ^the resolution of exquisite dissonances — Dorothy ality often has to learn to appreciate. Little Dorothys of seven or 20 eight always object to what sounds bad because they cannot read fast enough to make the resolution of the dissonance intelligible. This is one of the most powerful reasons for forcing reading ability and especially playing with your pupil, for often you can reach over and resolve the dissonance for her. " There, see? Now let's do it again and be siire and keep your C sharped or you won't like it." Little Dorothys need this fully as much as little Marys. Dsmamic originality — ^the contrast between J^'J,'^."' soft and loud. Hugo Wolf, one of the two real composers who ity and wrote only songs, once said: "All I want to know about a composer is, can he exult?" In other words has he originality in the management of dynamic effects. This is often not appreciated by Dorothy without much experience with music that depends on dyTia,mics for its effectiveness. Rhythmic J^^Jj^* originality such as exists in such a marked degree in all of ality and Dvorak's work is another sort of originality in the appreciation of which many Dorothys are rigorously limited. One such Dorothy said: "0, I just love waltzes," and I could get hours of real practice out of her on a really difficult concert waltz of attractive melodic outline and no great depth. But let me ask her to play the adagio from Dvorak's elegiac trio with me and no such enthusiasm is evinced. She cannot put herself in the inspired mood that was the composer's when the slow swing of this great music fired his imagination. Not enough music of such profoimd feeling as this has touched her or the quality of her mind is such that perhaps she will never be able to appre- hend its significance. Age has little to do with it. At present a pupil of eleven is plajnng it with me with the deepest apprecia- tion. There are other forms of originality as that of tone color *^e"oi„r in compositions for orchestra, for instance. No pianist can and experience this form without attending orchestra concerts. After once experiencing the beauty of this sort of originality the imagination can orient piano music with it. Then there is a certain originality in the scope of emotional expression as emotional exemplified to the greatest extent in the larger works of Brahms, expres- On all sides of us we find sentiment and gaiety expressed in music, but we should take joy in the musical expression of sorrow, humor, reverence, the weird, the dramatic and all phases of human emotion. So Dorothy herself may not be deeply musical though she may be astonishingly effective on the keyboard. There is a strong urge within me to disillusion Dorothy. It is this same 21 urge that leads Mr. Rachmaninoff in a recent number of the Delineator to advocate a national conservatory of music in Technic America. Such an endowed institution would not be dependent cheap for its financial existence on the retention of the unfit. Such a school could eliminate these pseudo-prestidigitators of the keyboard with ubiquitous hands and vacuous heads. Here and Us they would learn that mere technic is rather a drug on the dangerous market and real musical, imderstanding is quite the opposite. As conditions exist to-day, however, a late and rude awakening with genuinely tragic results usually replaces what might have been a mere timely disillusionment. What is responsible for a forward hand and a backward Good head? There are at least three well-defined reasons. First and first foremost is the conservatories' failiwe to train their product to would play great music with children, four hands on one piano, a failure the error which results in the loss of all the Mary Missouris and the restriction of the appreciation of originality in Dorothy Tickle- keys herself. Second, the use of teaching material purposely or ^'^""taff unconsciously devoid of great originality: Schmidt and that can- Pischna, Schmoll and Gurlitt, Bertini and Concone, Loeschhom not stand ^nd BurgmuUer, Czemy and Clementi, Hanon and Kullak, merits Heller and Neupert. These men's works, and many, many "^ ™"^d "^^^^ ^^^® them are responsible for Mary Missouri's quitting help and Dorothy's continued tickling of the keys. Why won't s'iJl Mary take delight in strengthening each individual finger with the little Schmidt hold-the-keys-down exercises and follow it up with Pischna? Why does she play Czemy's Velocity Studies at one-quarter tempo and by attenuation completely lose track of what little coherence these studies have? Why is her playing of Clementi full of holes where her weakest fingers are taxed and even strained? Because she didn't do her Schmidt care- fully, no doubt. She tolerates Loeschhom and Burgmiiller more than Bertini and Concone; the two former season bare and necessary technic with a spicier sauce. Schmoll and Gurlitt are an insult to her intelligence but she tolerates them out of a decent regard for her teacher. Hanon and Kullak may not be, but they seem extra-musical. The groundwork of the prestidigitator's art doesn't make a strong appeal, but Mary might like a little real music for its own sake and not for what it would do for Mary socially or commercially. Heller and Neupert — well, here Mary found a kind of fool's gold, a pale reflection of originality that for a moment had her listening, but 22 by this time school was so heavy with home work, and Bill and Jack camped so closely on her trail that "Really, Miss Spieler, Mary finds so little time to practice that I think it is a waste of time and money to continue her lessons. I'm sure you have done the best you can but I don't believe Mary is very musical anyway." "Water, water everywhere Nor any drop to drink." Dorothy, however, reacts differently. I sometimes suspect her of less mentality. Perhaps she is bom with a faculty for acquiring the very necessary muscular coordination required in the technic of piano playing. Because of the ease with which she acquires the mechanics of the piano and because she has Dorothy's been really listening to music longer than Mary, her mother — treme it is usually mother — ogives voice to that amazing credulity that ?ptWude obsesses many mothers when William draws his first scrawl third and in childish naivete calls it his dog. William is going to be •■eason an artist without doubt. The two cases are analogous. From then on mother backs Dorothy like a horse trainer a prize race- horse. Many a Dorothy owes her inability to enjoy anjrthing but music entirely to her mother. Piano teachers encourage her because they want to exploit her. She tolerates the stuff from Schmidt to Clementi and takes delight in those show pieces many of which limit the range of appreciation for originality. What a blessing it would be if we could compel piano teachers to 'lay off' of this stuff for a while. Sibelius's "Romance," Op. 24 No. 9, for example. Why not play the next one. No. 10? ^^ *^^^- It is a lovely barcarole. And Sinding's " Rustle of Spring," too. some new He can make the sea surge in his "Auf dem Wasser," from Op. ""'®'*' 97, as well as he can make the leaves rustle. (I'm not wild about his music, though, any more than I am about Ed. Schutt's.) Why not let up on Moszkowski's " Gondellied," Op. 41 and play Op. 73 No. 1, for a boat song. Instead of playing "Sparks" and "En Automne" play the "Etude" Op. 67, ^^^ " No. 2. and Op. 70, No. 1. Instead of the "Caprice Espagnol," it there Op. 37, play the easier "With Fan and Mantle" Op. 80, No. 2. '^• Instead of his "Valse" in E, Op. 34, No. 1. play Op. 76, No. 2 and Op. 88. These are all splendid things. Xaver Scharwenka wrote more than a score of Polish Dances but you would never know it from Dorothy's repertory or her teacher's programs. Let her try Op. 29, No. 1, Op. 47, No. 1, Op. 54, No. 3, if she must have Polish Dances. He wrote greater music, though. 23 ''^*" fe"too ^* Dorothy's teacher play his "Romance" in C minor, Op. 64, much neg- No. 1, and his "Ballade" in F minor, Op. 85, No. 2, and he or He has ^^® ^^* better be a 'he') will discover that here is another written composer to 'spell' Chopin with. What's the matter with music Dvorak's twelfth "Silhouette," or the eleventh, or the seventh? Give the second a rest. It is the same with his first waltz. Op. 54, No. 1. No. 2 is to my way of thinking much better; and did you know that his eighth "Humoreske" is the best one of all, much finer than " Um te tum te."? If you must play his piano solos why not play his best ones? However, he wrote some great music for orchestra and for strings alone which it is a joy to play, but nobody gets enthusiastic over music and the composers of it, it is eternally the piano and the players of it. (If the piano was not the only instrument that could lead small children quickly to great music, I'd consign it and its exploiters to perdition right now. I wish I could be a string quartet player all by myself and play all four instruments at the same time.) Rachmaninoff wrote more Preludes than those in C sharp minor and G minor, but nobody knew it until he came over here. I guess our Dorothy Ticklekeys and most of her teachers must be played to in order that they may acquire any new music at all. Liadow has written many lovely things for piano and also for orchestra besides his "Musical Snuffbox", and so has Glazounow besides his "La Nuit" etude. Play the former's "Mazurka" in F sharp minor and the latter's " Valse de Salon" Op. 43 and the "Valse de Concert," Op. 41. Dorothy's teacher would enjoy his Sonata, Op. 74, especially the Adagio. These men's works are inspiring and they wrote much music that is not of extreme difficulty. Rachmaninoff says that his countryman, Medtner's work is good. I believe him and look forward to finding something of his that I with my limitations can enjoy. I am sure there is something. So it is with the lesser composers; I can tell just what pieces by Chaminade or Godard or Leschetitsky Dorothy's teacher is going to give her, unless her teacher is the exception rather than the rule. But Dorothy's teacher doesn't believe any other way than his way of teaching will produce the mobility of thumb and Let's evenness of finger action that he knows is a desideratum if one 'b^°\1 wishes to play the larger compositions for piano solo. This is Where's because you cannot get him to try any other way. T N T. is the tri- ^;hg only recourse. Yet this man's insistence on imposing the toluol? limitations of his specialty on all his pupils is at last analysis 24 responsible for Mary's missing the joy of playing great music and for plugging up the public school system with a mass of the facts of music that admits easily of examination but means nothing of any permanent value unless preceded by a long experience with music. And he is also responsible for depriving Dorothy of other things of more importance than music. "Whistler made much of his musical analogies. If he had thought a little more deeply on music, he might have used another — or he might not. For music is indisputably and ^fig. naturally what he always sought to make painting — ^the art of norance ignorance; the art, that is, which appeals directly to the emotions and does not require for its appreciation any wide training or experience in history or in the general interests of human life."— Gamaliel Bradford on James McNeill Whistler, „„ . vvn&t IS in the April, 1921, Atlantic Monthly. Real culture is to be culture? found over in the College of Liberal Arts. Dorothy needs Latin. The expression of abstract ideas in English is all but impossible without a good grounding in that study. As good music will develop a sound technic for you, Dorothy, so will Latin? (Let's Latin smooth the way for good and eclectic reading. The words slip back into that are strange to you become rarer and occur less and less ignorance) frequently as you grow older and finally you love to read, not No. Wrestle only the fashions, and the stories and the sensational news of and a'blesshig the day, but also the editorial page of the best papers, The a thousand Outlook, the Atlantic Monthly, and special articles of deep powerful than human interest like the first one in the March Century. You i»»sic will des- will, in short, begin to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom. The Atlantic will become more and more a necessity Wisdom and the National Geographic a pleasant luxury, and you will think twice before buying any child a so-called book of knowledge ^ but you will part with your last copper for a book like "Messer tion Marco Polo" to free his soul from the bondage of the common- j_ place. If you can learn to love to read with understanding, lectuai you will be constantly in the intellectual companionship of ?"™^"" chosen men and women who are giving expression to valuable ideas and who will help you to "keep a summer mind snow-hid in January." It is such reading that gives you the impetus to in Age express your own ideas. You will not be afraid to put yourself ^^^ in tjrpe, and, again, in the College of Liberal Arts you can power acquire the technic of composition so that when you do have "'j^^ ression ideas definitely formed in your mind, you will know how to set them down in an orderly manner and not be mastered by 35 digressions. However, if you do not learn to love to read, you will have to find intellectual companionship in chance What acquaintances where one out of a thousand will have any ideas mental . , , . , , . . , . , i atrophy of real value to give you, and his ideas you may reject because "^""® through too little reading you have not learned to weigh and price it consider. You are most liable to be deceived by some specious exacts half-truth of pathology or religion or education. Obsessions along these lines are sure indications of mental atrophy. A broader foundation at the start will lessen the danger of your becoming a prey to such obsessions. After learning to Poetry jgyg ^q j-gg^jj widely and with catholicity of interest, and perhaps to write, you may acquire a love for poetry — ^that most precious of all golden things. Its true devotees are few and invariably you can detect a true one from a false one by his interest in its craftsmanship. Many, many false ones you will discover are not interested in poetry at all but in rhymed moral platitudes, or homely ruminations of childhood days, or light verse of a rather broadly humorous turn which they call poetry. The daily papers are full of such "poetry." Real appreciation of poetry, however, presupposes a rather keen discrimination in the use of words, a somewhat larger and specialized vocabulary, and, of course, an imaginative insight and power of visualization not possible to acquire in childhood. If music is the art of ignorance, then poetry is its opposite pole. What good are all the other studies in the College of Liberal Arts? A smattering of as many as you have time for will open History ^qqj.^ fgj. ypy a,ll through life. A course in general history under an inspiring teacher will make you believe in the upward trend of the human race and you will cherish as an epitome of your faith this bit: "AFTER THE WAR." "After the war — I hear men ask — ^what then? As though this rock-ribbed world, sculptured with fire, And bastioned deep in the ethereal plan. Can never be its morning self again Because of this brief madness, man with man; As though the laughing elements should tire. The very seasons in their order reel. As though indeed yon ghostly golden wheel Of stars should cease from turning, or the moon Befriend the night no more, or the wild rose Forget the world, and June be no more June. 26 How many wars and long-forgotten woes Unnumbered, nameless, made a like despair In hearts long stilled; how many suns have set On burning cities blackening the air, — Yet dawn came dreaming back, her lashes wet With dew, and daisies in her innocent hair. Nor shall, for this, the soul's ascension pause. Nor the sure evolution of the laws That out of foulness lift the flower to sun, And out of fury forge the evening star. Deem not Love's building of the world undone — Far Love's beginning was, her end is far; By paths of fire and blood her feet must climb. Seeking a loveliness she scarcely knows Whose meaning is beyond the reach of Time." Richard Le GaUienne. My hat is off to the man who, with the most consummate art, can move freely under the most rigorous Hmitations of rhyme and rhythm and practically with the caesural pause alone produce the charming effect of artlessness. Away with these vers libre artists! Artfulness shines through all their clever work. A very little chemistry, (Didn't I hear Dorothy say "Heavens!") even the romance of Mendeleeff's law and the Chemistry atomic scale, will make some recent editorials in the New York Times as interesting as Grieg's Romance from his string quartet. The dream of the alchemist of the middle ages is coming true upside down! It is great fun to share the chemist's breathless interest even in a small and imperfect way. So is it absorbing to read of a prehistoric saurian wandering around in Patagonia and hear how the paleontologists scout the idea and why. The little time spent with Ethics will develop charity toward man as History strengthens faith in the divine plan, for you will Ethics discover that any overt act may not be indicative of the present level of character of the individual but above or below it. Even so dry a subject as taxation will make interesting President Harding's insistence on a sales tax to supply revenue for a soldiers' bonus, and Secretary Mellon's frequent statements of PoUtical the financial condition of our government. With a little conscious effort these matters need not be an absolutely closed door even to Dorothy. One does not attend the College of Liberal Arts in order to know everything, one takes post- graduate work along one line only for this purpose and even then one discovers how little one can really know and how little 27 is really known. "Liberal" does not come from liber, mean- ing "book," but from liber, meaning "freedom."* So let teachers and parents try to place Dorothy as well as Mary in the intellectual class before any consciousness of kind begins to reveal her character set in a lower tjrpe. Few musicians Sociology are found in the forceful type, but nine-tenths of them are in the convivial tj^e. Those few that climb higher than this be- long to the austere dogmatic type. These are they who fill our publishers' music magazines with "their way of doing it." A little sociology would help many parents to understand more clearly what makes for the real betterment of the human race. A little "settlement" work in our own homes would not come wide of the "crying need of the age." So after all Mr. Surette is right: American children are, in their entirety, musical. Mary and Dorothy are really not so very far apart, not so far but that inspired music would make them coalesce, but as matters stand now Dorothys and Marys have not coalesced — grown together — so the professor at the con- servatory has to take what he gets, a few Dorothys and many Marys, and he makes a mess of the life of the former and the music of the latter. Why he doesn't pull himself out of the slough when the means are in his hands, that is, train his future teachers, his feeders of the conservatory, to play with their YOUNG pupils four hands on one piano, is past compre- ^^ aeainsl tension. Instead he raves about the quack teachers of music our and the need of state control of the music teaching business. children y/j^g won't solve his problem. He doesn't need a college education to know better than this, all he needs is plain, ordinary, Yankee common sense. But he is not a Yankee. Yankees are disap- pearing from America. Our fate is worse than Israel's. We are not taken captive to Babylon where we could hang our harps on the willows and wail: "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?", but Babylon overwhelms us. Our native acumen could leaven even this awful lump were it not for the deathgrip of convention and the consequent stifling of initiative. The ignorance and apathy of politicians makes one tremble for the safety of that of which Jefferson dreamed when he wrote the immortal document. We are sacrificing our children on the altars of false gods and they will pay the penalty even to the fourth generation. HARLOW D. CURTIS. *See an article in the May, 1922, Atlantic Monthly "What is College For?' ' by Arthur E. Morgan. 28 NOTES The following points are evident from the foregoing explana- tion of my way of teaching the normal child: 1. That weekly opportunities for playing with the child are none too frequent and that the importance of this feature cannot be overestimated. Only serious illness — ^no other cause weekly whatever — should interfere with consecutive work. That the lessons child isn't prepared for his lesson is not of great consequence. Three children in one household can take turns missing a lesson once in three weeks, but I do not advise it. I will not allow two children to alternate, however, as it is impossible to carry on this work under those conditions. 2. I have never found it necessary to lower the level of Cluldreii music or bring it down to children. They have always been S-ained able and willing to come up to great music. This 'bringing to get music down to children', however, is a feature of various 'systems', so-called. This is the mainspring of the camouflage. Little Mary is delighted to find her playmates in her "class"; she is also delighted with the "rhjrthmic" exercises and "doing something on the blackboard". All of the kindergarten features please her. After she is "graduated", ahem!, from the course, or when the inevitable time comes that this teacher rrnist connect her stuff up with the serious study of music as exempli- fied by the pedagogic material still adhered to by the con- servatory, trouble often begins. These teachers all think they must use dementi's sonatinas, for example, and "many of them don't know the proper use of such a work as Czemy's Velocity Studies. They are velocity studies and I have yet to find here in Syracuse a child or adolescent precocious enough to play them much more than at half tempo without genuine damage to really fine technic. When this stuff is brought on, Mary Missouri is being amused in some other way and her parents conclude that she isn't deeply musical. The trouble is that this stuff isn't deeply musical nor are the little two hand pieces by Tom, Dick and Harry that her teacher uses as a foil for the conservatory requirements deeply musical either. Mary might 29 still be, though, if her mind could have been touched with great music. Instead of that she has been amused. She should have been amused with great music. Anybody can amuse with the facts of music presented with a lot of paraphernalia in a kindergarten way, but to amuse a child with the very soul of great music : that is quite a different matter. " That teaching is the most perfect teaching that most nearly approaches play" is a truth capable of more misunderstanding and misinterpreta- tion than any I know. Music teachers, especially "system" music teachers are, every single one of them, not teaching child- ren to play with the soul of great music. They say in defense: Oh, no child can grasp such music. Right there is where they are dead wrong. All that is necessary is a child who hasn't been 'amused' and whose parents have trained it to produce results. Since I make no attempt to cater to the child's notions of what it likes, some supervision should be exercised by the parents to see merely that the child tries. Frankly I have no patience whatever with the parent who says: "Well, if John has to be driven to practice, he'd better stop." Let me say that John better not begin with me. I am not sugar-coating any music. I am interested in the child whose parents expect something from him in the shape of effort. Parents I have been hampered many times by children improperly annoying ^.^^^^ — ^what happens between birth and eight years of age can teacher defeat me. I have been hampered by parents who can read ime j^^^ won't and instead of following me when I have expressed . my ideas in print at various times have persisted in judging my way is work with their child by somebody else's work with somebody to ask else's child. I am not teaching like somebody else. You quesions j-gj^^gj^^er that Mr. Surette said that American children are musical but their parents are not. Parents defeat me more The most than children. I have been hampered by parents who laugh unfortunate when I "tell them that certain other teachers must fail with of all certain methods they use. These parents are discounting what I say and attributing my motive to professional jealousy. It is not necessary for me to be professionally jealous. I have never been able to handle the volume of work that has come to me. These parents are not numerous but they are extremely unfortunate in their misapprehension of my motives. I am actuated solely by a desire to correct unsound teaching methods and my record proves this. The child who cannot produce results will fail with any kindergarten method of teaching 30 music anyway, but real effort expended on inspired music of the master composers will lessen the amount of super- vision necessary to be exercised over most any child. It is nothing short of remarkable the way in which the normal child will awaken and begin to discipline itself in acquiring control over music worth playing. The notion that unless a child shows strong predisposition toward music, it is foolish to give him lessons, is directly traceable to the silly music and dryasdust exercises uniformly foisted upon children. I have had the Apecul- isr C&S6 curious experience of guiding a child who never put forth effort except when taking his lesson and couldn't be made to, still interested in good music after six years of lessons, still enjoys his lessons, still rather not work by himself enough to show real results. I don't know whether parents who continue to back such a child financially deserve approbation or censure. The child is an enigma. I think some day he will play, possibly with more individuality than many. But if Dr. Frank Dam- rosch is right: " Create in the pupil a clear conception of what he wants to express, and arouse his will to express it, and nature will find ways and means — ^nay, the best ways and means — ^to express it. It will shape the tools of expression with a refine- ment of accuracy which no mechanical means can hope to secure," then this boy is going to have a hard time of it dis- ciplining himself and training his hand. His fourth and fifth fingers are going to give him genuine trouble with a big 'T' in scales, chords and everywhere else simply because he will not do his work now. I will not throw him down because I know he understands and appreciates good music, but what the out- come will be rests on the knees of the gods. Very few teachers ever secure any pedagogic data on such an abnormal pupil. I am teaching two such pupils with more curiosity than en- thusiasm. 3. It is evident that when the major part of the work with children under twelve is taken up with playing with the child, memorization of entire pieces — a strong appeal to a parent who Memori- wishes her child to 'perform' — ^is prohibited. The question of childhood memorization has been presented plainly by me in another brochure a copy of which any parent can have for the asking. It is enough to state here that the notion that unless a child memorizes while young, it will be unable to do so when mature is contrary to the facts of psychology. It would be nearer the truth to say that a certain type of memory is some- 31 thing you are born with, and during all your life it may be always difficult to adapt it to certain purposes. The brochure mentioned above gives all the facts and the citations from James's Psychology, page and paragraph. New pupils may have 4. Parents who wish to place their children with me will '"outof ^^v® *o t^k^ t^^™ o^t 0^ school one hour a week for their lesson school probably for more than one year. Propinquity, however, lessons shapes my schedule as much as priority. Inasmuch as I wish to work in the home where the parent can always see and hear how I work, I have no use for a studio. As I maintain this house to house schedule during the entire school year, I am not interested in pupils whose work is sporadic, who make holes in my schedule during the height of the teaching season. To be All pupils Q'^i^s candid, I do not care to continue work under those condi- should tions. The school year is not too long a time for continuous '^"ing^^e ^o^^i ^^^ I make exceptions to this rule only in the case of whole older pupils who have become genuine appreciators of originality ^"year ™ ^lusic and who can read it readily and with understanding; in short, those older pupils who are nearly ready to get along alone. The years from twelve to sixteen and sometimes eigh- teen are quite necessary for this, consequently parents who contemplate sending their children to a finishing school away from S3n*acuse are likely to be disappointed in their child's work with me. I am always glad to work with any pupil during the Summer summer and hours of extra time will be gladly given to such ^""^ pupils as I then have more time and as I myself enjoy so doing. 5. It must be evident to the reader by this time that I am laying a foundation only. This often takes ten years. By no The art means am I trying to produce a finished performer on an 'musical' instrument. This takes a lifetime and many can never attain it. Neither do I mean to imply that the pupil needs any other A good teacher after I am through. The pupil needs first of all the piano best instrument money can buy. You who know me know lusic not too what I mean — a Steinway piano. (I get nothing for this unless '^■■^ "••' *"** ^^ ^^ some opposition.) He needs, secondly, plenty of -good and music, not too difficult and not too well known which he can INSPIRA ^®^''™ *° interpret in his own way. Pupils do not need instruc- TION. tion so much as they need inspiration. The following is as true as the Gospel: "The first thing to realize is, that in music no less than the other arts, teaching can go only a very short way. Beyond advice in the nimbling of fingers, and the fundamentals 32 of bowing or pedalling, a teacher is a deterrent of self-reliance and initiative. * * * This should be printed in gold lettering on the front of every piano manufactured: 'In music, there is no rule outside the promptings of instinct. The beginning and end of musical development is not technique but natural impulse, and if you have not the impulse at the start, technical training will never bring it to you on this side of heaven. While piano technique is as necessary as the routine which accompanies every human activity, if you have not the self assertion and imagination to make it your liberator, to make skill a matter of second thought that you may freely explore your marvelous chosen field, if technique becomes not your humble tool but your master, then you had far better make no beginning, for your worth as a musician and artist is nU.' " —J. N. Burk, in "The Fetish of Virtuosity" in the April, 1918, Musical Quarterly. Excerpts from "Musical Education" by Harlow Gale, in the January, 1922, Musical Quarterly "When, now one comes to compare the teaching of music 5f"l*® '?■ with the other arts, as literature, e. 'g., it is distressing to see of music how the lower aesthetic values preponderate. This condition is due to the teachers of music having learned an instrument rather than the literature of music. * * * Thus the great mass of teachers, absorbed in the difficulties of their instruments seldom rose higher in aesthetic emotions than accomplishment. Such musicians are on the literary plane of elocutionists, dis- plajring themselves and their organs, rather than the higher values of art works. * * * -pj^ig elocutionary plane in musicians is further intensified by the commercial motives and values which should be the least stimulus in art, being more prominent in music than in any of the other arts. * * * Like the older-fashioned school and college curriculums, the present musical repertories are still passed down mostly by custom and imitation. While the comparatively narrow range of concert and recital programs shows the tyranny of imitation and tradi- tion, so interesting psychologically, it is depressing in the pre- ponderance of display, curiosity, novelty and accomplishment. Imitation cannot lead to very high emotions. * * * Another important reason beside the narrow musi- 33 cal knowledge of most music teachers, why so little of the higher musical components are cultivated, is that even the best educated teachers so seldom discriminate between making performers and making cultivated lovers of music. The over- whelming mass of young people studying music can never be public soloists and should not even be inoculated with the bacillus of showing oflf in private. But it apparently never occurs to most music teachers to do anything different for their pupils than was done for themselves; i. e., a long course of technical stiidies and then the laborious mastery of a few The cure repertory pieces and concertos. Instead of thus missing about 95% of our wealth of classical musical literature, it would be vastly better for the teacher as well as for his pupil, for them to sit down together at the piano and leisurely wander through the ^*"" n^one original four hand waltzes of Schubert and Brahms, the exquisite piano "Bilder aus Osten" of Schumann and learn to know through their piano arrangements all the overtures and symphonies of Beethoven. Nothing also so helps the necessary facility with a Th ult "^^si*^*^ instrument and with reading music as the stimulus of good music and the necessity of keeping up with a better player. The teaching * * * The colleges and universities present strange musi- of theory gg,! anomalies. On the other hand there are two adaptations of the Puritanical idea of education by discipline in the college courses in musical theory and in instrumental practice. Harm- ony and counterpoint correspond to grammar and philology. They are interesting scientific dissection supplements to a living knowledge of music and literature. With the aid of the historical development of musical theory and of philology, some added interest can be given to the products of these rules. But they should be studied only incidentally, after a large body of classic music and literature is accumulated jor they are not necessary for the highest appreciation of art. (The italics are mine.) The music and theory relation is similar to that of reasoning and logic; we can learn logic only after we have unconsciously learned to reason. The modem psychological realization that all our higher intellectual and emotional processes grow unconsciously through the associations of experience, rather than by the deductive application of rules, should make teachers more cautious about reversing the mental process. * * * These most intimate art compositions (chamber 34 music) written for a few friends and for home use, are the most Chamber genuine essence of music. Display and accomplishment are here eliminated together with the soloist; the individual player is subordinated in cooperation for the production of joy, grace, purity and nobility. * * * * If we never read books any oftener than most music Reading teachers read music, we could hardly get beyond the primer, mwsic But there is no special trouble in learning to read music just as with newspapers, if we simply read. * * * When it comes to learning the symphonies, overtures. Again Wagner, Mozart's operas and "Fidelio", it is hardly possible *^"'" ^^^^^ to get together a college orchestra, unless help for the wind piano instruments is given by a conservatory. Even then, such tedious practice is necessitated by the poorer and irregular players that far more and better knowledge of orchestral works can be attained through four-hand piano arrangements. * * * * Until the age of adolescence and its awakened An error imagination there is no serious call for musical expression; below that is the naive play of primitive instinct." The last excerpt is the only untrue statement in Mr. Gale's article. I do not contend that it is untrue, I have proved that it is untrue. I can detect from Mr. Gale's article that he is not a man to scorn a lovely work imperfectly performed by a child. I know he would rather hear a masterwork imperfectly per- formed than an inferior work perfectly performed. A finale of a splendid string quartet taken a little slower than the Flonza- leys would play it is not going to make him run away. Unless I am mightily mistaken he is a man who would take great joy in seeing a child enthusiastic over such a work, even though the child was unable to reproduce all its fine effects. Mr. Gale simply needs to hear these programs performed by these children, all but three of them under sixteen years of age, many of them twelve or under. This is not a cause for argument, it is a fait accompli. 35 'Not failxire, but low aim is crime." — James Russell Lowell. PROGRAM 3 P. M. MONDAY, APRIL 17, 1922 I. MUSIC FOR ORCHESTRA 1 Norwegian Dance Grieg, Op. 35, No. U Ruth Hulbert This is the real Grieg; originality is rife here. The dance offers splendid practice in keeping time without counting. The pupil should have a large hand. This pupil is ten years old and in her third year of music, has the hand, needs the rhythmic drill and has learned to delight in the originality that is Grieg's. The only dance from Op. 35 that is known is the second one which is least like Grieg and is merely a very pretty tune. Teachers should use the first and fourth to lead a child to Grieg. 2 *Slavic Dance Dvorak, Op. 72, No. 8 Constance Cook The first book of Slavic dances. Op. 46, was written for four hands, but the sequel, Op. 72, was written for orchestra. This one, "lento grazioso, quasi tempo di valse," is good practice in sharps and flats. It leads the pirpil through the majors and minors of four and five flats and three, four and seven sharps. The pupil playing it is ten years old and in her third year of music. Dvorak has been a delight to her during the last part of the year. It is a curious notion prevalent among teachers who do not play wUh their pupils that a large number of sharps or flats in the signa- ture constitutes a difSculty. Just such a serious error did Leopold Godowsky make when he wrote his "Miniatures" — a set of some thirty duets for teacher and pupU. These are all in the key of C, or in the five note compass in G, or aU notes on the black keys. Here is music, real music, inspired by a genuine composer, but so sapped of aU other difficulties than mental ones that uie time any pupil can spend on them with distinct advantage is very short. And besides, there is a distinctly different technic required in other keys than C, F, G and D which should be acquired at the earliest possible moment. I seldom call attention to the signature when playing with a child, simply because I have never yet discovered a cmld, eitiier one who could or couldn't sing, who wasn't unconsciously aware of the intervals in the diatonic scale. It is not necessary to lalk about it, it is necessary to get experience in using this intuitive knowledge by playing in_ various keys. Experience in acquiring an appreciation for the peculiarities of the originafity in a composer's works — ^that genius that makes his work unique — ^is the first essential that should be taught to children, if we wish to make Americans a musical people, but our conservatories are caught in a vicious circle and do not yet understand how this can be done, and the public school is no place for any such training; first because the teaching personnel has, in the mass, little musical understanding, and second because too much time is already being subtracted from the soUd essentials of primary and secondary education, and third because it would be extremely difScult if not imwise for the public school to supply facilities for 36 any such trainmg. This is the field for properly directed music settle- ment work. Since the above conditions obtain in the schools it is to be expected that what will admit easily of examination would be found there and that the heart of music would be in great measure lacking. This is why the public school work in music is a mere mess of nomenclature — ^rules of thumb about the facts of music. Ti-re- fa-sol is a perfectly adequate description of the chord of the dominant seventh and will serve all purposes admirably throughout childhood. Add the knowledge about music YEARS LATER, but get the ex- perience with great music AT ONCE. Don't delay even to play these curious duets of Godowsky's. Get at some music by composers who had no notions about what children couldn't do, and you will discover that children can and will come up to great music. After the child knows the composer through his works, then let him read about the man's life. Indeed he can know much of the composer's works even before he can read the English language with any deep comprehension of its meaning. Don't put the cart before the horse by giving the bare facts in the life of a composer whose works are unknown to your pupil. 3 *"Furiant" from the Symphony in D . . . Dvorak, Op. 60 Louise Pubdy Dvorak often used this native Bohemian dance in place of the scherzo in his symphonies and chamber music. This furiant and the one in Smetana's opera "The Bartered Bride" are the only two I know in which phrases two quarter beats in length are placedin succession in three-four time. Here is splendid practice in keeping together at great speed. The pupil shomd be fourteen or over. II. CHAMBER MUSIC 4 *"Adagio" from the Elegiac Trio .... Dvorak, Op. 90 Pauline Flynn This is sorrow relieved by a vision of the earthly delights of his departed friend, I imagine. It is in four sharps minor and contains splendid practice in alternation of the hands and in playing arpeggios cleanly and very softly. Here again is demonstrated the value of good music over an exercise book. The ethereal atmosphere of this elegiac mood of the composer makes an instant and direct appeal to the heart of a child and soft, clean arpeggios result. This pupil is eleven and is finishing her third year of music. 5 *First Movement from the String Sextette . . Dvorak, Op. 1,8 Anita Carpenter This is one of the hair-trigger movements from chamber music as is the fourth number on the second program. This pupil is fourteen and is finishing her seventh year. It has taken a few months to produce a finished performance of this rather complicated music, as the chance for practice with the teacher is limited. 6 *"Elegy" from the String Sextette . . . Dvorak, Op. j^S Emma Richer The page in six sharps major is one of the best passages in Dvorak, simple to play and altogether lovely. The pupil is twelve and in her fourth year. The calm peacefulness of the rhthym broadens the power of appreciation at an age when many girls must have something "fast." Here is something traiiscendently beautiful yet replete with repose. 37 7 "Rondo" from "Ein kleine Nachtmusik" .... Mozart Henry Pohter Happy MozartI Pure sparkling water, crystal clear and cold! This pupil ia twelve and in his fourth year of music, but still has a very small hand and needs much four hand work. He likes the modem idiom best, but a little Mozart with a few archaisms in the shape of turns and mordents and a basso susswando won't hurt him a bit. However, many a pupil's desire to play music is destroyed by forcing on tiim prehistoric contrapuntal carpentry ia a vain attempt to develop individuality in the left hand and to give both hands the power of independent utterance. Music teachers are often lacking in the right kind of "inventions." 8 "Allegretto" from the String Quintette . . Brahms, Op. Ill Ramona Rentley It is difficult to write about this passage of Brahms in G major in the middle of this "Allegretto" without becoming rhapsodical. Many times must it appear on my programs so all may know it. The pupil playing is thirteen and in her fifth year of music. Any child can be Drought to love Brahms through music like this. How likeable he is! People who know >n'in through his piano solo music do not know this Brahms tmless they know his last rhapsody, the one in E flat major from Op. 119. 'This is the Brahms we enjoy most. Much of his chamber music is compact with the sheer joy that surges through this last Rhapsody. HI. ORIGINAL PIANO DUETS 9 Spanish Dance Moszkowski, Op. 65, No. 1 Katherine Buchester Moszkowski has written more than a dozen Spanish Dances for paano four hands. Critics talk about their superficial character. Evidently they know only Op. 12. If they would ^lay Op. 21, Op. 23, No. 3, and Op. 65 they might change their opinion. This one in three flats major and minor gives us not only Moszkowski's natural tunefulness but also his clever harmonic ingenuity — ^wizard work that invariably delights chfldren. Moszkowski improves technic. He is a pianist's composer, not profound but invariably interesting. I am sorry not to be tible to print the complete descriptive catalog of aU his works which is now ready for the press, but I nave been buflding a house and anybody who has been doing this knows perfectly weU why I delay publication. Katherine is ten years old and is finishing her third year of music. She can stick to tough stuff to the bitter end. Things have been expected of her and she gets results. IV. PIANO SOLOS 10 *Mazurka Josef Hofmann, Op. 16, No. 2 Dorothy Stevens This little mazmka in G major offers splendid practice in double notes for the right hand. It is not easy to play with finish and needs most careful articulation. The pupU is fourteen and in her seventh year of music. 38 11 *Gondellied Balakirew Cabolyn Howe This is one of the loveUest boat songs in all musical literature. Here is scale work for both hands together that requires the lightest touch. But something besides technic is required. This piece is not for a mere pianist but merits the attention of a musician to whom technic is of secondary importance. Any concert pianist would gain in reputation with the best critics of music if he would include this in his repertory. The pupil playing is sixteen and in her seventh year of music. 12 *Valse Glazounow, Op. J^, No. 3 Elizabeth Downing This waltz, one of three miniatures, is purposely light in character. The splendid final page redeems the composition from a certain superficiality — ^no — a certain facility of melodic expression too easily pleasing but quite original. The whole piece is splendid practice in phrasing. The pupil is twelve and in her fourth year of music. 13 *Rhapso(iy in F sharp minor . Philip Scharwenka, Op. 85, No. 2 Dolores Dosser This composer wrote down to children too much; the genius of the family is found in his works, however. His four hand works are voluminous and his best inspirations are in them. See his Op. 30, 48, 54, 57, 59, 78 and 103. Of two hand pieces not written for children that are worth playing there is this Rhapsody, an early Humoreske in D and a late Ballade in G sharp minor known to the writer. No doubt there are more. The pupil playing is seventeen and in her eighth year of music. Steinway piano used. 39 "Not failure, but low aim is crime." — James Russell Lowell. PROGRAM 7:30 P. M. MONDAY, MAY 22, 1922 I. MUSIC FOR ORCHESTRA 1 Slavic Dance Dvorak, Op. 72, No. 1 Theodosia Weisb This Slavic dance in five sharps major has a popular swing, pleasing to everybody. It offers good practice for the pupil in playing two notes to the teacher's three and vice versa, and furnishes a stepping stone in acquiring this necessary technic by herself. The pupu playing is sixteen years old and is in her fourth year of music. Dvorei has been a source of the greatest delight to her during the last two years. 2 *Tragic Overture Brahms, Op. 81 DoHOTHY Stevens "Then all is sudden silence and Dark fear — ^like his who cannot see, Yet hears, lost in a haunted land Death rattling on a gallow's-tree." Madison Cawein. It is not to be expected that the fuU power of this mighty music will be grasped by even experienced listeners but fortunate indeed is the pupil and her parents who can live with this great work and come to know every note of it. The pupil is fourteen and in her seventh year of music, but the one eleven year old pupil playing No. 4 on the first program and the two twelve year old pupils playing No. 6 and No. 12 could play this composition with understanding. II. CHAMBER MUSIC 3 "Andante" from the String Quartette . Richard Strauss, Op. 2 FBEDBRICaC KUCKHOFF This Strauss is far removed from the composer of the dramatic tone-poems of his later years. This is absolute music of genuine merit, not so amateurish as some critics would have us believe Strauss's earlier work to be. The pupil is twelve years old. 4 *"Finale" from the String Quartette . Brahma, Op. 51, No. 1 Carolyn Howe To play this as fast as it should go and produce a perfect ensemble is not easy, but it is great fim. III. ORIGINAL PIANO DUETS 5 "Bohemia" Schytte, Op. 131 , No. Jt Beatrice Weise Op. 131 is a set of folksongs arranged for the youngest players. Schytte's own compositions, however, are generally of such ajpoor 40 quality, both his pieces and his studies, that much better material can always be fotmd. The pupil is nine and in her second year of music. 6 *"Zum Empfange" Volkmann, Op. 2i, No. 1 Miriam Shanahan VollMiMm (1815-1883) was a Bohemian composer. His Op. 11, i ^- J ^ piano four hands are, arranged in this order of difficulty, CT)lendid material for the second and third year of music study. These little pieces have solid merit and genuine teaching value. The pupil playmg is twelve, and about in the third year of music. 7 *"Mmne" Volkmann, Op. 21, No. i Charlotte Johnston This piece is in three sharps minor and six sharps major modu- lating into seven sharps minor. Even a momentary excursion into the key of A sharp minor is a rarity. This pupil is just eleven, and is at the end of her second year of music. Such a child as this — quick to comprehend but impatient of drudgery — needs new material constantly so as to force reading ability and natural facility at the keyboard. Self-discipline wiU take care of itself as the child matures, if these other matters are attended to &st. Such training, however, will not produce a precocious performer. IV. PIANO SOLOS 8 *First Movement from the Sonatina, XSc/jarwenifea, Op.52,No.l Pauline Flynn If sonatinas must be played, here are two modern ones, Op. 52, No. 1 and 2, that to my way of thinking are superior to Beethoven's Op. 49. The Adagio of No. 2 would delight Mr. Harold Bauer, I am positive. See illustration on page 47. 9 Minuet Moszkowski, Op. 77, No. 10 Harriet Adams This is the last one in Moszkowski's Children's Album. These pieces require more technic than those in the children's albums of Tschaikowsky, Sibelius, X. Scharwenka and Volkmann. The pupil is eleven and in her third year of music. 10 *Valse Bluette Ed. Schiutt, Op. 25, No. 8 Frances Cook Schutt spent too much time writing too many waltzes. "Bluettes" is precisely what most of them are. He has a certain felicity of melodic expression often entrancing to the adolescent, but he lacks the solid power of invention, the harmonic and dynamic originality of Mosz- kowski or even Chaminade. I predict a steady lessening of his popu- larity. The pupil is twelve and in her fourth year of music. 11 *Ron(iino Ph. Scharwenka, Op. 58, No. 8 Henry Porter This is the best piano solo for children that I know from this man's works. It is splendid training for accuracy in rhythm and in the appreciation of dynamic effects. The sforzandos in the staccato movement transport the hearer directly to a peasant dance in some village inn. 41 12 *Morceau de Ballet Liadow, Op. 5£, No. 3 Emma Richer The whole piece is in five-four time — ^not three quarter beats followed by two quarter beats with a secondary accent — ^but five successive quarter beats with one accent only in a measure. It is simply fascinating to play. 13 Silhouette Dvorak, Op. 8, No. 12 Leora Van Brocklin This is a composition of concert calibre, and, for this pupil, a tour-de-force. She is fifteen and in her seventh year of music. Its technical difficulties are not obvious, the most briUiant passage-work being in some places rather easy and in others quite the reverse. Its vigorous passages need physical strength, and its more delicate pEissages need that same strength under repression. It is tremend- ously effective when played with abandon. Steinway piano used. 42 "Not failure, but low aim is crime." — James Russell Lowell. PROGRAM 7:S0 P. M. MONDAY, JUNE 12, 1922 I. MUSIC FOR ORCHESTRA 1 Minuet Dvorak, Op. 28, No. 1 William Phillips Here is another duet that furnishes splendid practice in sharps and flats. Four and five flats major and three and four sharps major and four sharps minor are its different keys. It is not difficult to play. The pupil is thirteen and can play with musical understanding, but needs to acquire self-discipline. 2 *Slavic Dance Dvorak, Op. 72, No. 7 Constance Cook Here we have Dvorak's rhythmic originality in striking form. The pupil's delight in this composition has known no bounds, and the technical progress with it has been remarkable. II. CHAMBER MUSIC 3 "Polka" from the String Quartette . . . Smetana, Op. 1 Leoba Van Brocklin This can be heard, somewhat shortened, played by the Flonzaley Quartet on the phonograph. It is to my way of thinking the best polka in musical literature. 4 *"Romance" from the String Quartette . Grieg, Op. 27 Dorothy Stevens This is exquisite music and yet not exactly in the Grieg idiom. It proves that he could be entertaining every minute in the difficult medium of string quartette writing. III. ORIGINAL PIANO DUETS 5 *Der Kuckuck und der Wemdersmann, Volkmann, Op. 11, No. 5 Mary Jane and Marian Thompson Here we see what children, one seven and the other eight, can do at the end of their first year of music. 6 *Minuet Ph. Scharwenka, Op. 5U, No. 6 Margaret Munro The theme in G major in the middle of this composition is splendid. The pupil is ten and in her first year. 7 *Valse Caprice Grwg, Op. 37, No. 1 Mary Smith Here is Grieg with all his weird charm. The piece is in four sharps minor and five flats major. The pupil is eleven and in her third year of music. 43 8 Walzer Dohnanyi, Op. 3 EuzABETH Downing As a hand and finger trainer this duet is hard to equal. Technical di£Sculties invariably melt before the enthusiasm of the pupil. Again and again has it appeared on my programs because of its solid merit. See illustration on page 47. IV. PIANO SOLOS 9 *Rondoletto Sibelius, Op. M>, No. 7 Ruth Candee The joyous tunefulness of this piece is rather unlike Sibelius. No. 14 on this program reveals a beautiful melody more sombre, more passionate, more like him. The middle of the Rondoletto, however, is in tiis mode, with its extremely high dissonant note for the left hand. The pupil is thirteen and in her third year of music. 10 *Sur une Escarpolette (On the See-saw) , Liapounow, Op. 59, No. 3 Ramona Rentley Op. 59 is a set of easy pieces. liapounow is not famous for his easy pieces, however. There is much fine poetic feeling in his works but a large and well-trained hand is almost always needed. 11 *Romance Rachmaninoff, Op. 10, No. 6 Helen Downing A Romance marked dohrosol There is a cry of grief at the very begioning then follows a masterly command of dissonance for the portrayal of recurrent anguish that makes this romance unique in musicEtl literature. As a legato study for both hands it is without a peer. The pupU is thirteen and in her fourth year of music. 12 Polish Dance X. Scharwenka, Op. Itl, No. 1 Anita Cabpentek A better Polish Dance is this one in five flats minor than the famous one in six flats minor. The part in the major key of six flats is much better than the second theme of the popular one. 13 Walzer X. Scharwenka, Op. 28, No. 3 Theodosia Weise Op. 28 is a set of six waltzes weU written and not very difiBcult. This one in five flats major is one of the easier ones. 14 *Sommerlied Sibelius, Op. 58, No. 10 Dolores Dosser (See comments under No. 9). Steinway piano used. 44 AFTERTHOUGHT /T is amusing to read in Mr. Gale's article the music one should know. I don't know how old Mr. Gale is, but if he knowsall the music he mentions, he mustoutclass Methuse- lah. A hundred years ago everybody read and re-read certain great literary masterpieces ; these became the criterion for culture, but today the output of literary masterpieces is so great that no man can even graze the surface. Literary culture of a very high order can be attained today without reading many of the masterpieces formerly thought essential. This is true in even greater measure with music. The conservatory graduate who has sacrificed a chance for a liberal education for a considerable acquaintance with Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt is not aware of this, nevertheless such is the trend both in music and literature. It is not " What music do you know?" but " Can you and do you perceive a new masterpiece amid the welter of mediocre music constantly being thrown on the market?" Let me say that the number of these new masterpieces published in America is small. More than half of the numbers on these programs — ^those marked with an asterisk — are being played for the first time. I do this so as not to stagnate. I like to find new things or old things new to me. If something new happens to require four hands — ^and much of it does — I and an older pupil who can read rapidly start with it and play until we get stuck. We do not count. It is not difficult to keep the rhjrthm mentally if one will but try. When we get stuck, first we laugh, then we find out what caused the trouble and try again until the com- poser's meaning becomes plain. I have little dignity. A teacher cannot have, and do this work. These pupils know how poor a performer their teacher is and some of them make him hustle trying to keep up with them. When their part is easy and mine is not, I think they do it on purpose, just like Laura Spencer Portor and her sister used to do when they lived next to James Gibbons Huneker, the great music critic, as she tells so char- mingly in the March Scribner's. But if I have little dignity, one thing at least they know I have and that is a love for the 45 best music and a willingness to stick to it until I comprehend it. The child that can stay with me without a whimper as long as I will stick to some tough stuff is the child with whom I love to work. It gives me great pleasure to find so many such child- ren. Out of these I can make musicians though many of them may never become pianists. ILLUSTRATIONS Excerpt I on the opposite page is part of the C major Quartette of Schu- bert. It is such simple chamber music as this, inspired by a genuine composerj that I refer to at the beginning of this booklet. This will hold Mary Missouri every time. There is plenty of it, and plenty of it should be used before attempt- ing the more technically diificult original four hand music like the excerpts II, III, and IV. These are from Dohnanyi's "Walzer," Op. 3. No. II shows the &8t theme in F sharp minor. Please notice how the fourth and fifth fingers of the left hand of the primo player are taxed but not strained. The first chord occuring in this hand should be fingered 2-4-5 and the second one in the next measure 1-3-5, and similarly in the many places where like combinations of such chords occur. The teacher should familiarize himself with his own part before teaching such works as this so as to be able at all times to watch the pupil's hands and see to it that pianistic fingering is strictly followed. Otherwise he will not get a well-trained hand even with this splendid material. Excerpt III shows a contrasting A major theme of frankly pleasing character. Be sure to notice the counter-theme in the treble clef in the secondo's right hand. This masterly handling of two splendid themes simultaneously entrances every pupil. Their delight knows no bounds. Excerpt IV is worth the closest in- spection. This is from the finalpage. First note the new theme in double notes for the primo right hand. The teacher should watch to see that the pupil changes from 4-2 to 5-3 where the successive identical thirds occur. If done correctly this is the finger training that produces results. While the right hand carries this work, the pupil's left hand is busy enunciating the melody formerly given to both hands in the A major part in Excerpt III. Now notice that while both hands of your pupil are delivering simultaneously thematic material of decided charm, your own right hand is insistently suggesting, of course in another key, the rhythmic idea first limned in Excerpt II, though not the identical melody. Is it to be wondered at that pupils brought up to understand and appreciate music like this turn out much better musicians than the average music pupil? Original duets by master composers offer a virgin field of un- alloyed gold. Indeed, Dvorak's Op. 59, 'L^enden" is to my way of thinking the greatest achievement of his career not excepting the "New World Sym- phony" and I am acquainted with a fair proportion of his works. Ekcerpt V is the beginning of the "Adagio" from Xaver Scharwenka's "Sonatina, Op. 52, No. 2. For sustained legato for all fingers of both hands I do not know its equal, and for profound feding nobly expressed it has no peer. It is indeed a great artist who would deigu to use this material in a humble sonatina and deny it to a symphony. Teachers will experience some difficulty in securing original foiu hand works by the modern master composers. I would suggest buying in quantity direct from Europe by means of bank drafts calling for payment in American doUars. The music will be forwarded by mail and will be marked "dutiable," which duty you pay the postmaster at the receiving office. Such reUable houses as Breitkopf & Hartel, of Leipzig; Simrock & Co., of Berlin; Jules Hainauer, of Breslau; Schott & Co., of Mayence, Enoch & Co., of Paris; Augener & Co., of London, will no doubt gladly forward catsdogs and terms, or American firms will import for you on a commission basis, though this method gives rise to some inflated prices due to the depreciation of foreign moneys. 46 iI..U.':^i..':i.-f.^ g