Educating the Musical Public
Claflin, Avery
40 THE COMMONWEAL May i9, 1926 -all human beings striving after superiority." In many ing the constant...
...The poor child I It probably won't get over or a Paganini, although a little common-sense reflechating music for many a year...
...Nor has any pragmatist musicians of all time...
...was step in the right direction, although not yet quite comasked of Professor Cisek at the Vienna School of prehensively enough developed...
...Still, will constitute a collection of all the important works what is life if not the pursuit of happiness...
...The channels into which is a pleasure and not a chore, the development of his tastes have fallen solidify with age beyond alterataste will largely take care of itself...
...Then we cite our own regrets at not having As for juvenile education, the idea of giving the child practised with more diligence, and suppose such vir- some knowledge of musical literature does not enter tuous repentance will have great weight...
...ment that has touched France and made much of Eng- A young captain in the bersaglieri when he lost his land pro-German...
...But, as many know, it is not a delusion...
...the less, admit that the former's gross ignorance lim- Schubert was a schoolmaster when he had to be...
...He goes about his task assumjob...
...Ideal results can be obtained, provided the music and similarly that the inculcable factors had best be is interesting, the executants competent, and the audi- left unlearned by those lacking the permanent ones...
...In theory to stress the music rather than the execution...
...The operettas of Arthur so complex that the appreciation and enjoyment of Sullivan make an excellent beginning...
...On the other hand, juvenile education in music As for adult education, free or low-priced concerts -as well as in singing and playing-would be a real will always be valuable...
...Reasons The born composer needs no further incentive to get for the non-attainment of the ideal are variously his education and pursue his art...
...very well attended, particularly by members of the The devastating alternative to artistic success is football team, as the professor had the reputation an unpleasant subject for the aspirant or his sponsors of passing everyone...
...Mary Baker Eddy, been or he would not have turned with such disadsuffering, against which human nature revolts in any vantages to make himself a doctor of law in the Unicase, has been treated either as cowardice or a de- versity of Siena, or aspired to wed the lovely daughter lusion...
...Besides, the only equipment to dwell upon...
...Moussorgsky, A great deal of nonsense has been written about a soldier...
...And mitted to light a candle there-but I beg of you to as I believe in the projection of will beyond death, I receive the tiny light I am trying to strike in minds, unbelieve in the energy derived from I know not what religious like mine, and not knowing you yet...
...Those ter provided with faith than I am...
...Yet he has done both of these, belose one's hands and one's eyes in one sudden ghastly cause suffering has developed in him a greatness of explosion is, when all is said by Christian Scientists which in his first happy days his companions never and done by medical scientists, still a calamity...
...an infinitesimal proportion of the survivors is it apPerhaps the saddest spectacle in the musical world preciably developed...
...If an effort is alism...
...But today, development of music, but rather to offer works that the products of genius are so manifold, so diffuse, and are readily understood...
...the volume is concluded with a few Tolstoyism, a mere imitation of Christianity, helped entirely orthodox pages on the possibility of an imita- many of us to realize the value of the gem half fortion of Saint Theresa in our daily lives...
...and Rimsky-Korsakof in the navy...
...years...
...I lament," he writes, which brought such a disaster to all the fervors and "my days of sadness when with eyes full of tears the activities of youth cannot simply be accepted or dis- soul never thirsted, but was fresh and lively as a missed...
...I school work to present a varied assortment of musical like to think of art coloring all departments of life compositions through informal recitals, taking pains rather than being a separate profession...
...After all, it is not learning to read 42 THE COMMONWEAL May i9, 1926 which interests a child in literature, but coming in con- of music...
...the genius colors tempt should be made at first to trace the historical life and the layman enjoys the coloring...
...Also the initiation is essential...
...Unfortunately, our boards of educapublic rehearsals of our principal orchestras...
...into flame the God-given sparks of interest...
...Berlioz was educated for medicine...
...literature...
...Informal musicales or chamber music an octave and set a teacher over it armed with some readings, which afford more intimate acquaintance with deadly exercises and insipid "pieces...
...We have done our duty but the child just isn't ing that the goal is to produce a Malibran, a Liszt, musical...
...Notic- and willingness, from any source, are contagious...
...Leopold Auer, therefore, the one permanent value which he has much whose word in this is weighty, declares that only a chance of instilling is an interest in the art...
...Likes and dislikes will change periodically...
...And for tion are not noted for their sponsoring of the useless the benefit of those who sing, or play instruments, arts...
...tion...
...A young mind can- a collection is ridiculously small...
...Small wonder, then, tion would convince him that practically none of his that we overestimate the ability of the survivors and pupils will get anywhere professionally, and that, literally force them into the arena...
...after the Prince of Piemonte the most famous of The People's War, and The Sacrifice of the Lord are Italy's young men, and a writer whose prose, as the the titles of his two earlier books, and such words as world is beginning to realize, is not only prose but "Holy Sacrifice" would do as a title for any of them...
...and in music fails utterly...
...And here is where education simpler piano works of Chopin and Mendelssohn...
...I believe four out of five peoplemuch of Schubert...
...a restaurant or theatre orchestra...
...Agreeing with Andre L'Hote that neither the will obliterate the surplus of second-raters and not general public nor the snobs have the right to judge impede the genius any more than it did in the past...
...ence possessed of a degree of familiarity with musical Only the second-rate musician is inspired by prizes...
...Nothing is more ravaging to an inferior work But on the whole, the adult can be taught precious than repetition...
...If it was simply and solely the horrible dewy meadow...
...Indeed, the position, execution, appreciation...
...Faith dreamed...
...The not be downed by the buffets of his own generation...
...literature and some critical discrimination...
...Preget a recompensing joy out of his work but, generally liminary to playing a bit of Mozart I recall the old speaking, the professional is too completely bound up gentleman saying squeakily: "Now, gentlemen, when with the business of music to get the same thrill out you hear this you will simply dissolve in pleasure...
...tirely their own...
...In spite ness and love...
...For the most part the blame is not en- I like...
...EDUCATING THE MUSICAL PUBLIC By AVERY CLAFLIN T successful production of music requires cul- half-baked theories materialized to facilitate the adtural development in three distinct fields: com- vancement of the American composer...
...let it be said that Mrs...
...Youth between the Arts and Crafts...
...Fewer second-rate professionals and more to be made it should first be centered upon fanning first-rate amateurs will make of music a sounder, hap...
...Amen...
...And how many amateur work assiduously and it will be amply rewarded in later libraries are there containing even a hundred volumes...
...But our surprise in- what little I know how to do...
...After a few into it...
...Rather than offer inducements to the American comAnd so, the public gets blamed for the crudity of its poser, suppose his path be made more thorny...
...It scandalready to act on people-sick, wretched, anxious-bet- izes a few Catholics, but rejoices many others...
...the idea does not seem to have found favor here...
...An instructor is hired to teach singing or years of torture the task is usually given up as a bad playing an instrument...
...An executant in a good orchestra may needed was a good vocabulary of superlatives...
...Music can be have a potential taste for music...
...To of a nobleman...
...whether a work of art is good or bad, one must, none Handel's father tried to make a lawyer out of him...
...That This is the story he tells in his last and best book, was the discovery of Carlo Delcroix, and the war Seven Uncanonized Saints...
...It would be much for any young man of But the others are Dialogues with the Crowd, and thirty to be...
...if you will, but I believe in the influence of saints, the I shall not take it over to your shrine-it is not perpossibility of miracles, and the power of prayer...
...But in at least three produced like foie gras, but not music worth pro- out of the four it goes to seed entirely...
...maimed...
...If he has the inascribed...
...of us who have lived long enough to remember how This is not all...
...In Europe the prinnot be expected to show any more interest in Bach cipal music sellers have circulating pay collections, but than it would take in Chaucer...
...Through Fascismo Italy found in hands and his eyes, Carlo Delcroix is now one of the the war an inspiration, and Delcroix is the prophet of most powerful speakers in the Chamber of Deputies, the salvation she has won from ardors and endurances...
...What more dismal in- However, it required a more potent solvent than ferno for the man who loves the art than to plidge- Mozart to melt the two-hundred-pound tackle beside plodge his way through life on the double-bass of me, or even distract him from preparing his math...
...of it that the amateur does...
...with it...
...Yet the number of libraries possessing such tact with stimulating experiences...
...Yet it Schumann's mother obliged him to study jurispruis precisely the hearer whose education is being most dence...
...If the students like Tschaikowsky, stuff them which cannot be had in the concert hall...
...Cui, a military engineer...
...I followed such a course once...
...It is far more important to stimulate an interest in To date, the greatest credit for the musical education any kind of music than to insist upon a purely classical of the public must be given to the phonograph and diet...
...was a chemist...
...cannot restore the loss...
...it is extraordinary in one blind and Seven Uncanonized Saints...
...praise of suffering...
...They may have been misled by The initial difficulty is that musical literature is teachers eager for repute, or have had sponsors who peculiarly inaccessible...
...No atat least, Professor Cisek is right...
...Misfortune lent me her greatness, calamity that it was, if it led to the glory of victory weeping opened her poesy to me and, in conflict with...
...Borodine thoroughly neglected...
...music, but the bestowal upon its hearers of a maxi- Yet it must be evident that the only permanent values mum of pleasure and stimulation...
...its drastically the scope of its own pleasure...
...in a composer are just those which cannot be taught...
...some drama of the individual soul: and the words of Delcroix is not simply a Fascista : but his books in Delcroix in their sensitiveness and passion are docutheir terrible eloquence and beauty are the evangel of ments of his own history, of the life which admitted that new enthusiasm which gave to Italy an impulse all the ghastliness of his calamity, and in doing so from victorious war that contrasts with the disillusion- made it an inspiration...
...His writings tell how it happened that, The theme which Delcroix repeats with variations, being a young man of no particular mark at the time and with an increase of mastery and power, is the of his disaster, he has become famous in a few years...
...ously happy analysis of the History of a Soul, Madame Such as it is, with its fervor and its flippancy, its Delarue comes out with the calm statement: "Laugh mockery and its exalted emotiveness, please accept it...
...A the radio, uniquely because they afford that intimate taste for jazz at fifteen will be largely outgrown at acquaintance and opportunity for repeated hearings twenty...
...In the few times in his whole experience has he, "been able end the child may learn to play, but he won't have to deter parents who cherished . . . an ambition been taught much about music...
...Not as a rule," he replied, "they ages of ten and eighteen is curious and unprejudiced...
...artists contend they must make them so, or starve...
...How often is the remark heard, is that of the mediocre executants who will never be "I don't know anything about music, but I know what anything else...
...THE SOUL OF YOUNG ITALY By ROBERT SENCOURT T HE political movement which dominates Italy and revival in a country, then it involved some mysterihas found in Carlo Delcroix a literary genius ous conflict, some tragic philosophical significance, whose fame may live with that of Mussolini...
...That the last funds, prizes, scholarships, and inducements now of these is quite as important as the first has never established would have supported for life the great been adequately stressed...
...paper criticism, account for what most adults know We drive the child to the piano before it can stretch about music...
...Some sini, and early Verdi are easily grasped...
...Sawthe development of a national music and a good many ing through a few knots of life will develop a creative May r9, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL gift better than a milk and honey diet...
...The agony is acute...
...Justine Ward's system is a "And do many of your children go in for art...
...We tell it to music, are rare in this age...
...In many ing the constant progress which page after page beplaces, this so-called unbeliever, certainly ignorant of trays, we are more touched than startled to read the a great deal that is elementary in Catholicism, aston- final ex-voto ishes us by her comprehension of much that is far Saint Theresa of Lisieux: from being elementary, or is entirely remote from the Like the juggler of Notre Dame, I have done for you tendencies of modern scepticism...
...It was profession...
...go into all sorts of professions and trades...
...Then It would be quite feasible in the course of ordinary adding, "That's quite right, that's what I like...
...The fact that, as Stendhal remarked of the Emthe music collections in our circulating libraries should peror Titus's Arch of Triumph, "anything so useless be improved...
...Likewise public or semi- achievement...
...Later on he may go for their child, or to save the young `virtuoso' from to a college where there is a course on appreciation certain failure by inducing him to take up some other of music...
...Yet when they begin consistently to discourage profession- the problem is far from insoluble...
...Our teachers and It is safe to say that anyone who knows musical c..nservatories will take a step in the right direction literature even tolerably is 99 percent self-taught...
...In the modern age, and most of A man of will and courage he must always have all among the admirers of Mrs...
...The fleeting impressions of pushed them for various reasons...
...Please creases when, toward the end of her patient and obvi- accept it...
...40 THE COMMONWEAL May i9, 1926 -all human beings striving after superiority...
...This tastes...
...Here is my book...
...divine) Breath continuing after the human being Let this unhallowed wax, burned in homage to you, the half-sister of the Rose, convince you of my willingvisited by the Breath is no longer with us...
...The vocabu- gotten in our hand, will not be ready to dismiss the lary is not the one to which we are accustomed- matter with a mere statement that there are enough often too accustomed-but the spirit is the truly books written about Sister Theresa by Catholics : love Catholic spirit of submission and renunciation...
...The net result but provides a yet pointed out that from his standpoint, the goal is livelihood for a number of dubious musicians endowed not the creation or competent rendition of a work of thereby with a distorted estimate of their own merits...
...Once it is gotten across that music little about amusing himself...
...In fact, our entire the concert hall, stabilized by next morning's newssystem of musical education must bear the censure...
...The musically well-educated deplore the spiration that will stand the ravages of time he will general banality of our concert programs...
...of my rage against the poor taste of the Lisieux chapel, I am convinced that this chapel is full of fluids What will be the effect of such a book...
...Weber, Rosthem is not as matter of fact as it was once...
...And in only ducing...
...Here pier, and more cherished pursuit...
...A thousand dollars judiciously spent can afford so much pleasure," bears little weight...
Vol. 4 • May 1926 • No. 2
