Purity of vocal method must not be departed from by teachers. The introduction of new ideas is at best a hazardous undertaking. In the routine of teaching week after week and month after month the teacher finds himself casting about for a new idea. He finds something which pleases him and tries it on his pupils. Most teachers can look back at experiments which have failed. Better decide on a few basic principles and cling to them. The desire to try something new is very liable to be the result of fatigue from overwork. Better take a holiday; go away from the classroom and rest. Come back to first principles again and go to work. The result at the end of the year will be better. Every teacher as he grows older resolves his ways of cultivating the voice into something very simple but which, as it condenses, becomes more powerful. There is only one right way and deep thinkers settle on that alike in time.
Mental Recovery.
A teacher cannot do better for himself and his work than to occasionally close the office door and sit quietly by himself for a half-hour. At such time crowd out the thought of all work, all planning, all worries, and all demands. Bring the mind as nearly as can be into inactivity. One will find in the hour when work is resumed that more of value will flood into the mind, he knows not from whence, than he can catch and apply in a great many hours. How many of us have times of refreshing. It is work, work, hour after hour and the wonder is that we do so much and yet do so little. Leave out some of the work and call activity of mind to our aid and we will do more work with much less effort.
Profession or Trade.
An item recently seen reads, "we would rather be a music teacher in an obscure town than be a prosperous tradesman in a large city." That has the sound of enthusiasm, and is the feeling of one who has the good of his fellowmen at heart. Every man who enters a profession gives up his life to do good. But few men in any professional life ever make more than a good living. Some can, indeed, save enough to make occasional investments, and these (if judgment has been good) secure a moderate fortune. But no man ever became wealthy from his profession alone. A professional man, however, gratifies his better nature and satisfies cultivated tastes. A man in trade becomes so engrossed in business that his better nature (his refined taste) is dwarfed. That comfort of mind which the professional man has is more to him than the bags of gold of the merchant would be. Probably the writer who made the remark quoted, had in mind the opportunity which the music teacher has to do good. It is a grand field of work, and one who has been engaged in it for several years wants no other. To lead the public by teaching and by public performance into the knowledge of the highest art, is a privilege which should be prized. The music teacher, (even if not so placed by common opinion) stands with the minister and the physician in the good which he does the community.
Heart and Intellect.
Let not the heart be the ruling power all the time. If it is, art sinks into sentimentality. Allow the head to rule alternately with the heart. Intellect must be applied if any satisfying musical result is to be obtained. Emotion is good, but it needs curbing, shaping and restraining. Emotion, long sustained and unbridled, becomes nauseating. Emotion in itself is beautiful, but like fire and water, if it once becomes the master, wastes and destroys. Emotion, aroused by imagination and directed by intelligence, serves to give taste to all musical rendition. One without heart is non-satisfying as a singer. Be he ever so intellectual, his singing is cold. Intellect alone, unaided by heart, is like polished steel—cold, brilliant and dazzling. Intellect and heart combined are like the same surface engraved and enamelled in artistic design—chaste, delicate and finished.
Time Ends Not.
We may say with Emerson that "Time has his own work to do and we have ours," and with Wood, "Labor is normal; idleness, abnormal," but in music there must be times of cessation from labor. Call it change of work, if you choose rather than admit that labor has ceased, but experience shows that no musician can safely follow his calling year in and year out, with no regular period of rest, and save his mind and body. Sooner or later comes a collapse. The human machine breaks down. Then we shall think of Emerson and Wood as unsafe leaders. Time has his work, but he works in such deliberation and in such ever-changing form that were he one who could feel fatigue, he need not feel it. Time is from eternity to eternity. Time does not occupy a human machine. The music teacher does. Many a teacher has toiled beyond his strength this year. Many will next year. Who will take thought for himself and break loose, if but for a few weeks, and postpone the time of breaking down? One might say, that with Time, the human soul is from eternity to eternity and there is no breakdown. True, but the residence of that soul while it is in this period of existence, demands much of its attention. That cannot properly be given when the exacting duties of the class-room drag on week after week, till they number fifty-two, and then begin at once another weary round. Admit that there are limitations, and, in cordial co-operation with existing laws, select and use the days of idleness, even if one has said that idleness is abnormal.
Power of Thought.