Library Essays; Papers Related to the Work of Public Libraries

by Arthur E. Bostwick

My own opinion, which some may regard as heretical, is that taste can not be cultivated, in literature, or art, or music, to any considerable extent by study. The study of these things must have to do largely with history and technique, and while a knowledge of these is desirable it can not affect taste, although we may imagine that it does. We may reduce this matter to its lowest terms by thinking for a moment of something that depends on the uncomplicated action of an elementary sense—physical taste. If one does not like an olive when he eats one for the first time, that judgment can not be reversed by studying the history of olive culture. If he dislikes cheese, it will be useless to take him into a cheese factory and explain to him, or teach him the technical processes of manufacture. The only way to make him change his mind is to induce him to keep on eating olives, when one of two things will take place—either his dislike of olives will be confirmed, or it will disappear. As most people like olives when they become accustomed to the taste, the latter result is to be expected. Now suppose that someone does not care for Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”. My contention is that he cannot be made to like it by studying the history of music, or that of this particular selection, nor by analyzing its structure, but that he may be led to do it by listening to it repeatedly. As persons familiar with good music do generally enjoy this piece, it is probable that this result will follow.

I know that I must now justify this comparison. When I make it I am accustomed to indignant protest on the part of some of my students. Is it not unworthy to compare the music of the Moonlight Sonata to a mere physical sensation like the taste of an olive? Only as it may be considered unworthy to compare the great and the small; the complex and the simple. Both the taste of the olive and the sound of the sonata, have a physical origin and impress the brain through the agency of the sense organs. And as a matter of fact I doubt whether the sensation of the music is much more complicated than that of the taste. We know that an acoustic sensation is a unit. When a chorus is singing with orchestral accompaniment the result is not a hundred sound waves, but one; it strikes the ear drum as a unit, and that vibrates as a unit, so that the impression on the brain, about whose mechanism we are ignorant, must also be a unit. The popularity of the phonograph enables us to illustrate this familiarly. Examine with a microscope a record of a complicated musical performance, with many voices and many different kinds of instruments, and you will find a single wavy line. When the needle causes the disk to vibrate by following this line, it vibrates as a unit, just as the ear-drum does. There is but one disk, yet its vibration enables us to pick out separately the different voice parts, and to recognize the separate quality of the stringed instruments, the woodwinds and the brasses, with the drums, bells, and what not. When we taste the olive, we get a sort of chemical effect. We do not know what happens as definitely as we do in the case of a musical sound, but the various atoms, each vibrating in its own way, act upon the taste-buds of the tongue so that a sensation is transmitted to the brain—transmitted as a unit, just as the sound is. I want to be fair, so I will acknowledge that instead of comparing a single sensation of taste to a sequence of sounds, I should have likened it to a musical chord. To get a taste analogy with a sonata we should have to use a sequence of taste sensations, possibly that presented by a course dinner. I submit, however, that this does not affect my argument.

Let me repeat my conviction, then, that art is primarily a matter of the heart and not of the head—of the feelings and not of the intellect, and that the feelings are trained by personal experience, not by study. One cannot learn to appreciate a poem, or a picture or a piece of music by examining it historically or structurally, only by experiencing it and others like it again and again, and also by experiencing in life the emotions that the art is intended to arouse. Of course I do not mean to say that knowledge of history and technique is not interesting and valuable. It is highly interesting to know the recipe for the pie and to watch the cook make it; but this does not affect the taste.

Knowledge obtained by study does affect ability to reproduce or create. One must know how the pie is made before he can make one himself. One can not write a poem or paint a picture or compose a song, without preliminary study. This should be understood, but it is outside the pale of our present discussion, which relates to the chief purpose of the music collection in a library and of its chief uses. My contention, to repeat, is that it is related to musical art precisely as the purpose of the book-collection is related to the art of literature.

Now the present status of the music collection is precisely what that of the book collection would be in a community where the percentage of literacy was small, where a considerable number of persons did not understand the language of the books, even when spoken or read aloud, where those who knew the language understood it only when spoken or read and where readers were obliged to read aloud before they could appreciate what they were reading. A community, moreover, where teaching generally meant solely teaching how to recite or read aloud acceptably to others, with only enough ability to read to get the sense of an extract and enable the reader to commit it to memory. A librarian set down with a collection of books in such a community would not be true to his vocation if he did not attempt to better this state of things, while admitting the elements of good that it contained. For instance, the imaginary situation that I have described would be quite comparable with a real appreciation and love of good literature.

In the first place, the librarian would wish to see that all the members of his community were able to understand the language of his books, if not to read it. To remember our analogy for a moment, he would practically fit his books to his people. If they were predominantly French, for instance, he would buy many French books. But one can not do this with music, for music is a language by itself, for the most part untranslatable into any other. We must assume that in the world to which our imaginary community belongs there is but one language, and that to understand the books those who do not know that language must be taught it. School instruction in language is largely limited to reading. Children who go to school understand and talk their language already, having been taught it at home. It is to the homes, therefore, that the librarian would have to look for this instruction and he would have to bring to bear on parents whatever influence might be at his disposal to make them see its value and uses.

Secondly, he would have to see that as many as possible were taught to read the language. This would be the function of the schools.

Thirdly, it would be necessary to see that facility in reading proceeded so far that readers would not find it necessary to read aloud, but could when they desired, read rapidly “to themselves”. It would be necessary, of course, to show many of the teachers and almost all of their pupils, that reading is primarily not to enable the reader to recite to others, but to make an impression on his own mental equipment. It is quite possible for one to learn to read out loud after a fashion, in a foreign tongue, without understanding a word of it, but so that listeners may get a fair idea of it. The effect on the reader in this case is absolutely zero.

Musically, this kind of community is precisely the one that public libraries have to deal with. Many of our clients do not like or understand music at all, or they care for only the most elementary melodies, harmonies and rythms—comparable to the literature that one gets in a child’s primer. Of those whose range of appreciation and love is fairly wide, comparatively few are familiar with musical notation, and can not read music. Of those who can read, few can read rapidly and with assurance, and fewer still can read without audible utterance; that is, they can not read to themselves. It is common to hear persons who can sing or play on some instrument with a fair degree of success and taste say “Oh, I can’t read; I have to pick out the notes and get my teacher to help me.” This is exactly as if someone who had just recited an oration or a poem with some feeling should proclaim complacently: “Oh, I can’t really read. I had to pick out that piece word for word, with my teacher at my elbow to help me out.”

In the face of such a situation the librarian should feel and act precisely as he would feel and act if the situation existed with regard to books, as it has already been imagined and described.