Why We Love Music

by Carl E. Seashore

Note that the child composes by performing; therefore, each musical form that he develops is clearly at his command in performance. Notice also that the repetition of achievement is limited by the play attitude of always demanding something more difficult. Composition, performance, appreciation, body response form interlocking steps. That is what makes the procedure natural. The joy of conquest, characteristic of play, is the dominating motive. Here nature has her way in the development of knowledge, appreciation, and skills.

Musical activity is normally a form of play, expression for the satisfaction in the expression itself without ulterior motive, and this attitude may be carried through life. A person who cannot take a play attitude toward music perhaps has no music in him. The play attitude does not free one from effort, even systematic and arduous effort, in the acquisition of the art. Witness all the sports at all stages of growth. There is nothing to relieve us from understanding facts involved in music; but the driving motive is found in the play attitude, and the result is pleasure in play. On these observations of nature's ways in play, the future pedagogy of music will be built.

Environment. It is astonishing that the child is often treated as unmusical unless he can sing or play adult compositions or show an intelligent appreciation of high art forms. How pitiful it is for a mother to say that her child is not musical because he does not sing her songs and understand her artistic playing. How vastly could a mother's appreciation of the child be increased if she realized what constitutes music at his level and how fundamental the musical reactions at his level are to the development of music in the adult!

To be musical, the child must be musical in response to his environment. There are natural laws of evolution in the race and in the development of the individual for types of reactions to the music that abounds around us in nature and for the various means at our command of expression through imitation of them. To the primitive tribe, the drum is a powerful, thrilling musical instrument. So are all forms of drumming to the child. He imitates the whistling, tooting, rattling, banging sounds in his environment, sometimes until he becomes noisily tiresome. He feels in harmony with the clock that ticks, the birds that sing, the dog that barks, the cat that mews. He loves to bang on the piano and blow his horn.

This craving for pleasure in sounds radiates through the sense of rhythm into graceful movements, the beginnings of dancing and dramatic action, even from the crudest rhythmic kicking and tapping movements of the infant. His speech becomes rhythmic, melodic, dynamic, beautiful. His whole body becomes reverberant in response to the sounds of nature. Laughter progressively acquires new and beautiful forms. Even crying may give satisfaction of an artistic sort. The swinging of the pendulum of the old clock on the wall is music. The patter of rain, the splashing of water have musical elements.

The child does not think of the artistic forms as does the musician; but like the canary which, even if grown in isolation in a soundproof cage, in due time produces his natural tours in repertoire, the child instinctively comes out in melody, dynamic modulation, and rhythm. But all these are modified by the environment.

Music and speech. Speech has the same media as music; namely, pitch, loudness, time, and timbre which result in such musical forms as tonal and dynamic inflection, rhythm, articulation, and vowel quality. A child is, of course, not conscious of any of these as such, and yet, under favorable circumstances, will quickly develop beautiful speech, which means that it is well inflected, well modulated in loudness, beautifully rhythmic, rich and clear in vowel qualities. If the child has a good ear, instinctive liking for these aspects of speech will develop surprisingly early.

To give the child musical environment means therefore not only exposure to formal music but rather a motivation for hearing musically all sounds around him, for acting rhythmically, and feeling the rhythmic impulse in all forms of activity, for responding by imitation or other forms of appreciation to all sounds beautiful. These acquisitions naturally take the form of beautiful speech. Musical education in the nursery, therefore, comes most effectively through informal education toward beautiful speech.

The child becomes proficient in speech long before he becomes correspondingly proficient in musical performance and appreciation. It is therefore very important to recognize that music and speech employ the same medium; namely, sounds which vary in pitch, loudness, duration, and kind. The child reveals flexibility, richness, rhythm, and all other forms of meaningful inflection in speech earlier than he does in music. Indeed, by the time the child leaves the nursery, even at the age of five, his characteristic form and command of speech are fairly crystallized. The command of elements of beautiful speech is the first step in a beautiful singing voice.

Speech is an index to character, and the means for the development of character. Beautiful speech is musical speech. Genuinely beautiful speech is a revelation of beautiful character. Let the mother who worries about early piano or violin lessons first give thought to formal sympathetic cultivation of a beautiful speaking voice.