Although the money and time given to the piano, among a large proportion of the girls in our school, was worse than wasted, I soon found that three out of four of them would refuse to enter the school, or remain in it, if they were urged not to study music.
After a young woman has studied music for five years, and has twisted her spine all out of shape in practicing upon the piano, she marries, plays a little on the splendid "Grand" which "Dear Aunt" gives her as a wedding present, and then drops it forever. If there is decided talent, she may continue; but I speak of the results as I have seen them.
IMPORTANCE OF VOCAL MUSIC.
If the voice be cultivated, and the piano used as an accompaniment, the music in a girl's education would prove ten-fold more valuable. Indeed, vocal music might prove, with many girls, the most valuable part of education. It is more likely to be continued, because of the greater pleasure it affords; while social singing serves more than any other influence to bind the inmates of a home together. As a source of general health, it stands unrivalled.
In this country of consumptives, it is especially valuable in fortifying the pulmonary apparatus.
Let us, by every means, foster social singing. Its influence is, in many ways, most precious. How interesting the group of sisters and brothers gathered about the piano, and how blessed the home where the evening is welcomed by family song.
Contrast this with the average mechanical execution of classical music, by one of the girls, or with the fashionable operatic singing by one of them.
And just here I wish to speak of a fashion which should be deprecated. It is another piece of that growing vice, which would remove music from the social sphere, and make it, like some peculiarity of dress, a mere show. Suppose we have singing. Instead of four persons performing the several parts of some rich melody, Miss Arabella is invited to "give us that exquisite Aria," and we all sit by, and wonder at her execution.
The great service of music is one of the heart, and not of the head.
There are departments of music, there are possibilities in this divinest of the arts, which appeal to the subtlest appreciations of the intellect, and the most exalted conceptions of the imagination; but still it is true that the greatest service which music renders to man is in the social sphere, is one of the heart When our voices blend, our hearts will not long be kept asunder.