II. OUR MUSICAL ACTIVITIES
As a preliminary to this discussion it will be well to look at the present status of music among us, and to see how near we come to this necessary intimacy with the art.
In any small American community the first impression one gets about music is that it is useful to fill up gaps. At the theater, before public meetings, at social affairs of one sort or another, music is performed to a ceaseless hum of conversation or while people are entering and leaving. The art becomes, in consequence, like the cracking of the whip before the team starts, or like the perfunctory speeches and gestures of social amenities; it is nothing in itself, and falls in our estimation accordingly. It is true that, at such times, only trivial music is usually played, but this only makes the situation worse, because, after all, it passes as music. A bad piece of music at the theater or while one is dining in a restaurant is merely an annoyance; a good piece beats its head against a flood of conversation, tinkling glasses and other disturbances, and is lost; one feels as though its composer had been insulted. All this incidental music must be partly due to the decline in conversation. We are relieved of all responsibility save an occasional “yes” or “no” shouted above the din.
Real musical activity in the average small community is limited to a very small number of its inhabitants. Only a few people sing; a much smaller number play some musical instrument. There are, here and there, choirs made up of volunteer singers, but the spirit that animated the old choirs—the spirit which Hardy has celebrated so lovingly in “Under the Greenwood Tree”—has disappeared. Hymn-singing in church is often distressingly bad, and with good reason, since the composers of modern hymn tunes seldom take into consideration the needs and wishes of congregations. Church music has been delegated by us to paid singers, and our church music becomes a thinly disguised concert, or, when the really abominable vocal quartette supplies the music, a concert outright.
What days those were when old William Dewey and Dicky, and Reuben and Michael Mail played in the Mellstock church! What a fine personal character such music had! How they loved to play—these simple rustics, and how intimate was the relation between their music and the people and the place! Read the early chapters of “Under the Greenwood Tree” and listen to the ardent discussions between the players before they go out on their Christmas rounds. “‘They should have stuck to strings as we did, and keep out clar’nets, and done away with serpents. If you’d thrive in musical religion, stick to strings, says I.’ ... ‘Yet there’s worse things than serpents,’ said Mr. Penny. ‘Old things pass away, ’tis true; but a serpent was a good old note; a deep rich note was the serpent.’ ... ‘Robert Penny, you was in the right!’ broke in the eldest Dewey. ‘They should ha’ stuck to strings.’ ‘Your brass-man is a rafting dog—well and good; your reed-man is a dab at stirring ye—well and good; your drum-man is a rare bowel-shaker—good again. But I don’t care who hears me say it, nothing will spak to your heart wi’ the sweetness o’ the man of strings.’”
In the preface to his book Hardy speaks of the advantage to the village churches of that time of having these volunteer players and singers, and how their displacement by the harmonium with its one player “has tended to stultify the professed aims of the clergy, its direct result being to curtail and extinguish the interest of parishioners in church doings.” This holds good in our own village churches to-day, for we consider music more a means of entertaining the church-goer than of enlisting his interest in the services.
Women’s clubs provide a certain sort of musical life to small communities. They foster the performance by members of rather variegated programmes of pianoforte pieces and songs, with an occasional concert by a paid performer from abroad, and they sometimes make a study of a composer or a period of music. Many of them lose sight of the only possible means of vitally influencing the musical life of their own members and of the community at large.
In some of the communities of which I am writing there are choral societies. In very few is there any well-sustained and continuous choral organization giving concerts year after year supported by the general public. The record of choral singing in America shows a constant endeavor to attain grandiose results rather than to foster the love of choral singing for itself. Singing societies are continually wrecked by the expense of highly paid soloists, and are continually striving for something beyond their reach.
This statement would not be complete were we to omit the instruments which play themselves. The educational possibilities of these instruments have not been realized, for they are used chiefly for amusement. In spite of the extraordinary selections of music which one finds in people’s houses, and in spite of the seemingly incorrigible propensity to hear singing, as opposed to hearing music,—I mean the exaggerated and grotesque singing of certain famous people who care chiefly for sensation,—the graphophone, which has the practical advantage of being portable and inexpensive,—it has transformed many a lonely farmhouse,—and the mechanical piano-players have become so popular that one can but conclude that there are multitudes of people whose desire for music has never before been satisfied. Would that this desire could be turned into proper channels; that these instruments could be used systematically to build up taste and develop understanding of great music. The larger number of people using them have no means of knowing what to buy. If they could hear the best music their allegiance would probably be secured. How many parents ever think of the responsibility laid upon them of preserving or improving the musical taste of their children by a careful supervision of the records or rolls used with these instruments?
This completes the list of our own personal activities in music. And we have to admit that the most discouraging item of all comes at the end. For we make little music of our own, by our own firesides where all good things should begin, and where we should find the community in embryo. What a delightful element in family life is the gathering together of young and old to join in singing! How few families cultivate this custom! How few parents, whether they themselves care for it or not, realize that their children would enjoy it and be helped by it! Why should not such parents begin at once and be encouraged, or even taught by their children until all can sing together heartily and well? Is it not worth while preserving the musical sense of children, so that when they reach your age they will not be helpless as you are? Are you satisfied to have your child’s music merely bought and paid for outside the home? How can you expect it to flourish under such conditions? Let the children teach you, if need be. Copy them, learn their songs by ear, and find out what music really is!
This somewhat meager showing of musical activity does not completely represent our connection with the art, however, for nearly all but the smallest communities spend considerable sums for concerts by paid performers from abroad. But it is doubtless true that the majority of the people in any small community hear very little real music at all save at occasional concerts, and if a fine composition is performed they seldom hear it again, so that it is clearly impossible for them to understand it. In towns of from five to twenty thousand people all over the country there is very little consciousness of what music really is. Highly paid performers occasionally appear, and local pride asserts itself to provide them with the adulation to which they are accustomed, but real musical activity or musical feeling is confined to a few.
In large communities these conditions are duplicated and even exaggerated. There nearly all the music is bought and paid for, and very little is home-made. Nearly all choirs are composed of paid singers. In cities, as in the country, choral societies are struggling to find men who care enough about singing to attend rehearsals. There, too, children go their rounds of “music” lessons. The only possible way to estimate the state of music in our cities is to look at the population as a whole. By counting up the number of fine concerts in fashionable halls one arrives at no significant conclusions. Do we sing at home, or when we are gathered together in friendly converse? Are there small centers in cities where good music can be heard? Is there any good music within reach of people of small means? The millionaire regales his friends with the playing of his private organist (in imitation of the old patron days of art, but generally without the love and understanding of music which was the sole justification for the proceeding), but does the dweller in the modest flat ever have a chance to hear good music? These are questions we need to ask if we want to estimate the state of music in our great cities. Is not all this grand music, as I have said, merely a largess of our prosperity?
The most grandiose and disconnected form of our musical activity is the opera. And when we consider the love of drama which finds expression in nearly every small community in a dramatic club, we cannot but deplore the almost complete detachment of opera from our natural thoughts, feelings, and instincts. Of this detachment there is no doubt whatever; the whole plan of American operatic productions is exotic, aristocratic, and exclusive.
It is quite true that we are continually improving our musical status. The effect of all our fine music may indeed be observed, but our progress is undeniably slow, particularly when we remember with what a liberal endowment we start. That endowment is very little less than other peoples possess. Our children are musical, and there is no reason why we should not be. Moreover, the strain of ideality which runs through American life, however naïve it may be, would seem to make us especially qualified to love and understand music.