CHAPTER XV.
MUSIC AND READING.
"Truly it has been said, a loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge."—Thomas Carlyle.
A beautiful thing in life is the friendship for books. Every one who loves books pays some day a tribute to them, expressing thankfulness for the joy and comfort they have given. There are in them, for everybody who will seek, wise words, good counsel, companies of great people, fairies, friends for every day, besides wonders we never see nor dream of in daily life.
Some of the great men have told us about their love for books; how they have saved penny by penny slowly to buy one, or how after the day's labor a good book and the firelight were prized above anything else. All tell us how much they owe to books and what a blessing books are. Imagine the number of heart-thoughts there must be in a shelf full of good books! Thoughts in tones or thoughts in words may be of the heart or not. But it is only when they are of the heart that they are worthy of our time.
You will not only love books, but gain from them something of the thoughts they contain. We might, had we time, talk of classic books, but as we have already talked of classic music we know what the principal thing is. It is that good thought, out of the heart, be expressed in a scholarly way—"Great thought needs great expression."[51] This teaches us the necessity for choosing good books for our instruction and for our entertainment. They present beautiful pictures to us truthfully, or they present truth to us beautifully. And these are the first test of a written thought—its truth and its beauty.
If you read good books you will have in every volume you get something well worth owning. You should bestow upon it as much care as you would want any other good friend to receive. And if it has contributed help or pleasure to you it is surely worth an abiding place. A fine pleasure will come from a good book even after we are quite done with it. As we see it in years after it has been read there comes back to one a remembrance of all the old pleasures, and with it a sense of thankfulness for so pleasant a friendship. Hence any book that has given us joy or peace or comfort is well worth not only good care, but a place for always; as a worthy bit of property.
In the early days of your music study, it will be a pleasure to you to know that there are many and delightful books about music written, sometimes by music-lovers, sometimes by the composers. The written word-thoughts of the composers are often full of great interest. They not only reveal to us many secrets of the tone-art, but teach us much about the kinds of things and of thoughts which lived in the minds of the composers. We learn definitely not only the music-interests of the composers, but the life-interest as well. It really seems as if we were looking into their houses, seeing the way they lived and worked, and listening to their words. Never afterward do we regard the great names in music as uninteresting. The most charming and attractive pictures cluster about them and it all gives us a new inspiration to be true to music, loyal to the truth of music, and willing to do as we see others have done, and to learn by doing. The lesson we get from the life of every man is, that he must do if he would learn.
I am sure you will spend many delightful minutes with the Letters of a great composer. Every one is like a talk with the writer. They are so friendly, and so full of the heart, and yet so filled with the man himself. Especially the Letters of Mendelssohn and Schumann will please you. In truth the Letters of all the composers are among the most valuable music writings we have. In some way they seem to explain the music itself: and the composer at once becomes a close friend. But besides these read the biographies. Then it is as if we were personally invited home to the composer and shown all his ways and his life. And besides these, there are some friendly books full of the very best advice as to making us thoughtful musicians; many and many again are the writers who have so loved art—not the art of tone alone, but all other arts as well—that they have told us of it in good and earnest books which are friendly, because they are written from the right place; and that you must know by this time is the heart.
You will soon see when you have read about the composers that true music comes out of true life. Then you will begin to love true life, to be useful, and to help others. But all these things do not come at once. Yet, as we go along step by step, we learn that art is unselfish, and we must be so to enjoy it; art is truthful—we must be so to express it; art is full of life—we must know and live truth in order to appreciate it. And the study of pure thoughts in music, in books, and in our own life will help to all this.