THE

66

XXIII

THE TEACHING OF MUSIC

compara

addition to

HERE is perhaps no more direct way of throwing a sort Music a of flashlight upon the musical activity in the colleges tively recent of America than the statement that a volume of this kind, the college if prepared a dozen years ago, would either have contained curriculum no chapter upon music, or, if music were given a place at all, the argument would have been occupied with hopes rather than achievements. Not that it would be literally true to say that music was wholly a negligible quantity in the homes of higher education until the twentieth century, but the seat assigned to it in the few institutions where it was found was an obscure and lowly one, and the influence radiating therefrom reached so small a fragment of the academic community that no one who was not engaged in a careful, sympathizing search could have been aware of its existence. It was less than twenty years ago that a prominent musical journal printed the very moderate statement that the youth who is graduated at Yale, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Amherst, Cornell, or Columbia has not even a smattering of music beyond the music of the college glee and mandolin club; and of course to cultivate that is the easiest road to musical perdition." One who looks at those institutions now, and attempts to measure the power and reach of their departments of music, will not deny the right to the satisfaction. which their directors men of national influence feel, and would almost expect them to echo the words of ancient Simeon. The contrast is indeed extraordinary, and, I believe, unparalleled. The work of these men, and of others who could be named with them, has not been merely development, but might even be called creation. Any one who attempts to keep track of the growth of musical education in our colleges, universities, and also in the secondary schools of the present day, will find that the bare sta

must

History of the subject of music in the American college curriculum

tistics of this increase, to say nothing of a study of the problems involved, will engage much more than his hours of leisure. Music, which not long ago held tolerance only as an outside interest, confined to the sphere of influence of the glee club and the chapel choir, is now, in hundreds of educational institutions, accorded the privileges due to those arts and sciences whose function in historic civilization, and potency in scholarly discipline and liberal culture, give them domicile by obvious and inalienable right.

The first university professorships in music were founded at Harvard in 1876, and at the University of Pennsylvania at about the same time. Vassar College established musical courses in 1867, Oberlin in 1869. Harvard took the lead in granting credit for certain courses in music toward the degree of A.B. in 1870.1 Progress thereafter for many years was slow; but in 1907 investigation showed that “approximately one half the colleges in the country recognize the value of instruction in music sufficiently to grant credit in this subject."2 Since this date college after college and university after university have fallen into line, only a few resisting the current that sets toward the universal acceptance of music as a legitimate and necessary element in higher education. The problem with the musical educators of the country is no longer how to crowd their subject into the college preserve, but how to organize its forces there, how to develop its methods on a basis of scholarly efficiency, how to harmonize its courses with the ideals of the old established departments, and now, last of all, how to bring the universities and colleges into coöperation with the rapid extension of musical practice, education, and taste which has, in recent days, become a conspicuous factor in our national progress.

An investigation into the causes of this great change

1 Arthur L. Manchester: "Music Education in the United States; Schools and Departments of Music." United States Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1908, No. 4.

2 Papers and Proceedings of the Music Teachers' National Association, 1907; report by Leonard B. McWhood.

social ideals

for the new attitude to

study of

music in

would be fully as interesting as a critical examination of Changing
its results. The limits of this chapter require that consider- responsible
ation be given to the present and future of this movement
rather than to its past; but it is especially instructive, I think, ward the
to those who are called upon to deal practically with it,
to observe that the welcome now accorded to music in our colleges
higher institutions of learning is due to changes in both
the college and its environment. In view of the constitu-
tion and relationships of our higher schools (unlike those
of the universities of Europe), any alteration in the ideals,
the practical activities, and the living conditions of the
people of the democracy will sooner or later affect those
institutions whose aim is fundamentally to equip young
men and women for social leadership. It is unnecessary

to remind the readers of such a book as this of the marked
enlargement of the interests of the intelligent people of
America in recent years, or of the prominent place which
æsthetic considerations hold among these interests. The
ancient thinker, to whom nothing of human concern was
alien, would find the type he represented enormously in-
creased in these latter days. The passion for the release of
all the latent energies and the acquisition of every material
good, which characterizes the American people to a degree
hitherto unknown in the world since the outburst of the
Renaissance, issues, as in the Renaissance, in an enormous
multiplication of the machinery by which the enjoyment of
life and its outward embellishment are promoted. But
more than this and far better
the eager pursuit of the
means for enhancing physical and mental gratification has
coincided with a growing desire for the general welfare;
hence the æsthetic movement of recent years, and the zeal for
social betterment which excludes no section or class or occu-
pation, tend to unite, and at the same time to work inward
and develop a type of character which seeks joy not
only in beauty but also in the desire to give beauty a home
in the low as well as in the high places. Whatever may be
one's view of the final value of the recent American produc-
tions in literature and the fine arts, the social, democratic