In science you have general laws, and from these deduce particular facts depending upon them, but collections of facts and phenomena without connection you must learn by heart. The extensive and involved nomenclature of music, added to the complicated and inconsistent system of notation, is a continual and exhausting strain upon the memory. Teachers commence their drill in vocalization, as a rule, with the scale of the key of C, and the pupils, fired with a noble ambition to become musicians, make a strenuous effort to remember where do, ré, mi and the other notes are placed on the lines and spaces of the staff. Presently the "key is changed," and with that change comes chaos. All the notes are now on a different series of lines and spaces. The confusion continues until the series of seven notes is exhausted. Then come scales with new names, commencing upon different notes (flats and sharps), but with places on the staff identically the same as others having different names!
Long before this point is reached by the pupil his courage flags, his ambition cools, and in the greater number of cases dies out altogether. To be sure, if he has the rare courage to persist he will come to recognize the notes of any key, not by the number of lines or spaces intervening between them and some landmark, but by their relative distances from[page 239] each other measured by the eye. But this requires long practice. At first he must remember if he can, and when he cannot he must count up to his unknown note from some remembered one. It is, at best, a labor of Sisyphus. With many people—bright and intelligent people, too—it requires years of practice to read new music at sight even tolerably readily; for it is not simply a question of learning the notes, difficult as that may be: there is a further difficulty, and to many even a greater difficulty—that of the measure. Not the number of beats in a measure or bar and their proper accentuation—this is but the alphabet of time—but to group correctly and rapidly the fractional notes, rests and prolongations in their proper place in time. In very rapid music this becomes an herculean task, requiring long-continued and arduous practice. It is not simply a question of nice appreciation of rhythm, but of mathematical calculation, to know instantly and unhesitatingly, for example, that one-sixteenth, one half of one-sixteenth and one thirty-second added together equal one-eighth—that is, one-third of the unit of time or beat in six-eighths time.
Any one can see that such mental feats, ever varying as they are in music, and demanding instant solution at the same time the attention is given to the intonation, style, etc., must require an exceptional temperament and natural capacity. The fact is, it is beyond the power of most musicians. They must practise their instrumental and vocal music, and learn it nearly "by heart," before they attempt to perform it for others.
The writer of this has attended a class taught by one of Chevé's pupils, and can testify to the efficiency of the method, though the lessons were a very modest attempt to exemplify the perfection of the system. The lessons of M. and Mme. Chevé were divided into three parts: first, a drill in the principles of the theory of music; second, singing scales and exercises; third, drills in "reading time," beating time, analyzing time, etc., ending with some diverting "round" or "catch" or some exercise in vocal harmonies. On their method of teaching time, more than on any other part of their system perhaps, did the grand success of the Chevés depend. Rhythm was always taught separately from intonation, it being contrary to their principle to present two difficulties together before each had been mastered alone.
The first grand law of Galin's system is that every isolated symbol represents a unit of time or beat, whatever the measure. For example:
| 5 | , unit of sound articulated. |
| • | , unit of sound prolonged. |
| 0 | , unit of silence. |
The second law is that the various divisions of the unit of time are always united in a group under a principal bar, and such a bar always contains the unit of time—never more, never less. To illustrate:
H a l v e s . | __ 55 | T h i r d s . | ___ 555 | |
__•• | ___••• | |||
| __ 00 | ___ 000 |
Here the units of time—the numeral, the dot and the cipher—are divided first into two equal parts, and then into three. In both cases the groups represent units of time—one beat of a measure—according to the rule. It will be noticed that the form of the notes is the same whether whole or divided into fractions; that is, there are no different forms for "crotchets," "quavers," "semiquavers," etc., the expression of time being better provided for. Thus, halves or thirds are indicated to the eye by a single bar surmounting two signs for halves, three for thirds. If the halves or thirds have in their turn been divided by two, then the principal bar covers two little groups of two signs each; if the halves or thirds have been divided by three, then each principal bar covers two or three little groups of three signs each.
Nothing could be more simple than this. The eye has always before it, separate and distinct, the unit of time or beat; and the mind apprehends instantly the number of articulated sounds, prolongations or silences (rests) that must[page 240] be sung or played during that beat. The eye has no hesitation, the mind no calculation, as to what note commences or ends a beat. Even the most modest student of music will see the immense advantage of this. Nor is there any need for the multiplicity of fractions to express different kinds of time. The moment the eye rests upon the score the student knows the measure as definitely and certainly as he knows the letters of the alphabet.