The Boston teaching was especially weak in dealing with rhythm, and for a perfectly simple reason. Rhythm was taught, not as action, which it is, but as symbol, which it is not. The various rhythmic figures were taught, in other words, through the mind instead of through the body. These rhythmic figures were given arbitrary names (to which I have already referred), and the children, looking at the symbols, were told the strange name given to them, and, sitting quite still, produced the required sounds. The teachers did not even beat the time. The usual answer we got when asking about rhythm was, “Oh, they feel the rhythm.” This may have been true, but, if it were, the children were extreme individualists! This sort of rhythmic teaching is common in the United States and the defect is a grave one. The arithmetical complications of rhythm in music should never be taught to little children at all. Just as they should sing the melody by imitating the teacher, so they should be taught the rhythm by imitating, in action, the time value of the notes. A child who has sung a simple folk-song many times, and has danced, or marched, or clapped his hands in exact time and rhythm with the notes, can be taught later the pitch names and the time names of those notes without the slightest difficulty and without any subterfuge whatever. In a schoolroom containing some forty children, and with the space largely occupied by desks and seats, it is, of course, impossible to carry on any extended exercises in rhythm. But every effort should be made to teach musical rhythms as action before they are taught as sounds. Whenever possible classes should be taken to the assembly room, where there is a sufficiently large open floor space, for such exercises.
But the most distressing condition in the Boston schools—and this would be more or less true everywhere in our country—was that all the children in the kindergarten and primary grades were learning such songs as would eventually destroy their natural taste for fine music. This is the one great indictment against public school music in the United States—that it has been made to order for schoolbooks, and to fit technical problems, and that it consequently fails to keep the allegiance of children. Nothing but the best will ever do that, and until we supply the best our school music is bound to fail. Our committee, as a preliminary step toward reform, recommended that all instruction in reading music should be postponed until the last half of the third grade. This allowed us to institute singing by ear and at the same time to teach rhythm by beating time, clapping hands, marching, etc. A book of folk-songs was compiled by Dr. Davison and myself and was adopted and published[7] by the School Committee. The greatest difficulty here has been to get suitable verses for the simpler songs. We have spent much time over this one matter and have not, even then, always been successful. Good verses for very young children are difficult to secure, and—to instance how painstaking the process of making a book of such songs is—we have sometimes received half a dozen sets of verses for a simple melody without finding one that we thought suitable.
It is perhaps too soon to draw very definite conclusions from the results of these reforms in the Boston schools. One thing is certain: a very large number of children five, six, and seven years of age are now singing really beautiful songs without seeing any music at all and without being told anything whatever about the notes, rests, intervals, etc., which occur in them. Upon the experience of these two and one half years of singing by ear we shall build up skill in singing by note and this skill will be acquired with much greater ease than would be otherwise possible. It is also worth noting that the expense of music books in these grades (and the same will be true of later grades) is more than cut in half. In the kindergarten and the first primary grades the children sing without a book; in the second and third grades they use a simple and inexpensive book of words, while the teachers in these grades use the small collection of folk-songs already referred to.
In the Boston schools ninety minutes a week is given to drawing, and sixty minutes a week to music. It is obvious that a daily lesson in music twelve minutes long is entirely inadequate for proper instruction. An increase to twenty minutes a day, or to three half-hours a week is highly desirable. In many schools entirely too much time is devoted to preparing music for the graduation exercises. Failing an examination, what is there left but an exhibition?
It is a task of real difficulty to reform any strongly entrenched system or method of education. What is conclusively demonstrated as a more sensible method runs against self-interest, tradition, intellectual immovability (to use a moderate term!), and other even more violent opposition. The reforms we are instituting in Boston need the combined force of all the persons in authority, of all the teaching staff, and of public opinion. No one of these forces is being fully exerted owing to circumstances over which we have no control. But we have accomplished something, for we have reduced the expense and we have simplified the teaching; and each of these improvements was sadly needed.
VI. OTHER ACTIVITIES IN SCHOOL MUSIC
One of the encouraging signs of our advancement is in orchestral playing. School orchestras have become important features of school life, and the excellence of some of the orchestral playing is remarkable. It often outshines the singing, and it is frequently self-contained, being under the direction, not of the music teachers, but of the head master or one of his assistants. In this department of music teaching, as in the singing lessons, much depends on the attitude of the head master. In our Boston schools there are notable examples of fine music fostered and sustained by enthusiastic head masters who lay great stress on that as contrasted with mere technical expertness. Credit toward the high-school diploma is now given in Boston for study of the pianoforte or an orchestral instrument outside school hours and with independent teachers. Lists are issued to indicate the standard of music and of performance for each grade, and certificates of hours of practice are required of parents. This system of credits depends for its success on securing competent examiners not otherwise connected with the schools, for by this means poor teachers are gradually eliminated. Many schoolrooms are provided with phonographs which may be a powerful factor in building up or in breaking down the taste of children. An approved list of records for the Boston schools is in course of preparation in order to eliminate undesirable music and to increase the usefulness of the instruments.
Singing by ear spontaneously and without technical instruction, but rather for the joy of doing it, and for the formation of the taste on good models, is the proper beginning of all musical education. Such experience, coupled with proper rhythmic exercises, constitutes a real basis, not only for sight-singing, but for performance on any instrument. No child should be admitted for possible credit in pianoforte playing or be allowed to enter violin classes until so prepared in singing and in rhythm. The pianoforte neither reveals nor corrects the defective ear; the violin, on the other hand, does reveal it, though it does not necessarily correct it. Defective rhythm can be properly corrected only through actual rhythmic motions of the body.
Many high schools now offer courses in what is called “The Appreciation of Music.” The success of such courses depends to a considerable extent on the quality of music used in the primary and grammar grades. If the children have been singing inferior music for eight years, the difficulties of teaching them to appreciate the best is correspondingly increased. If, on the contrary, their taste has been carefully formed on good models, the introduction to great music has already been made. In studying symphonies, for example, one would begin with Haydn whose symphonies and chamber music are largely based on folk-melodies. In short, courses in appreciation should be the culmination of the musical education of our young people. Such courses should have for their object, first and foremost, the cultivation of the musical memory, for this is an absolute essential to anybody who hopes to listen to music intelligently. After this has been accomplished, the student should listen to simple instrumental pieces whose style and form should be explained, and the explanation should be as untechnical[8] as possible. Each of the properties or qualities of music is susceptible of treatment on the broad grounds of æsthetics, and one’s success in teaching young people to understand it depends considerably on the ability so to present it. The instructor and an assistant should play on a pianoforte all the music studied, or, failing that, a mechanical piano-player should be used.
And now let me say that the most important and beneficial step any community could take toward improving its school music would be to secure a supervisor who is untainted by current American pedagogical theories of sight-singing, who will not attempt to teach little children something they cannot possibly understand, and who will use nothing but the best music from the kindergarten to the high school. No community is really helpless if it will bestir itself. If our public school music teaching were well devised and properly administered and if our children were taught to sing nothing but the best music, we might look forward to a time, not far distant, when a generation of music-lovers would take the place of the present generation of music-tasters. Our young people would gravitate naturally into choirs and singing societies. Groups of people would gather together to sing; families would sing together; there would be chamber music parties; we should pass many a quiet domestic evening at home listening to Mozart and Beethoven instead of playing bridge or going to a moving-picture theater. The whole body of American music would be affected by the influx of those young people who would want the best. In course of time, perhaps,—although one must not expect the millennium,—the vapid drawing-room song would disappear along with the tinkling pianoforte show-piece. ’Cellists would play something better than pieces by Popper; the thirteenth concerto by Viotti and the thirtieth Hungarian rhapsodie would be relegated to that limbo where now repose (we hope in death) the “Battle of Prague” and “Monastery Bells.” This cannot be brought about casually. We must set about it; and the place to begin is in our public schools.