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petent teachers, allowing the children to float or howl along mechanically, saying words they do not understand, and whole songs whose pictures are to them like crude designs on wall paper.

The power of the song to vitalize, lies largely with the teacher, the most beautiful song falls lifeless if presented by a listless expressionless teacher. Of all travesties on vitalization, the worst is the attempt of a self-constrained, impassive, calm, expressionless teacher, standing aloof and prim, stiff as a statue of William Penn or Chief Watello, in the front of the room ten feet away from the nearest child, trying to get enthusiasm from fifty little wigglers intent on other affairs. To vitalize the child means first to vitalize the teacher.

On the other hand, however, it cannot be denied that this same process of vitalizing the child thru song is often more properly hypnotizing the child thru the exaggerated efforts of the vaporous, butterfly teacher. Life and animation in giving a song are indispensable, but often I fear, that an overabundance of zeal leads many young teachers and supervisors into such an overdoing that it results in a soulless caricature of vitalization. Aimless arm-waving, à la Delsarte, facial contortions, senseless and useless dramatizations, wild markings and drawings and antics generally, are unmusical, unpedagogical, and retard the real progress of work.

As the child grows older, he learns a great vital truth, that there is no joy like that of doing or having done. No possible thrill can be so lasting as that which comes from a consciousness of having accomplished a worthy or beautiful deed. So in music, when the child has had his full quota of rote songs thruout the kindergarten and first and second grades, the rote songs alone pall somewhat, and a new and stronger interest is needed to spur the growing intellect to its best efforts.

Here then must enter the joy of doing for himself. The mastery of the elements of music, learning to use the scale tones to express his own childlike musical thoughts, becoming able to read the printed symbols, are tasks worthy of his highest efforts. In the later years this definite, accurate knowledge of the scale tones, and their endless combinations of rhythm and its various uses enhance the beauty of the songs learned.

When the child has once been really vitalized thru song, it reaches in, and in a real and intimate manner makes him alive to the beauties of music other than song. Our children hear too little of the great music, too much of the ragtime and clap-trap of the comic opera and cheap show. When once they have learned the great things from piano, violin, organ, band, pianola, or graphophone, they are much more critical and less well satisfied with the trash. A really vitalized musical child enjoys a good melodic or harmonious exercise as well as if it had words.

If they have come to really love music for music's sake, they will sit spellbound, as I have seen them do in our recent composers' programs, listening to the works of Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, and Schumann. To vitalize children thru song means more, much more, than giving a few primary songs

with appropriate gestures and animated countenances. That is the foundation, but not the completed structure. There is nothing in our whole school curriculum that is so vitalizing as music in its entirety running thru the whole gamut of child song, larger song, part song, and the great masterpieces of the world's treasure of song, opera, and oratorio.

Vitalize the child thru song? Yes. Use it as one of the greatest forces of the universe to stir up his whole nature and the effect will be carried over into every other branch studied and every avenue of expression.

Realize the importance of making the songs alive with meaning.
Itemize the things really worth while, and then do them well.

Specialize in finding the shortest way of getting the results that are indispensable.

Do not jeopardize the strength of the whole by spending too much time on the frills and pretty things to the exclusion of the really good work that must be done.

Visualize the end in view, the completion of the eighth grade, when you outline the work for the kindergarten.

Fear not being ostracized if you do not happen to follow every vagary and mirage of new things, neither be afraid to fly off, a bird set free, if something is offered better than you have known; only be honest to your own soul. "Prove all things. Hold fast that which is good."

If your field of usefulness is undersized and your best efforts and purposes thwarted by an unappreciative populace, minimize the danger to your future, by permitting some school board to sufficiently subsidize you for a life time at a liberal allowance, with all contingent conditions to your liking.

This do and you will be a suitable candidate for the music-teachers' paradise.

FREE MUSICAL EDUCATION A NECESSITY TO THE MUSIC ART OF A REPUBLIC

FANNY EDGAR THOMAS, REPRESENTATIVE OF THE MUSICAL COURIER, NEW YORK Outside of public-school music teaching there exists the so-called private school and studio field. In it musical education is in the hands of whoever wishes to hang out a shingle as music teacher. Consequently, there may be found, here a fair one, there one thoroly bad, again one something better, with once in a while a really efficient instructor-by chance-because born so.

All these people, depending for their living upon moneys derived from pupils must have those pupils at all hazards. They obtain them, largely by the methods of hucksters at the market-place-with trumpet and drum, noise and bombast, yelping their wares to attract the passer-by. "This way, come this way, I alone can teach you. All others will take your money and harm you. I am the only one. This way, this way." Naturally, the one with the strongest voice and loudest call, is the most successful-at securing pupils. As to who

is best or worst fitted to instruct in music, there is no indication whatever, from

any source.

What

Waste of time and money,
Moreover, being obliged to

There can be no continuity in the work of such form of instruction. one accomplishes the other must throw down. damage to gift and spirit, are inevitable results. keep these pupils in order to live, such teachers must cater to whims and wishes, make things as easy as possible, and keep alive the belief that much is being done, whether so or no. Otherwise pupils will leave that teacher and go to another, and the staff of life, the very bread and butter of the place, ceases to be. Consequently, organization which may prove disagreeable must not be insisted upon. There must be no uninteresting fundamentals, no grading, no obligatory courses, no examination to test result. There is also no supervision. The teacher or director (the interested party) is sole arbiter, iterating and reiterating degrees of advancement in order to seem to give return for moneys received so that others may come. There is no protection for the good teacher, against the insolent assumption of supremacy by the most unqualified "hucksters" in the educational mart. Where there is no fence black sheep have as good right to enter as white ones. There is no fence. Shepherd and flock are at the mercy of human impulse at its worst, in pursuit of commercial prosperity under pressure of competition. Under such pressure all other considerations must become secondary. And so they do, despite the best intentions.

For honesty or dishonesty of those engaged in the work of unauthorized music lesson giving is not called into question here. All are as honest as they can be, some more, some less so, as in all trade. It is the trade condition and circumstance surrounding their work which makes it impossible for them to go forward on straight educational lines.

But worst of all, in this open field, there is no preparation of teachers to do the work. This, the keystone and arch of all education, is absent, impossible. The most ill-advised, illiterate, anti-educational courses are pursued. The work is chaotic. There is no logical division as to features, no system, no plan, no coherence. All is impulsive, haphazard.

That music itself has advanced is not due to this education, so-called, but in spite of it, by momentum of its own power and beauty, by need for it in the human mind, and by importation of features from foreign countries. The time has come, however, when necessity for change in the practice of musical education is apparent to all. Parents are stirred in the matter. All educators are roused in this interest. The very fact of this assembly is proof of this. Well, what of it?

Much. Whence the unprecedented intelligence of this nation? Why did our forefathers find it necessary to interfere with the self-interest and haphazard of private teaching in the early days? Why were they forced to go to the expense of establishing in the country a system of free public instruction, sustained by the nation, controlled, supervised, and protected by the government? Because observation and experience proved to them that such course

was imperative. The same is being now proven in regard to musical education. Teachers of music, as of general education, must be free of pecuniary dependence upon their pupils in order to be in a position to properly educate those pupils.

This is the keynote to the whole musical distress of our nation, gradually growing worse instead of better, and not half realized by those most interested. For, failure in the actual education of music itself is not the only disaster that has come to music in the United States through music speculation. The whole deplorable train of evils in the entire music life of the country follows as a wake to this condition. The Barnumized booming of teaching "speculators," the false and puffing advertisement of good and bad alike in the most open and shameless fashion, misstatements of all kinds through self-interest, the existence of unprincipled people in the management of musical affairs, the thraldom of all effort, however meritorious, if not backed by money, and the unwarranted success of all which is the whole tide of dishonest and unscrupulous trade speculation in art, are some of the inevitable results of this pernicious system of selling education. Education of any kind must not be sold. It must be free.

HOW CAN FREE MUSICAL EDUCATION BE MANAGED?

France manages free musical education for its people. One of the first acts of the new republic was the establishment of this system, on exactly the same principle as that of our public schools. Music is taught in the public schools there too, as with us. But this other is different and in addition, it is a distinct musical education, sustained by regular taxation, in the interest of national music art.

By this system, now in use for well over one hundred years, music instruction is carried on upon authorized educational lines. This is commenced at nine years of age and is carried to the highest point of musicianliness, to the borders of the creative field. The work is divided into the technical and the artistic or interpretative, the former preceding. It is all graded and examined as in case of our history and geography, save that examination is not in the hands of teachers or directors, but of a jury of twelve of the highest art authorities of the country, who convene for that purpose. Three or four examinations a year bound all activity and any failure to pass any three consecutive examinations constitutes inability to further enjoy the privileges of the institution. For that institution is not seeking pupils to pay its rent, coal, meat, and milk bills, but artists, to augment the art glory of the nation and of the world.

As may be imagined, fundamentals are made imperative. For instance, no study of any instrument, or of song, is permitted till the pupil is master of fluent sight-reading, instrumental and vocal. Also the piano is studied as a library or reservoir from which music may later be learned. Whether one is destined to play cymbal or flute, to be a prima donna, drummer boy, conductor, or teacher, the piano and its literature are first imperative. Theory, accompaniment, ensemble work, vocal and instrumental music, fugue, counterpoint,

composition and the playing of all instruments, including those military, the biography, history, and literature of music and the most fluent sight-reading of manuscript and of print, are taught, also lyric drama, tragedy and comedy, as essential to musical interpretation. Further, creative artists are given travel and study in other countries, and the state sustains institutions of music and acting, in which gifted graduates may be engaged, thus making a complete network of the art system.

But this system does more than educate its artists. It forms further the only and the inevitable means for the nationalizing of music art. When the senator, the milliner, the president, the letter-carrier there, attend an operatic or theatrical performance, he is not there merely to gaze at a newly-imported singer or player, who, like some wild animal, has been captured upon foreign fields and set up in gilded cage to be exhibited at so much a peep; nor yet to see one of his fellows who has had to be sent abroad to have foreign labels gummed upon him, in order that he may perform at home. He is there to enjoy an art structure, interpreted by skilled specialists who are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, taught by his efforts and guided into place by the united care and affection of the whole nation. This it is which gives that "art atmosphere" of which we hear so much and know so little. This it is which gives art reverence, feeds correct taste and judgment, brings high standard, critical power, modesty of feeling, and the hunger and thirst for perfection, rather than for the accumulation of material riches. It is not a "certain something occult" in the air, or in the sky of France which makes its people artistic. It is the education their children receive, of which they are all possible partakers, and for which they pay not one single sou.

Here you think: "Why then are our students who go over there to study not better taught than we find them on return." For this reason. Our students who go to Paris to study do not hear of nor see, much less partake of the free musical education. How can that be? On this wise:

Paris being the seat of the Paris Conservatoire, the head of the free system, gained renown as an educational as well as an art center. Thither flocked the private teacher contingent and "music speculator" from all quarters of the world, uniting with such of the home ones as were not occupied with the free work. And thus was commenced the self-established, or paid, or socalled "private studio," outside of all system, independent of supervision or restraint or any sustaining force save such as they "earned" from pupils. Had this field been restricted to the first-class artists who were among them, and to pupils properly prepared to receive advanced coaching, it would have had worthy reason for existence. But alas, such was not so. The field being open there came into it good, bad, and indifferent, with and without knowledge, with and without teaching ability, with and without conscience. But their greatest lack lay in this, that not being educators, their teaching was chaotic and incoherent. They did not know and did not discover necessary educational principles, or if they did they dare not enforce them for reasons sug

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