Why We Love Music

by Carl E. Seashore

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.