5. To explain principles after practice (the inductive method).
6. Analysis and practice of articulation of speech in order to use it in song.
To apply this revolutionary method to teaching music was the central purpose of the establishment of the Boston Academy of Music. It had a useful career during the fourteen years of its existence. Mr. Mason, like Mr. Adgate, of Philadelphia, believed in 'music for the people,' and his generosity in extending this without considering material profit kept the institution in constant need of funds until it gave up the struggle and closed its doors in 1847.
The Academy was more than a New England institution: it was a national one, in that music teachers in every part of the country wrote to it for guidance in their work. And it left behind it the finest of mmorials, the establishment in Boston, and, through Boston's example, all over the nation, of music in the public schools, not merely as a relief from other studies, but as a study itself. This innovation was made by the city fathers of Boston in 1837, after a trial of the propositions had proved successful. T. Kemper Davis, chairman of the school committee, made a long and learned report upon the subject which is a classic of its kind, and as such may be read with profit by teachers of music, particularly those in the public schools.[56]
Music in the public schools of New York had an independent origin. In 1835 Darius E. Jones experimented with the idea of forming singing classes in the schools and teaching them without compensation. The trial was successful, and the school board gave him permission to continue the work provided no expense was incurred and regular studies were not interfered with. Music in the New York schools was not effectively recognized by provision for compensation until 1853. T. B. Mason, the brother of Lowell Mason, introduced singing in the public schools of Cincinnati. Pittsburgh began such instruction in 1840. Nathaniel D. Gould, a music teacher and composer, claimed to have been the first to teach singing to children in a systematic method. From 1820 onward he organized such classes in New England, New York, and New Jersey.
The recognition by municipal authority of music as an essential element of education has been ratified in the fullest manner by national authority. Philander P. Claxton, United States Commissioner of Education, addressing the National Education Association convened at St. Paul, in July, 1914, asserted that music is of more practical value than any subject of the usual curriculum, except reading and writing, and with these studies, and physical culture and arithmetic, forms the fundamentals in elementary education.
While in the later thirties colleges and universities were not prepared to grant music a place in the academic curriculum, they began to recognize it as an important element of culture, and to extend to it their patronage. In 1838 William Robyn, a professor in St. Louis University, formed, under the auspices of the institution, a musical society called the 'Philharmonic' for the performance of public concerts. These were well patronized.[57]
IV
The German immigration was in full force in the forties, cities such as St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Milwaukee becoming the homes of great numbers of this music-loving people. In the broad sense of the term, they formed the greatest educational influence in music that the country had yet received. It is said that wherever two Germans settled in America they organized themselves into a Sängerbund. Tyrolese and Swiss singers and bell-ringers began to tour the country in 1840 and delighted Americans of every class—even now they are popular in the Chautauqua circles. However, when, lured by the success of the jodlers, really fine German bands, such as the Steiermarkers, Gungl's band, the Saxonia and Germania, came over in quest of American dollars, they met with consistent failure, and were forced to dissolve—to the great benefit of American musical education, for the individual members generally became teachers of instrumental music in the localities where they were stranded. It was only by playing dance music and popular airs that the bands met with any success whatsoever. Gungl (whose 'Railroad Galop,' an imitative composition, was the most popular in his répertoire) wrote home to a musical journal in Berlin that music 'lies still in the cradle here and nourishes herself on sugar-teats.'
The sentimental strain in German vocal music of the period made it more popular than German instrumental music, in that the American palate had been prepared for sentimentality by a saccharine sort of psalmody and secular music which was being sprinkled over the country by a second generation of Yankee music teachers of the Billings order. Elijah K. Prouty and Moses E. Cheney were leading representatives of this class. Prouty was a peddler, singing teacher, and piano tuner. Cheney was a leader of a church choir. In 1839 they organized and conducted a musical 'convention' at Montpelier, Vt., at which, with shrewd perception of popular interest in novelty and variety, they practised 'unusual tunes, anthems, male quartets, and duets and solos for both sexes.' For the secular music they used the 'Boston Glee Book and Social Choir,' compiled by George Kingsley. In order to attract the attendance of non-musical people, in the intervals between performances short debates were held between the local ministers, lawyers, and other prominent citizens.