[55] See Thayer's 'Life of Beethoven.'
CHAPTER X
MUSICAL EDUCATION IN AMERICA
Early singing teachers and schools—Music societies in colleges—Introduction of music in the public schools—The Germanic influence—Conservatories—Musical courses in colleges and universities; community music—Present state of public school music—Municipal music.
There seems to be general agreement among students of American music that we are entering upon a national era. That we did not attain this stage long before has generally been laid to the inadequacy of our educational system in music. A less apparent yet more rational statement would be that our educational equipment, growing with the increasing culture of the people and adapting itself to their timely needs and developing comprehension, was the kind most desirable. A 'mugwump' was defined by General Horace Porter as 'a man educated beyond his ability.' Had a European system of musical education, however theoretically ideal, been imposed on young America when necessarily occupied with material problems, we might now be a nation of musical mugwumps, smugly satisfied with ourselves, and incapable of original achievement.
If it be granted, then, that musical culture is conditioned, in kind and degree, upon the character of the people concerned, then the colonization of our country becomes a subject of prime importance, affording, indeed, the best logical method, in conjunction with a general chronological order, for discussing the present subject.
The various colonies which were planted on our eastern shores developed by permeating in successive waves of immigration New York, northern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and Michigan and Wisconsin; thence the lines became divergent, broadening through the trans-Mississippi plains until, emerging on the Pacific, they embrace the entire coast, from Seattle to Los Angeles. While the original spirit has been greatly tempered in the course of this progress, its distinctive character still remains—a pale tinge of Puritanism, as it were, which colors every expression of life, and which can be traced on the sociological map of the United States by a narrowing belt of ever-deepening hue, back to its undiluted source: the all-pervasive theocracy of colonial New England.
From the time when this religious influence began to reach beyond its original boundaries, it met and amalgamated, in a social though not sectarian sense, with Presbyterianism, a kindred spirit which, somewhat later than Puritanism, came to America, largely from Scotland, and took root in almost all the colonies from New York to the Carolinas. The 'blue laws' of Connecticut, so repressive of the graces of life, of love and laughter and music, found their counterpart in the Westminster Catechism, wherein the 'moral law,' that is, the regulation of social relations, is said to be 'summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments,' the first four of which are specifically religious.
Religion being the dominant factor in this stream of social influence which flowed through America, and the Bible standing as the chief and final authority on all matters of life, music, the ever-willing handmaid of every human institution asking her assistance, was naturally drafted into the exclusive service of the church. The first singing books were psalm books; the first singing schools were organized for the purpose of the instruction and training of church congregations and church choirs.
I
Private instruction in music was unknown for more than a century after the settlement of the country. In 1673 the British Commissioner for the Plantations reported that there were no 'musicians by trade' in the United States. Indeed, it was not until 1730 that an advertisement appears of a music teacher. In that year a newspaper in Charleston, S. C., printed a notice that John Salter was teaching music in a young ladies' boarding school conducted by his wife.