But before and above all things else, the public schools must show to the public, the parents, and the nation, that a teacher must be free from pecuniary obligation toward pupils in order to be in a position to properly educate those pupils. This is one of the primal laws of our music art success, and the public must gain its understanding thru the results in the public schools.

But the public schools must not themselves try to do all. The public schools are limited, and must ever be so, by the existence and demands of other studies, by inevitable lack of time, by lack of organization if never so well organized, by lack of artistic education of the best trained music-teachers there employed, and by difference in life and object and gift, of the pupils there assembled. The public school must not even seem to try to do it all. The public must not get the idea that all of musical education ever could be possible under any circumstances, to the public school field. In fact, the great danger in the schools at this present moment is of their falling into that evil of the outside studios, of placing the spectacular before the essential, of pleasing by the superficial, leaving the fundamental half done, of producing attraction instead of knowledge and science, of confounding the means with the end, of mixing the inspirational with the technical, to the extinction of both.

Too much of the expositional-the concert, the recital, padded out by extraneous attraction, carries danger. Even when preparation is carried on outside of school hours, it may be made to distract and weary young children, satiate them of performance before being at all ready for it, make the other education seem more tedious and difficult, while producing but crude and inefficient music result. We have not need of more mediocrity in the country, but of better quality in what is done. Knowledge, science, and power must be made to precede the spectacular. Attraction must be made subsidiary to benefit. Anyone can sing and play and show off. To point right standards, and to properly prepare to study for perfect performance is the province of public-school work.

The public schools are doing marvelous things in regard to musical education. There is not time to commence to enumerate them. Praise and credit have been in some measure accorded them in a series of articles upon the subject printed in the Musical Courier for now over one and a half years.

But after all, beyond what the public schools may at best ever be able to perform, the great musical educational endeavor of this nation must come thru the federal government. There must come here, as in France, a distinct free national system of musical education, analagous to that of our public schools themselves, where from A to Z of all that underlies true musicianliness must be laid as a foundation, together with the fitting reverence, taste, perception, and desire to attain, which come only thru the true, real culture.

We must stop top-dressing and get at the depths of values. We must stop grafting and plant seeds. We must stop music trade and commence to exalt true music art. We must stop exhibiting and learn how to live and to love art. We must make our musician's nature at home. We must learn

reverence and standard and desire for perfection, instead of mad race for accumulation of material resource thru an art avenue. And this must all come about thru national music education, established by the government and cared for by the government to this end, for the glory of the government and of the nation and of art, as in France.

Only so may we ever have proper musical education, national musical education, national musicians, national music art. For as the great emperor Napoleon said and publicly decreed:

"A free national system of musical education is a necessity to the music art of a republic. Arise, let us go hence. For the end is not yet."

MUSIC TERMINOLOGY REFORM

CHARLES I. RICE, SUPERVISOR OF MUSIC, WORCESTER, MASS.

It gives me the greatest pleasure to be here today as spokesman, and bring to you this initial message from the newly appointed Committee on Terminology Reform.

I accepted chairmanship of this committee with what I believe to be a full realization that its path is beset with many and great dangers.

Anyone who has observed the teaching of school music in any considerable number of places in this country cannot fail to have remarked the great diversity of statement employed by different teachers regarding the facts which we are engaged in teaching and the equal diversity of terminology used in teaching the symbols by which musicians seek to record these facts. To the teacher of exact sciences our picturesque use of the same term to describe two or more entirely different things never ceases to be a marvel.

Isolated individuals have from time to time raised their voices in protest against the use of this or that term, but this year of grace, 1907, in which the desirability of reform in music terminology is first recognized by such an organization as the National Education Association affords us who are here an opportunity of promoting the early stages of a good work. We can do little more than make a beginning at this session but I am very solicitous that this beginning be made under favorable conditions.

I am sure that this campaign, if carried on with wisdom, will in the course of time work out some reforms which will be to the everlasting advantage of everyone. I say if carried on with wisdom, for it is the easiest thing in the world to get into an argument in which the main issue is lost to sight. It must be apparent also that one, two, or three years will be necessary if the committee is to do anything of value.

We are all apt to be jealous of any attack on our own methods and this is exactly as it should be. I believe no one should be blown about by every shifting wind and I also believe that there is not one person here but what if shown two different ways of saying the same thing, would gladly choose the

A true statement is just as easily made, just as easily understood, and

just as easily acted upon as a false one and it has this fundamental differenceit is true instead of false.

Grove's Dictionary of Music says: "A sharp raises the pitch of a note, etc." Is this true? and has a note any pitch? Another music dictionary published in 1905 says of this character: "It raises the pitch of a tone one chromatic semi-tone;" and of the double-sharp: "It raises a note a whole tone." Now is this free and interchangeable use of note and tone evidence of a breadth of belief wide enough to take in both words and say that note and tone mean the same? I think not. What I do think is this: The definition of the sharp got in because it did not seem quite bad enough to be excluded, but the author, on coming to the double-sharp could not persuade himself to be consistent and say that it "raises a tone a whole tone" and instead of going to the bottom of things and starting right, he side-stepped the whole matter and put another stumbling block in the way of a clear comprehension of the facts. But someone will say: "Nobody teaches it that way," and, I reply that for some years I have been interested in finding out how different people teach these things and that for the past nine months as chairman of the Committee on Terminology Reform, it has been my special business to collect statements from a large number of people scattered all over the United States.

As a result I am convinced that the theory of pitch and pitch representation is erroneously taught to many, many thousands of pupils in the schools of our country, and let me say also that we teach it as well as it is taught in any country under the sun.

This discreditable state of affairs will continue until we who know a better way make ourselves felt with our own fellow-teachers thru institute and convention addresses, and also with the authors of textbooks and dictionaries.

Dr. Calcott was one of the early reformers, for in his Musical Grammar, published over one hundred years ago, he says (p. 22, sec. 47):

The greatest care must be taken not to misunderstand the words note and tone. A note is the sound which is heard, or the mark that represents it on the staff; but a tone is the difference between two notes, etc.

After showing how far away he was from present-day ideas, I will point out that he was right on another matter. Speaking of bar, he says: "In common language, the word bar is used improperly for measure." Lowell Mason in the second edition of the Boston Academy Manual of Music, published 1836, says (p. 41, sec. 38), "Observe the difference between a measure and a bar. Do not call a measure a bar." Opposition to the report of this committee, if any develops, can probably be classified under two heads. There is one class of teachers which believes in inventing new nouns. This we will call the revolutionary party. Another group believes that we should seek for a better understanding and clearer teaching of existing terms. This is the reform party.

To the first class, I would like to say that progress in any line which looks

toward a change in existing conditions is necessarily slow. "You cannot hasten reform by edict any more than you can stay it by jest.”

I beg to read you some extracts from an article I wrote early in 1906:

If disregard for accuracy were confined to any one stratum of the music profession— if public school supervisors, for instance, were the only careless ones in this respect-then the college professors, piano-forte teachers, chorus conductors, teachers of theory, and others might combine to guide the erring brethren into the path of rectitude. It is found, however, that the conductor of a great music festival is just as likely to correct his altos who have sung "G sharp" by saying that they should have sung "G natural," the harmony teacher in college will tell you to "sharp the G in that chord," while the audience at a choral performance, not to be outdone, says: "the high 'notes' of the tenors were flat."

Now there are certain errors so glaring that the offender admits his guilt at once, but says it is too great a tax on the memory to change a lifelong practice. He gets results, so why bother with a new line of statements? His pupils play or sing well and what more can be asked?

We want him to be brought to a better frame of mind so that he will willingly undertake immediate reform in these more apparent violations of accuracy, and thus place himself in a receptive attitude concerning the more subtle distinctions which at first thought may not appear to him to be distinctions at all. The old saw about teaching "old dogs new tricks" is applicable here and it really takes a deal of study and effort to establish one's self in a new view-point.

I am confident that it is only necessary to get people's minds working a bit on the very easy points in order to start an interest which will develop insight to penetrate, and momentum to override, the more obscure and puzzling distinctions which at first are not apparent.

Here is the method pursued in compiling material for this report. A set of fifteen questions was prepared and submitted to each member of the committee and to others. These questions were couched in from two to five different ways and each person was asked to indicate the best form by canceling all others. The report of the committee will contain no recommendation which has not met the approval of four-fifths of the people who replied to the questionnaire. In considering this report, it seems to me that the points which have met the approval of four out of five thoughtful people who have taken time to apply their minds to the matter in hand ought to be disposed of rapidly and with little argument. When they are settled, I can assure any argumentative brother or sister that I have plenty of material in reserve for discussion.

Just one word now to save time later; some one will say: "These statements and recommendations of yours are so simple as to appear ridiculous and therefore my self-respect will not allow me to vote for them." To such an one I can say that the committee, from its experience as a committee, is better qualified to know with regard to prevalent usage than any individual can possibly be. In registering an affirmative vote on any point the individual does not acknowledge himself an offender but taking the word of the committee that there are offenders somewhere in the broad land, he simply throws his influence toward the abatement of the offense. It may appear entirely unnecessary to him

in his own practice, but I can assure you that every point has been well considered.

Thoughtful men and women will become impressed with the untruthfulness of certain statements and little by little change their practice. Others will follow, influenced by example. The revolutionists will deride us for not moving faster while the conservatives will be suspicious of any change.

And so, for the music terminology reform, I predict that it will spread, never swiftly enough perhaps or in such channels as to pacify revolutionists, laughed at in all probability by the thoughtless, but like the spelling reform, not materially retarded by any of its opponents.

It is in the air. Will you not help to get the air in motion so that it will be made effective?

DISCUSSION

After some discussion following Mr. Rice's paper, the following points were formulated and a motion made for their adoption:

I

We should seek for a better understanding and teaching of existing terms rather than the invention of new ones.

II

Tone, as a distinctive term for musical effects, is better than sound.

III

Tone, as distinguished from note: "The high tones of the violin were both strong and pure."

IV

Tone, as distinguished from interval: "The fifth tone of the major scale."

V

Bar, a visible symbol as distinguished from measure: "I heard only the last few measures of the symphony."

VI

Scale as distinguished from key: "America is written in the key of G."

VII

A sharp or a flat does not raise or lower:

(1) A given note; (2) A given tone; (3) A given pitch; (4) A given staff-degree. For example: (1) "The fourth quarter-note is raised by the accidental sharp;" (2) "The third tone of the major scale is lowered by a flat," (3) "The pitch F is raised by a sharp in the key of G;" (4) "The third line is lowered by a flat in the key of F," are each and all incorrect.

VIII

There are no pitches named “B natural,” “A natural,” “C natural,” etc.

IX

Any and all of the following: Tone, semi-tone, whole tone, half-tone, are incorrectly used as terms of interval measurement.

X

The chromatic scale is a progression upward or downward from a given tone to its octave by half steps.