Why We Love Music

by Carl E. Seashore

VANTAGE GROUNDS

Artistic insight. The extraordinarily rapid introduction of real music education in the grades and in the high school and college curricula, and even in graduate study, is changing the attitude of the listener by increasing his competence. Children and youth now hear more good music and hear it presented in such a way as to increase their understanding of it. At the college level music is presented as an academic subject, with primary emphasis upon the art of hearing music together with some knowledge of history and content of music. The training of high-school teachers of music has changed radically in a generation from the mere development of proficiency with an instrument or voice to a deeper insight into the nature of the art, its history, and its roles. At many levels well-developed courses in music appreciation have acquired a permanent status and have proved a good foundation for further penetration into the art of the appreciation of music. This implanting of points of view and development of esthetic attitudes in the academic instruction in the schools is hastened to fruitage by the popularizing of music for the masses through radio and phonograph as well as through the penetrating of the skills acquired in school into the home and social institutions. The popularizing of good music, where public entertainment in the parks and other public places is of good musical quality and furnished free or at popular prices, is a great help in developing a critical attitude even among those in other respects quite uneducated. Therefore, we may say with great satisfaction that training in the art of hearing music has come upon the educational horizon in America in a very promising way.

The scientific attitude. We are constantly impressed with the analogy between scientific insight into the nature of music and the corresponding insight in other sciences, such as botany or astronomy. A child starts out with an inborn capacity and urge for the love of flowers; but as a student of flowers he soon encounters many marvelous revelations. On the one hand his horizon is broadened by acquaintance with larger and larger classes and varieties. He learns to see relationships to habitat. He learns to trace scientifically the laws of their evolution, the methods of artificial breeding and development of new plants, and even the beauty in their usefulness. On the other hand, he turns to his microscope and discovers not only the external parts visible to the naked eye but the internal structures, their modes of evolution and development, even down to the discovery of the mechanisms of heredity through the genes, which are so small that we know them only by inference from what the microscope reveals. The natural history of music is analogous to that of such a material science.

This scientific insight into the structure and function of music goes hand in hand with the development of the artistic insight into the nature of the esthetic values from the point of view of the art of music. Thus the student of music is now furnished the facilities for increasing his power of appreciation of music and a critical awarding of praise or blame from two complementary points of view: a study of the art and a study of the science of music.

Terminology. The mere matter of terminology here plays a very important role, as is now being demonstrated so successfully in the recent developments in the field of psychology of music and acoustics. Take, for example, the concept of tone quality. Until a few years ago there was probably not a single adequate statement of the nature of tone quality in the entire literature on music; and yet this is the most important element in music. In the past the listener and the student have generally approached the subject in an attitude of acceptance or rejection of the unanalyzed impression, but often with no more competence than that with which the ignorant shepherd appraises the grandeur and meaning of the heavens above on a starlit night. The teacher, as a rule, said "This is beautiful," or "This is ugly," without being able to give the reasons why, for want of a tangible terminology. The teaching and development of tone quality therefore has wallowed in a slough of despond. Recent researches in the field of musical acoustics are ushering in a new era. The structure of tone quality has been dissected, and its parts have been adequately described and defined. This is leading to an improved musical language. The same is true for other musical concepts. Thus, through the systematic development of musical terminology, there will gradually develop a scientific classification of the various aspects of the musical medium which is essential not only for the learning of music but also for the awarding of praise and blame.

Musical talent. With this development of a knowledge of the nature of music, the scientific student of music has turned to the analysis of the nature of the musical mind attempting to assign specific roles to musical heredity and musical training and environment. Hazy concepts of the gift of music have been subjected to scientific analysis, experiment, and measurement. From this, it is being demonstrated that it is impossible to award praise or blame without taking a reasonable account of the innate fortes and faults of the performer which determine in large part the direction and limits of achievement or failure. The recognition of this fact, of course, plays its fundamental role in the early encouragement or discouragement of the inceptive musician, in the recognition of the purpose of his education, and in the motivation through training.