CHAPTER V.

MUSIC IN GERMAN SCHOOLS.

CONTENTS.-Introduction.-Opinion of T. W. Surette.-Historical review of singing in German schools.-Present state of method in Germany.-Selection of matter for singing.-Methods of instruction in the United States.-Methods of instruction in Germany.-Value of folk songs in school.-List of German poets and composers.-Literature: German books on theory and method.-German song collec

tions.

INTRODUCTION.

The study of music in the schools of this country is attracting special attention among teachers, especially since the department of music of the National Education Association has been making inquiries into the history and methods of this branch of study. The situation is rather emphatically stated in an article in The Citizen (June, 1896) by Prof. T. W. Surette. The author asks:

WHAT PART SHOULD MUSIC HAVE IN EDUCATION?

Looking at the present condition of music in America-taking the country as a whole-one is struck by the fact that in spite of our great progress there does not yet exist any real relation between music and life. By this I mean that we have not yet apprehended what music really is; it appeals to most of us only as an innocent sort of amusement, and the idea of giving it any place in education and thinking of it as a potent factor in civilization, is only in its infancy.

It seems timely, therefore, to say a word as to what may be done in the way of bringing music more closely to people, so that a better use may be made of its great power as an educational factor, and to show wherein that power lies; to explain, as far as may be, just what the relation is between music and life, and how it may reach us and help us.

It is not difficult to understand why music is universal. It antedates language. It is the cry, in its infancy nothing but a wild chant of joy or sorrow, analogous to the cry of animals; afterward the rude song of victory or the wail of death; then the fisherman's song, the reaper's, the soldier's-each giving expression to those feelings for which speech is inadequate; without art, but true to nature. Through all these stages of civilization it has been increasing its power of expression, keeping pace with the widening range of human activity, with the spread of knowledge, growing as naturally as a tree grows, having a form as beautiful and well ordered as any form nature has molded. Where once it expressed the emotions of rude peoples, it now has come to be the voice of our highest aspirations, to picture for us what we should, without it, never see. As Carlyle puts it, "It takes us to the edge of the infinite and lets us for moments gaze into that."

It is the language of the emotions; in its highest expression it gives you the very essence of beauty. Take the Heroic Symphony, for example. If you understand it, you get from hearing it a picture more vivid and real than any verbal description could be of that turbid, fitful, solitary, and tragic thing which is the life of a great man. No words can convey to you as this music does the heroism, beauty, and love which are there. The inevitable and onward marching fate, the very ideal of it all-its essence-is perfectly expressed by the music. Words are but symbols through which the ideas and emotions try to find vent; music is their natural and real voice. Every other medium gives them to you at secondhand.

But of what practical use is all this? you say. What relation between music and life have you established by this statement of what music is? How does it affect morals or conduct?

It all depends on your point of view. If you think education consists in knowing facts; if your idea of a thorough preparation for life is a knowledge of geometry, history, and the other things usually learned in school and college, then you will not agree with me that music should find a place in our scheme of education. Music will not make two cabbages grow where there was only one before; it will not satisfy you as a good dinner will; it will not give you the consolation to be derived from a spring bonnet.

But if education is that sweetening of life which comes from happy surroundings, from a home where only the most refined influences gather; if it is the broadening of your mind and heart from love of nature, from observation, from experience; if it is the growth in your soul of the love of beauty; in short, if it is all those things which tend to make you a better man and a better citizen, then music is a serious, a logical, and a powerful factor in it.

I don't suppose any argument is necessary to prove the influence on character of great poetry, painting, or sculpture. What I desire to show is how much more active the influence of music is; how thoroughly wholesome, and how easily obtained.

There is a whole side of our nature which is left untouched by the ordinary affairs of life, and you find men who have devoted themselves to business exclusively, or to the pursuit of knowledge in one form or another, in whom the perception of beauty, with all the inspiration which comes from it, is almost totally inactive. It is perhaps a rather extreme case, but an interesting one, which Darwin's life presents. He says in his autobiography that up to the time he was 30 he derived great pleasure from Milton, Byron, Wordsworth, and Shelley; that Shakespeare gave him intense delight, and that he was fond of music; but in later life he could not endure to read a line of poetry; Shakespeare nauseated him, and he had entirely lost his taste for music. "My mind," he says, 'seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. If I had to live my life over again I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the part of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature."

This is, perhaps, too negative an illustration to carry conviction with it; but a positive expression of what the effect would be if one were to hear music continually is a little difficult. You can not measure such things by the rule of three. A tape measure is not of much use in estimating the beauty of the Venus of Milo, but there is no doubt that we are moved to the depths of our natures by the visions which we are vouchsafed by great music. When we are educated to listen to it, it touches us as nothing else can. For this reason, as well as because it is a so much more common factor in life than painting or sculpture--so much more easily obtained-I believe it should be an active influence in education.

For you may reasonably hope to do more with an art which appeals to the mass of the people than with one in which only a few are interested. In addition, there is

this further point: The influence of music is without taint; it does not give you immorality under the guise of art.

But you may say that music is fast becoming all that it is claimed it should be. We have our seasons of opera, our great orchestras; we crowd to the recitals of a famous pianist, and from one end of the country to the other thousands of people are engaged in teaching music; every country village has its half dozen professors, and altogether it seems as if we were really making music a factor in education. And there is no doubt whatever that we have advanced very much in the last twentyfive years; we have passed through the stage when Monastery Bells was a classic. But there is one fundamental difficulty with it all; we are on the wrong track. We are not making music a logical factor in education; we do not study it, nor understand it in a logical way; we do not even look on it as possessing the quality of logic, and we take it, or tolerate it, as a harmless kind of amusement. There is no doubt, for example, that in our church services, where it plays so important a part, it is simply tolerated by many people, even by some of the clergy. The names of the men who have written great church music are, in many cases, entirely unknown. As a consequence of this ignorance, a great part of our church music is vapid, not to say irreligious, and it rarely appeals to you as an integral part of the worship.

Of course, if it is to be the factor in education which we have here proclaimed it, it must possess the qualities of greatness. To be great an art must be capable of quickening the imagination; it must present beauty which compels you in spite of yourself; it must give you a consistent, logical, and satisfying picture; it must have a physiognomy, a plan, a consistent purpose throughout. Everything great has these qualities, this organic nature. Without it nothing can exist, neither an institution, nor an art, nor the human body.

Furthermore, it will be conceded that some understanding of this organic nature is necessary if we are to derive great good from the thing which possesses it, and, in the case of music, the conditions which surround it as an art are so peculiar that an understanding of its organism is absolutely necessary. A symphony possesses to an eminent degree the qualities I have enumerated as essential to a great piece of art, and, to a less degree, the same thing may be said of all music.

A moment's thought about the manner in which our impressions from music are received, however, will convince anyone that order and balance are absolutely essential to it. A piece of music which lasted ten or fifteen minutes, in which those qualities were absent, would be meaningless to everyone. The very nature of a musical phrase demands its repetition in some form or another in order to have continuity; otherwise it would not remain in the memory. In a symphony or sonata the themes are changed, thrown into new lights, dismembered, enlarged, treated in a dozen different ways, not unlike the manner in which ideas are developed in a sermon, or characters in a book or play. But it is all done in the ten or fifteen minutes, and when it is over you have only a faint notion of a tune here and there and of a hopeless noise which has seemed confusing and meaningless.

Most persons who have never studied music in a systematic way are incapable of recognizing a theme when it is changed, however slightly. Consequently, when they listen to a piece of music, they are like a person who enters a theater in the middle of a play and who has no programme and does not know what it is all about.

These qualities, then, which distinguish great music, which are essential to its greatness, must be apprehended by us-we must be instructed in its form and manner of speech; then it will educate us.

We must take it out of the place it now occupies as a parlor accomplishment, or as the pleasure of the passing hour, and study it understandingly. Our chief aim should be appreciation of the masterpieces of the art.

University extension suggests a right method of dealing with this music question. If we can get our audiences to see the value of a musical education, and how much