Why We Love Music

by Carl E. Seashore

THOUGHT REVIEW

General Principles

(1) Music is pursued primarily for the pleasure of the pursuit without ulterior purpose. (2) When music renders service, this service is essentially the giving of pleasure. (3) The depth and the quality of a person's affection for music vary significantly with the degree and kind of musical inheritance. (4) If the natural urge toward music is there, it will be readily molded through training and facilitation of the environment. (5) It is psychologically possible to present a natural history of the origin and development of the love of music in terms of its objects and motives. (6) The inceptive psychology of musical experience and behavior can be pursued in the laboratory and the studio through experiment and measurement. (7) There is a charm in knowing that we love music but even more so, why and how. (8) It is also worth knowing why some people do not and others cannot love music.

Questions to Consider

(1) Is the play attitude in music opposed to hard work? (2) Why is high intelligence essential to the composer? (3) Can a moron love music genuinely? (4) Is the musical temperament essential for the love of music? (5) How can the adrenal glands affect the love of music? (6) Is the love of rhythm primarily inherited or acquired? (7) What hereditary factors may block the development of the love of music? (8) What factors in musical talent are most telling for the development of the love of music? (9) What educational motives are most effective as a means of enhancement of the love of music? (10) What is the nature of musical ecstasy?

Discuss These True Situations

(1) The typical "house" for the season's performance of the symphony orchestra is arrayed in festive attire and poses in attentive and festive mood. Make an estimate of the relative proportion of the audience there (a) to see and be seen, (b) to perform a social obligation, (c) to satisfy curiosity, (d) to learn something about music, (e) to thoroughly enjoy the orchestral music.

Chapter II
MUSIC BEFORE THE AGE OF SIX

The psychology of music and the psychology of the child are giving us new vital conceptions of the nature and role of music in child life. To understand this fully is to understand adequately the nature of the child mind and the nature of music.

From smile to music. All mental development begins with some inherited form of behavior and gradually differentiates into richer and richer meanings and forms of expression. The taproot of all music is the smile. This in its first appearance is a pure reflex, expressing the well-being of the organism.

Observe some typical steps in its history in high lights. When the infant has had its fill from its mother's breast, its head falls back and the mouth puckers as a result of withdrawal from the nipple. The mother looks at this and says to herself, "He is satisfied." The child has thus acquired one means of communication—the expression of well-being. This rapidly radiates into many situations. When the infant is patted on the back, is bathed, is rocked in the arms, or feels the waft of comfortable air, the same puckering of the mouth seems to convey to the mother a sign of well-being, and the meaning of this puckering is thus enriched.

It gradually radiates from the lips through more general expressions of comfort in the face as a whole, and we have a clearly developed smile. Gradually it becomes associated with sounds—inceptive gurgling, simple droning, light chatter, and other inceptive forms of vocalization, always accompanied with a smile, which thus develops new meanings, and mother and child acquire mutual understandings, because from the first the mother tends to respond sympathetically in like language.

As this association grows it takes the form of audible laughter which, at a comparatively high stage of development, becomes a "ha-ha-ha" with musical inflections. This is a form of language, still not expressing specific ideas, but the general attitudes of well-being, comfort, satisfaction of young life as a whole. The mother knows it, loves it, and responds accordingly; and this mother's response draws from the infant a growing hierarchy of new types of responses, meaning the same thing.

Gradually these infantile sounds develop inflections and modulations in pitch, in loudness, in rhythm, and in tone quality. These inflections are the beginning of beauty in voice, and each new conquest gives a new form of satisfaction to the child and mother.

The mother may stimulate natural forms for expression of mutual feeling by her own musical laughter. Gradually the playing with these sounds becomes an object in itself, the making of a particular sound for mere pleasure. This is the beginning of singing and the appreciation of musical sounds.

We observe the child playing with modulations in pitch, in loudness, in duration, and in different kinds of tone quality. This is the beginning of musical experiment, of musical creation, and musical appreciation in the child. Blessed is the mother who can appreciate the music thus born. She then sees the significance of the rhythmic patty-cake as music which gives pleasure to mother and child alike. She then begins to understand that the jingling of a bell is sweet music to the child. She can see how the appreciation of rhythm is gradually revealed through the progressive development of means of making sounds and hearing varieties of sound. Perhaps unconsciously she sets patterns for a musical inflection which the child begins to imitate. To the child, noise is music, and the discovery of noises and the mastery of various noises play an immensely rich and important role, even in the highest forms of adult music.

Thus, the recognition and feeling of pleasure in sounds, and the power to make agreeable sounds, reveal to the child an unfolding musical world. His whole organism responds to it. This is an element of musical feeling.

Let me digress for a moment to say that the beginnings of mental life tend to develop from two fundamental needs: attraction and repulsion, likes and dislikes, approaching and getting away from—these being respectively the positive and the negative aspects of adjustment. The smile is the sign of the positive side. The companion piece of the smile as a taproot is the frown, which gradually develops through crying and is the reciprocal of laughter. The history of the frown and crying is quite parallel to the history of the smile and laughter in mental evolution and in the development of the individual.

Music in play. While it does serve a purpose as language in social adjustment, the musical activity of the young child is expression for the love of expression itself. This play aspect early differentiates itself from the use of sounds to convey meaning in language.

The child composes, rapidly revealing new melodic progressions, new rhythms, new kinds of sounds, and new patterns in the durations of sounds for his own delight in self-expression. Through them he wins manifestations of appreciation from those around him who constitute his audience. He repeats each new achievement as the momentary goal of play until new patterns progressively take their place. In these actions of musical composition, the same mental faculties that we see in the active adult composers are at work, but limited to the child's natural level of successful achievement.

He early reveals command of the four elements of all music, as such; namely, pitch, loudness, time, and kind of tone or tone quality; and we observe the unfolding of melody, dynamic expression, rhythm, and richness of tone. Through these he imitates the sounds of nature, speech, music, and noises at his level in the surroundings. In terms of these he develops memories, indulges in fantasy and creative imagination, and gradually begins to think about music. These are the avenues through which the child expresses his needs and urges vocally or instrumentally; but they are music in so far as they are indulged in for the pleasure of the hearing or the making of the sounds themselves.

Note that the child composes by performing; therefore, each musical form that he develops is clearly at his command in performance. Notice also that the repetition of achievement is limited by the play attitude of always demanding something more difficult. Composition, performance, appreciation, body response form interlocking steps. That is what makes the procedure natural. The joy of conquest, characteristic of play, is the dominating motive. Here nature has her way in the development of knowledge, appreciation, and skills.

Musical activity is normally a form of play, expression for the satisfaction in the expression itself without ulterior motive, and this attitude may be carried through life. A person who cannot take a play attitude toward music perhaps has no music in him. The play attitude does not free one from effort, even systematic and arduous effort, in the acquisition of the art. Witness all the sports at all stages of growth. There is nothing to relieve us from understanding facts involved in music; but the driving motive is found in the play attitude, and the result is pleasure in play. On these observations of nature's ways in play, the future pedagogy of music will be built.

Environment. It is astonishing that the child is often treated as unmusical unless he can sing or play adult compositions or show an intelligent appreciation of high art forms. How pitiful it is for a mother to say that her child is not musical because he does not sing her songs and understand her artistic playing. How vastly could a mother's appreciation of the child be increased if she realized what constitutes music at his level and how fundamental the musical reactions at his level are to the development of music in the adult!

To be musical, the child must be musical in response to his environment. There are natural laws of evolution in the race and in the development of the individual for types of reactions to the music that abounds around us in nature and for the various means at our command of expression through imitation of them. To the primitive tribe, the drum is a powerful, thrilling musical instrument. So are all forms of drumming to the child. He imitates the whistling, tooting, rattling, banging sounds in his environment, sometimes until he becomes noisily tiresome. He feels in harmony with the clock that ticks, the birds that sing, the dog that barks, the cat that mews. He loves to bang on the piano and blow his horn.

This craving for pleasure in sounds radiates through the sense of rhythm into graceful movements, the beginnings of dancing and dramatic action, even from the crudest rhythmic kicking and tapping movements of the infant. His speech becomes rhythmic, melodic, dynamic, beautiful. His whole body becomes reverberant in response to the sounds of nature. Laughter progressively acquires new and beautiful forms. Even crying may give satisfaction of an artistic sort. The swinging of the pendulum of the old clock on the wall is music. The patter of rain, the splashing of water have musical elements.

The child does not think of the artistic forms as does the musician; but like the canary which, even if grown in isolation in a soundproof cage, in due time produces his natural tours in repertoire, the child instinctively comes out in melody, dynamic modulation, and rhythm. But all these are modified by the environment.

Music and speech. Speech has the same media as music; namely, pitch, loudness, time, and timbre which result in such musical forms as tonal and dynamic inflection, rhythm, articulation, and vowel quality. A child is, of course, not conscious of any of these as such, and yet, under favorable circumstances, will quickly develop beautiful speech, which means that it is well inflected, well modulated in loudness, beautifully rhythmic, rich and clear in vowel qualities. If the child has a good ear, instinctive liking for these aspects of speech will develop surprisingly early.

To give the child musical environment means therefore not only exposure to formal music but rather a motivation for hearing musically all sounds around him, for acting rhythmically, and feeling the rhythmic impulse in all forms of activity, for responding by imitation or other forms of appreciation to all sounds beautiful. These acquisitions naturally take the form of beautiful speech. Musical education in the nursery, therefore, comes most effectively through informal education toward beautiful speech.

The child becomes proficient in speech long before he becomes correspondingly proficient in musical performance and appreciation. It is therefore very important to recognize that music and speech employ the same medium; namely, sounds which vary in pitch, loudness, duration, and kind. The child reveals flexibility, richness, rhythm, and all other forms of meaningful inflection in speech earlier than he does in music. Indeed, by the time the child leaves the nursery, even at the age of five, his characteristic form and command of speech are fairly crystallized. The command of elements of beautiful speech is the first step in a beautiful singing voice.

Speech is an index to character, and the means for the development of character. Beautiful speech is musical speech. Genuinely beautiful speech is a revelation of beautiful character. Let the mother who worries about early piano or violin lessons first give thought to formal sympathetic cultivation of a beautiful speaking voice.

Unfortunately, the child's speech is very largely determined by imitation of those around him. How few mothers and fathers, how few teachers, how few older children have beautiful speech! The young child as a rule, therefore, encounters unfavorable speech environment. The civilized world is just awakening to the possibilities and significance of beautiful and effective speech.

Train the young child to the appreciation and development of power in beautiful and effective speech, and you will have laid the best foundations for musical appreciation and formal entrance upon musical training.

Musical talent. Children differ in musical talent, both in degree and in kind. One normal child may be twenty-five, fifty, or one hundred times as sensitive as another normal child in matters of time, in matters of pitch, in matters of loudness, and in matters of tone quality. The normal child may be very high in one of these four musical traits and low in another. Let me illustrate how these traits may be observed very early in a very highly musical child.

Playing with a little girl eleven months old, I noticed that she responded to the music over the radio. I put a simple two-step on the victrola, and she marked the time correctly by a free sympathetic swinging of the arms. I changed this to waltz time, and she picked up the rhythm. As she could not yet stand on her feet, I held her on all fours, and then she shimmied with her trunk. Was that child musical? I could give one positive answer. She had a splendid sense of rhythm and urge for rhythmic action. As I watched her in succeeding years, she very early developed original dances, and at the age of four gave delight in original "shawl dances." Her speech very early was beautifully inflected. Her speech was also very early characterized by fine and meaningful modulations in loudness for emphasis and meaning. She gave early evidence of power to imitate different sounds.

Of course, the less musical a child is by nature, the more difficult it is to find early evidences of this sort. We do not need measuring instruments so much as we need training of teachers and parents to an understanding of what constitutes musical capacities so that we can observe the child critically in his early natural responses. By the age of eight or ten these specific capacities will become more conspicuous, and at that age the competent psychologist in music can analyze and measure talents reliably.

Musical education. When and how should musical education begin? It should begin in the earliest infancy by giving the child a musical environment suitable to elicit his response. This means not simply the hearing of formal music, but, far more significantly, a sympathetic response to the child's natural vocal expressions at each level, even to the making of sounds of all kinds.

The child from the first needs a sympathetic audience. It is not so much how beautifully the mother sings as how sympathetically she responds to the beginning croonings of the infant; and this sympathetic enjoyment includes recognition and encouragement for the hearing of all sounds around, whether animate or inanimate. The mother's first task is to be a good listener.

The first elements of formal musical training should be devoted to speech. Ideally this would come most effectively through the child's opportunity for hearing and imitating the beautiful sounds and speech of those around him. Even if the mother and other associates cannot set the model for the child, they can do a great deal to further musical development by showing their appreciation of the instinctive outcroppings of the musical qualities of the child's speech.

During the first six years there should be no formal musical instruction; but, by the end of that period, the musical child should have gradually acquired a sense of appreciation for musical sounds, pleasure in self-expression in musical intonations, confidence in his ability to compose a tune, some proficiency in singing and good speech, and some degree of satisfaction in free playing with an instrument.

The principles here developed for early childhood have profound implications for later musical education. Let the emphasis lie upon the broadness of the meaning of music to the child, upon the child's learning by doing, at his natural level of successful achievement, and upon the utilization of natural motivation in place of formal instruction.

THOUGHT REVIEW[^[C]]

General Principles

(1) Musical activity is always a form of play. (2) To be musical the child must be musical in response to his environment. (3) To the child noise is musical. (4) Musical education for the preschool child comes most effectively through formal education toward beautiful speech. (5) Musical education should begin in infancy by giving the child a musical environment suitable to elicit his response. Do the above statements by the author modify your own theories in regard to the musical education of your children?

Questions to Consider

(1) What may we be doing when we say to our husky two-year-old, "Oh, Johnny, don't make so much noise?" (2) Why is it that children so quickly lose their lovely childish intonations and inflections? (3) How does Doctor Seashore endeavor to help us recognize music in our children? (4) In our efforts to develop musical ability and response in the child, what errors do we, as adults, commit? (5) Is it ever too late for adults to cultivate a beautiful speaking voice? (6) Do you agree with Doctor Seashore that "genuinely beautiful speech is a revelation of beautiful character"? (7) What methods are you using with your young child to elicit musical responses? Are they in accord with Doctor Seashore's advice?

Discuss These True Situations

(1) I listened to the droning voice of a mother reading to her small son. Would it be better for the mother to tell the story with animation? (2) Mrs. Brown is what is termed "high-strung." She has much to do with household duties. Her three toddlers ask many questions, over and over again. She finds herself speaking louder and louder with each repetition. What would you suggest? (In a similar situation a five-year-old said, "Mother, why don't you relax a little?" C. E. S.) (3) In the Black household the radio is on continuously. Is this helping the musical education of the older and younger children? (4) "I simply can't get Johnny to practice his music lessons unless I sit down with him and make him do it," says Mrs. Young, who voices the complaint of many ambitious parents. What would Doctor Seashore say? (5) A mother, musically talented, said to me, "I simply can't help my children at all with their music. I get frantically impatient with them." (6) In a crowded railroad station I was admiring a lovely looking woman who held an equally lovely looking child by the hand. Then she spoke to the woman sitting next to me and it was with great effort I kept a look of consternation from appearing on my face. Her voice was harsh, metallic, unmodulated. Is it possible for her to help herself?

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[C]. This outline was prepared by May E. Peabody, Supervisor, when it appeared in Parents' Magazine. It seemed to me so stimulating for thought about the reading that I have adopted this general plan for all the chapters in this volume. C. E. S.

Chapter III
MUSIC BETWEEN THE AGES OF SIX AND TEN

The question "When should music education begin?" is now coming to be "How should music education begin?"; because we now recognize that music should play a large role in the first five years of child life.

Soon after six the child enters school. Here the principles of educational psychology, now so effectively applied to other primary and elementary school subjects, have revolutionized the presentation of music. This has of course been favored by the recognition of music on the level of the three R's. Music has come to function in the school not only as something to be learned but primarily as something to be lived. Primary teachers are, or will be, trained specifically for this subject. The old conflict between[between] enthusiasts for rote singing, on the one hand, and for technical sight reading, on the other, is vanishing. The approach to music is following new avenues involving diversified action, creative imagination and thinking in music, recognition of individual differences, freedom for individual expression of musical feeling, opportunity for sampling various avenues of choice in expression, the association of music with play, dance, and dramatic action, opportunity for hearing music at the child's level, avoidance of the fostering of a narrow precocity, and recognition that there is music everywhere—in speech, in play, in nature.

Parents who now aim to provide private lessons for formal training in some aspect of music must lay their plans in the light of all these facts which have come into view so strikingly in the school. They must understand and evaluate the significance of this movement in the school, the new status of music, the new role of private instruction in music, and the availability of a private teacher who can dovetail with these new facilities and responsibilities. In the hope of giving some helpful suggestions in regard to this planning, I wish to present some psychological considerations which are, at the present time, reconstructing the theory and practice of private lessons in music at this age.

A broadened conception of music. In Chapter II I pointed out that children coming out of a favorable music situation in the home, the preschool, the kindergarten, and other school and playground activities have attained rather astonishing achievement. Let me repeat, for emphasis:

"During the first six years there should be no formal musical instruction; but by the end of that period, the musical child should have gradually acquired a sense of appreciation for musical sounds, pleasure in self-expression in musical intonations, confidence in his ability to compose a tune, some proficiency in singing and good speech, and some degree of satisfaction in free playing with an instrument."

This achievement now accomplished in many preschool communities presents a challenge to the primary teacher and the supervisor of music in the public schools. And, where pupils come without such preparation or background, they must begin from scratch and offer a substitute for it in more concentrated form.

Private lessons should be built upon this background and designed to carry this type of program forward during the next four years with progressive enrichment of opportunities on the basis of talent thus revealed and with these types of activity as a goal in the beginnings of formal training.

This point of view turns a large part of the job of the private music teacher over to the primary school where it is favorably developed; because only in the group activity and in the avocational attitude with the avocational atmosphere under technically qualified teachers can this program of musical education find its best fruitage for children in general. The private teacher is falling from her high pedestal of the power to cast the child's musical mind in the pattern of her own image within a limited musical skill at this age. On the other hand, the ideal of the school situation which I have pictured will play happily into her hands by furnishing a background for a systematic study of voice or a particular instrument.

In this procedure, the child's interest may well concentrate around a single instrument. Furthermore, we are just awakening to the fact that voice development should begin in this period. New techniques for the development of a beautiful voice are coming in, and are adapted to this age. They should play an important role in this orientation period, and the child's interest may concentrate around this, as well as around an instrument, especially through the association of artistic forms of speech with song.

The analysis of talent. Music educators are coming now to a recognition of the principle that musical education, public and private, should be given in proportion to the possession of natural talent and in the direction for which the most favorable indication is found on the ground of specific talents. Such talents reveal themselves through the daily activities of the schoolroom, where the alert teacher understands their significance and directs them wisely. There are certain basic abilities which are favorable to a musical life. Some of these can be measured accurately with the Seashore Measures of Musical Talents in a revised edition now available through the RCA Victor agencies. They are concerned with the senses of pitch, loudness, time, timbre, and rhythm, together with tonal memory. These may be given individually to children between the ages of six and ten if administered with good judgment and the child is not required to write the answers. However, if the teacher is trained in the musical analysis of talent and the critical observation of children's behavior, inceptive achievement, and interests in the musical situation, it is possible to proceed without instruments, since the teacher will know what to listen for and will be competent to observe with sufficient accuracy for the purpose in hand. After the fourth grade, "measures of talents" may be given either as individual or as group tests. They may furnish a key to the most natural development of musical type; such as, the tonal, the dynamic, the temporal, or the balanced types, on the basis of degree of responsiveness to each of these factors as well as on other specific adaptations for voice or instrument. The teacher who has such concrete facts in hand will observe and plan the child's development more critically. Every private teacher should have a conception of the significance of individual differences in talent, and might well utilize measurements of this kind in the studio. The progressive private teacher should also be able to serve parents in an advisory capacity on such matters.

It is not necessary that the teacher should be an expert in testing; but it is essential that she should understand the nature of musical talents and have the sort of insight into child life which has been developed so splendidly in recent scientific studies of child behavior, especially with reference to the recognition of natural abilities, the early fostering of these, the devising of effective motivation, the awarding of praise and blame, and the setting up of standards of achievement recognizable by the child. It is, furthermore, reasonable to demand that the teacher herself should present a good voice in song and speech, have some proficiency and ingenuity in the manipulation of simple instruments, and feel deeply the love of music.

Group instruction. The old-fashioned piano lesson was at fault in various respects. First, time was taken to tell the pupils, individually, the elements of musical notation; second, the main function seemed to be to make the pupil "get" his lesson; and third, the child was expected to acquire a love of music through the technical approach. These things are now changing. The pupil now coming from the respectable primary school already has acquired the elements of sight reading, both from ear to eye and eye to ear. Any new element in notation can certainly be picked up incidentally as needed, without waste of time. The position of the teacher as a taskmaster is also disappearing. True, that eliminates many a pupil, but probably without much loss to the musical life of the community. The child comes to the private teacher already motivated with a feeling and urge for music. Musical achievement is no longer counted in terms of the number of lessons taken.

The function of the teacher is far more to motivate than to teach. The thing that counts is how long and faithfully the pupil works to acquire the proficiency which can only come through practice. What can be taught in one lesson should suffice for several times as much practice as is ordinarily expected. Better than having the teacher crack the whip for many periods would be to give the time available for lessons to the pupil for practice and use more remunerative rewards, even a percentage of the teacher's fee, to encourage self-help in a larger assignment through adequate practice.

One of the significant advancements in private instruction for children of this age lies in the direction of class or group instruction. No effort is made to force all children into the same cast. Small groups are formed on the pattern of chamber music, taking children of matched abilities and interests and using music progressively adapted to their level. Many forms of class instruction have failed on the ground of the teacher's inability to use informal procedures in some form of project method. Duets, trios, quartets, all in the competitive and play mood, can accomplish great things, even with the youngest children. Few private teachers have awakened to a realization of the fine possibilities in that approach. This method is especially adapted to primary instruction in private music schools in which there are enough pupils to make competitive promotions from group to group. Most of the musical information and the motivated drill can be accomplished through the group. The recognition of this principle may lead to the development of extracurricular and private organizations under an inspiring teacher or group of teachers for private instruction.

Formal lessons delayed. The principal point I wish to stress is that musical education should not begin with formal lessons on one instrument. Except in the case of rarely-gifted children, such specialized instruction should come naturally after the general musical interests have been awakened and the natural abilities have been revealed. Technical private lessons for children in general should therefore be begun considerably later than has been customary. In this there is a threefold saving: First, except in rare cases, rigid technique of instruction can be responded to much more economically after the age of eight or ten than before. A ten-year-old will acquire more than twice as much in a single lesson as a six-year-old. This will apply even to the much "touted" necessity for early finger development. Second, during this period the child should have the freedom to try himself out spontaneously with diversified encouragement in the development of specific interests; and third, it will take the aspect of drudgery away from the music lesson. To these may be added the fact that this liberal procedure helps to give the child a feeling that he is living music rather than learning it. It involves the play attitude in the acquisition of an art. The attitude of feeling the necessity for hard work, which is a very real necessity in music, can best be cultivated formally after the age of eight or ten.

A sympathetic listener. Although circumstances may alter cases, facility in piano playing might well be regarded as a foundation work in the approach to other instruments. The child's preference for a particular instrument is generally childish and will change in the normal course of development. An analysis of case histories would make an interesting study on this point. The development of skills in a particular instrument should always be accompanied by opportunities for sharing the pleasure in this skill with other children and the presence of a sympathetic listener in the teacher and the parents. What the child of the primary-school age needs is more a sympathetic and critical listener than a task-driver. This type of approach will discredit the now so prevalent artificial ways of symbolizing music by attempting to force the teacher's affected and stilted imagery upon the child's musical mind, which may run naturally in much more effective channels. It is a notable fact that the great musicians who emerged as very precocious made their early and distinctive progress far more through freedom for self-expression than through instruction from the masters.

In brief, the private lesson to the child should pattern, at the child's age level, after the procedure followed in adult instruction in music at its best; namely, that of sympathetic and inspiring criticism and guidance rather than the dealing out of predigested pellets of interpretation and technique. The general attitude to be cultivated in the child should therefore be freedom for self-expression rather than mere willingness to absorb set tasks. In this attitude the problem of scales, exercises, and calisthenic techniques will come in the natural course of events without being forced.

Music lovers vs. virtuosi. One of the first essential steps in training at this level is to educate the mother to the notion that only in very rare cases will the child become a virtuoso or a professional musician, and that she has no right to pose as an exhibitioner. The normal child is richly endowed with powers for diversified development. By too early emphasis upon a "gift" it is possible to produce monstrosities and pathological temperament. True, a gifted child beginning, for example, by taking lessons at five and being effectively motivated, may produce extraordinary results before ten, but generally at the expense of a normal development of the child as a person. An ill-guided enthusiast can make of the bright normal child a mathematical freak or a contortionist before the age of ten; but who wants that for the welfare of the child? It is a form of human sacrifice. The time for intensive specialization should normally come after the age of ten. Parents and teachers should shun the development of precocity as they shun disease. Indeed, in ninety cases out of a hundred, excessive precocity is a form of disease, a distortion of the normal personality.

The goal in musical education in this period should be to recognize individual differences, natural capacities, and native interests and urges in their natural stages for the development of a well-rounded personality. We have long since abandoned the notion that every girl should play the piano. What we need to learn now is that we should not allow the musically-gifted child to die with all the music in him, and that the musically gifted should not be exploited. The middle ground is that all children who have musical ability should learn to love music and live it naturally, each according to his ability.