On every side this sort of instruction goes on. One hears glib statements on the lips of uninstructed persons about child psychology, “second” brain, and so forth. A pupil is asked to listen to a phrase of music and then tell the teacher what “comes through.” We must remember that art is discipline and that there is no real liberty except under law. We want children to use their minds accurately and to have control of their bodies, but this use and this control can only come through definite and regulated effort. Gropings in the dark, detached and illusive pursuits of the will-o’-the-wisps of education will never accomplish our purpose.
IV. WHAT SHOULD CHILDREN SING?
But even these artificial and false methods are less harmful to children than are the poor, vapid, and false songs by means of which their taste is slowly and surely disintegrated. Now the nature of music is such that many people are unable to see why one child’s song is better than another. There is a considerable number of people having to do with children’s music who seem quite incapable of distinguishing between a really beautiful folk-song and a trivial copy of one. Long association with the latter has produced the inevitable result. Only one argument can be brought to bear on such persons, an argument having nothing to do with æsthetics—namely, that the current music for children of one generation is inevitably displaced by that of the next, whereas the same folk-songs are continually reproduced, and are sung by increasing generations of children the world over. Any musician can string together in logical sequence a series of notes to fit a verse of simple poetry—almost every musician has; any poet can put together simple and easily understood verses; but the hand of time sweeps them away to oblivion. Out of the depths of simple hearts, in joy or sorrow or privation, as a balm to toil and labor, as a cry from a mother’s heart, in battle, in moments of religious exaltation—wherever and whenever the depths are stirred, song springs forth. A composer can express only what is in him; his limitations are as confining as are those of every other artist. Dickens could no more create a Clara Middleton than could Tschaikovsky a theme like that at the opening of the Ninth Symphony; and to suppose that the creation of a child’s song is a simple matter of putting notes together in a correct and agreeable sequence, is to misconceive the whole creative process.
It is our cardinal error that we think any tune good enough which is attractive at first hearing. In the music-books provided for kindergarten and for home singing there is an endless series of poor, vapid, over-sweet melodies which children, hungry for any music, will sing readily enough for lack of better. Some of these tunes smack unmistakably of a Broadway musical comedy; many of them are full of mawkish sentiment and affected simplicity. No real progress can be made until we reach definite conclusions on this point and act on them. Our taste and that of our children is never stationary,—we continually advance or go backwards,—and the subtle disintegration of the taste of children by bad songs results inevitably in indifference to good music in later life. The road branches here; one leads the way we know too well, the other leads to a real love of fine music, to a real happiness in it, and to a real respect for it. Let me say, also, that children love good songs, and that, as a part of their natural or normal endowment, they possess in this respect, and to a remarkable degree, that quality which we ignobly call “taste.” (I recall an old Egyptian manuscript in the Bodleian Library containing a letter which ran thus: “Theon to his father, Theon—Greeting. It was a fine thing that you did not take me to Alexandria with you. Send me a lyre, I implore you! If you don’t, I won’t eat anything. I won’t drink anything. There!”)
The number of musical nostrums for children is legion, and I have no desire to enumerate them. Their effects are in inverse relation to their extensive and—sometimes—expensive paraphernalia. But I will quote a single sentence from a popular song-book for children as an illustration of the tendency which they represent: “Understanding as we do the innate fondness of children for rich harmonies, we have given special attention to the harmonization of the melodies; and although it is occasionally necessary for children to sing without accompaniment, yet such a lack is to be deplored, as the accompaniment often serves as the rhythmic expression of the thought.”
The foregoing specimen is almost a compendium of what children’s songs and the teaching of them should not be. If children are fond of “rich” harmonies, the fact is to be regretted. (I do not believe that the average child is.) The best possible thing for them, in that case, would be to hear no harmonies at all for some time, but to sing entirely unaccompanied (just as you would deprive them of sweetmeats if they had been made ill by them); special attention given to the harmonization of children’s songs is given in an entire misconception of their character and their uses; for the essence of a child’s song lies in its own rhythmic and melodic independence, and if it depends on an accompaniment for its rhythm, it is by just so much a poor song. There is no harm in a simple accompaniment to a folk-song, but in teaching them to children an accompaniment does for them precisely what we want them to do for themselves, namely, reproduce correctly the metre and the rhythm, the pitch and the contour of the melody.
Such training as I have advocated, if carried on through early childhood, brings with it a natural desire to continue singing and makes learning to sing from notes much easier than it would otherwise be. The capacity to sing music at sight is a valuable acquisition for children, for it enables them to take part in choral singing and provides them in after years with a delightful means of access to some of the finest music. The advantage to the individual of this acquired technique is that it is of the mind and not of the muscles; it does not desert its possessor as finger technique deserts the player who ceases to practice. To sing part songs with friends, or to be one of a larger number singing a composition by Bach or some other great composer, in which each singer is contributing to reproduce a noble work of art—this, in itself, is a highly desirable experience. But the process of learning to sing at sight has sometimes led far away from true æsthetics and has resulted in a certain debasing of the taste through singing inferior music. Vocal exercises for sight singing are necessary, and we can accept them as such, for they do not evoke the æsthetic sense; but bad songs taught to illustrate some point of technique are unnecessary and inexcusable.
V. THE FALLACY OF THE INEVITABLE PIANOFORTE LESSON
But the majority of the children who have private instruction in music take lessons in pianoforte-playing. It has become a custom; the pianoforte is an article of domestic furniture (and a very ugly one); pianoforte-playing is a sort of polish to a cursory education. But the reason is chiefly found in the fact that this is the line of least resistance: there are plenty of teachers of pianoforte-playing but few teachers of music, so parents accept that which is available.