Why We Love Music

by Carl E. Seashore

PARTIES CONCERNED

The pupil. Modern education has revealed the importance of a student-centered and student-originated learning process as opposed to the traditional and institutional direction of development of the individual. The question of self-praise and self-blame, satisfaction or dissatisfaction on the part of the child or youth, is of course of first importance both in the initial stages of orientation and throughout the course of specialization and achievement. Instead of imposing regimentation, the home, the school and the private teachers tactfully aim to assist the child in the discovery of his natural interests, resources and promises which aid him in the building of his personal convictions. But emphasis is laid upon the principle of self-determination in the light of progressively available reasonable facilities for self-appraisal. This refers both to the appreciation of music and to the development of musical skills. This principle of self-determination has frequently run amuck in the hands of progressive educators, capital P. But it is a fundamental and permanent principle for the development of personality and motivation in specific pursuits. The child will soon discover that in order to pursue his interests and satisfy himself in performance he may have to work hard, conform to requirements, be patient, and make sacrifices; but his first goal is to feel satisfaction in what he is getting and in the worth-whileness of the pursuit.

For these things he will find an analogy in any form of play, physical or mental, into which he enters in a wholehearted way. This feeling of self-approbation comes easily in the musically talented where the urge for music is clearly manifested; but with moderate talent this attitude of self-reliance needs cultivation. And in the assumed absence of talent, there is need of assistance in the real verification of this absence. The greatest danger lies in the intrusion of prejudice and social pressures. This principle of self-determination is of most importance in those fields which are to be pursued primarily as a source of self-expression and pleasure in the pursuit as distinguished from the pursuits which are essential for the earning of bread and butter and the maintaining of social status.

The teacher. The recognition of this principle of self-determination and the sustained will to achieve has revolutionized the art of teaching, or we may say better, has laid the beginnings for an art of teaching. One of the greatest obstacles the teacher encounters is the traditional social demand, and often the recognized objective in the profession, to make everybody musical. Finding that there is no adequate natural interest and no marks of gratifying achievement are developing, the teacher settles down to the sledge-hammer method of forced development. We must therefore bespeak for the live music teacher the right to refuse to make gold out of iron. The private teacher's fee and the tuition of the school are, of course, the temptations of the devil to face the situation with complacence. The constituency granting lenience in this respect has the right to expect that, in turn, the teacher understands and has exercised the effective means of self-discovery, self-orientation, self-determination, and self-motivation on the part of those who are on the border line. In this art, the profession has made but little progress so far. The constituency also has the right to impose the obligation upon the teacher to respect the individuality of the gifted and to give all types of freedom to the pupil commensurate with his natural line and degree of successful achievement in developing appreciation for various types of music.

In breaking with the traditional routines of musical drill, the teacher must first of all give up the attempt to cast the musical mind of the child in the mold of his or her own pattern. This principle has acquired its greatest significance in dealing with the highly gifted, where it is clearly substantiated by the musical history of precocious children. The public must acquire tolerance for the principle of giving musical facilities to child and youth in proportion to this self-determination and demonstrated ability to achieve. The great musician and the musical virtuoso are not fostered by educational or social conformance but primarily by the enjoyment of the principle of free determination and development of divergent personality.

The critic. The music critic unfortunately, as a rule, is a newspaper man and must conform to the pressure methods of efficiency in writing down. This newspaper ability has often been the basis for the unfortunate selection of musical critics. On the other hand, the thoroughly competent musical critic, if he were to ply his art as a technician, would find but small outlet for publication and a negligible constituency of readers. He would face, most discouragingly, the fact that many of the performers on the stage do not have critical knowledge of what they are doing and are not interested or even capable of reading the highly technical and critical analysis of their performance. So we must be tolerant with the musical critic.

If music were a simple thing or had a specific goal, such as the development of a logical proposition, the task of the critic would be easier. But, as it is, he is dealing with a highly fluid and chaotic state of affairs when he is supposed to aid the common reader in assigning praise or blame to the performance. One of the most striking faults of the work of the musical critic is his lack of words—lack of concepts which are discriminating and logically definable. We tolerate his splashing of his personal likes or dislikes as if he were competent to boil down our feelings of the situation into a fair assaying of praise or blame of the performance. One difficulty lies in the demand for writing in smart and emotional style. Among critics there are rare individuals who have a fine artistic insight and a balanced esthetic judgment in regard to what is good or bad in music. But we seldom see their names in the musical-review columns.

Phonophotographic recordings reveal art principles which had not been discovered in the musical world through hearing, and yet functioned very largely. They enable the critic to use scientific language in the description of achievement and assign praise or blame on the basis of identifiable and describable grounds. We can now photograph the sound waves of a performance at any distance from the source of sound and convert this into an analyzable performance score. As a whole, this principle cannot be available to the musical critic who must render an immediate opinion. But we have a right to expect that he should have a scientific knowledge of the types of facts which are revealed in such objective records. He is living in a new musical era in which the qualifications for the critic are as new as they are for the artistic and scientific orientation of teacher and performer.

The public. I can recall the time when the possession of a piano and piano lessons for the darling girl represented almost the sole ambition of the mothers in our state aside from the spontaneous and untutored self-expression in song. The public demand has changed. Instruments have changed. Methods of teaching have changed. Understanding of the art has increased. Cosmopolitan tastes have spread. Knowledge of the science of music has become aligned with knowledge in other sciences. The public rapidly learns to demand all these things and take the right for granted. The ambition of the mother, the objective of the teacher, and the expression of the youth of fifty years ago are coming to be historical curiosities. The art of music in America is coming to a wholesome fruitage and is becoming associated with present-day academic learning. For the first time in history it reaches out into the remotest corners of the land and many of the technical aspects of the art and new concepts of the musical medium are fast becoming common-sense knowledge and therefore add in the just awarding of praise or blame.