As stated in a bulletin of the university, the School of Music stands ready to assist any community in strengthening its musical life by the following means:
1.Itgives advice to communities desiring such aid, by sending to it an expert who studies the situation, and, with local representatives, prepares a plan of action.2.Itsupplies lists of materials, names of persons and books that would be helpful to the plan.3.Itrents out at low cost such materials, including chorus music and material for bands and orchestras.4.Itsupplies at reasonable prices musical attractions of high quality and wide variety, such as concerts and lecture recitals—singly or in series.5.Itassists in providing competent music teachers to communities which are too small to support them unaided. These teachers direct the music in the public schools and assist in general community music, both vocal and instrumental, and in the music of churches and social organizations.6.Throughthe coöperation of the Wisconsin University School of Music, the American Federation of Music, and other organizations, it assists in building up bands and orchestras throughout the State by supplying organizers and teachers.7.Itconducts correspondence courses in which experts give advice in solving the various problems which arise in connection with school and church music, bands, orchestras, choruses, and concerts.
1.Itgives advice to communities desiring such aid, by sending to it an expert who studies the situation, and, with local representatives, prepares a plan of action.
2.Itsupplies lists of materials, names of persons and books that would be helpful to the plan.
3.Itrents out at low cost such materials, including chorus music and material for bands and orchestras.
4.Itsupplies at reasonable prices musical attractions of high quality and wide variety, such as concerts and lecture recitals—singly or in series.
5.Itassists in providing competent music teachers to communities which are too small to support them unaided. These teachers direct the music in the public schools and assist in general community music, both vocal and instrumental, and in the music of churches and social organizations.
6.Throughthe coöperation of the Wisconsin University School of Music, the American Federation of Music, and other organizations, it assists in building up bands and orchestras throughout the State by supplying organizers and teachers.
7.Itconducts correspondence courses in which experts give advice in solving the various problems which arise in connection with school and church music, bands, orchestras, choruses, and concerts.
Truly an extensive program and one worthy of emulation.
The introduction of music into the public schools has already been discussed. It is a great tribute tothe soundness of the pedagogic principles laid down by Mason and Woodbridge, the pioneers in juvenile musical education, that, despite the many new methods which have been tried, music in the public school is largely conducted along the original lines. Singing in chorus with use of specially prepared and successively graded exercises printed on charts or written on the blackboard and song books, and, most important of all, under the leadership of a teacher with winning personality and knowledge of the childish mind, has been found to produce the best results. So great proficiency has been achieved in the training of juvenile choruses for musical festivals that the only really satisfactory choruses given by a great multitude of persons are the choruses of children, some of which have exceeded three thousand voices.
The basis of juvenile instruction in music is marked rhythm and simple melody, with a short range of pitch, which are best taught in unison. The voices of the children with a good natural ear being fortunately in a large majority they tend to correct the defective auditory perception of the minority.
When the voices of the children are sufficiently trained by singing together simple rote songs, musical analysis is begun. The notes are taught to be recognized first by the ear, and then by the eye, and a practical application of this knowledge is made by exercises and songs. The same general process is pursued until, by the time the pupil reaches the higher grades, he has acquired an ability to sing at sight any new song which a non-professional musician is likely to be called on to render.
In small American towns the regular teachers in the public schools carry on musical exercises. But they are not without easy access to knowledge of approved methods, for this is published in a special magazine, 'The School Music Monthly,' which was established in1900. Many other magazines, educational as well as musical, contain articles and even departments on the subject.
Furthermore, there exists a great and influential organization, the Music Teachers' National Association, which was founded in 1876 with Dr. Eben Tourjée as its president. This uses every means in the power of an extra-governmental association to keep up the standard of musical education in the country. It holds annual sessions wherein methods in musical pedagogy are presented and discussed. In many states similar associations are found whose membership is confined to music teachers in the state. These are not affiliated with the National Association, and their activities are less general in scope, although of more immediate interest to the members because applied to matters of special concern.
Cities of from 8,000 to 200,000 inhabitants usually employ a special teacher to direct instruction in music in the public schools. Larger cities have a number of these teachers and one or more supervisors or directors of public school music. New York, for example, has one director, one assistant director and fifty-six special teachers. From the vastness and complexity of the situation in the largest cities, musical education has of necessity become highly systematized and correspondingly efficient.
New York perfected its system about 1900. The capstone may be said to be the public musical lectures and performances given in connection with the evening lecture courses presented in the public schools and other public buildings under the general auspices of the Board of Education and the special supervision of Dr. Henry M. Leipziger.
Indeed, it is only since the beginning of the century that the country in general has come to recognize at all adequately the supreme importance of musicalculture to community or civic life. As a result of this recognition there has been a general movement in the central and western states, and in encouragement of the study of music to add the forces of private instruction to public by giving credit in the schools for musical work done outside of them, which credit many state universities have in turn accepted by admitting high school graduates upon their certificates.
A more spectacular expression of appreciation of the value of music to community life is the growing use of children's singing for musical festivals, concerts, and pageants. In many cities the performance by public school children of concerts ranging from simple unison songs to part songs, cantatas, and even light operas has become a regular feature of community life. In many cases school orchestras and bands have accompanied the choruses. In this way the public schools have become foreshadowings of the conservatories and the university schools of music. In time the weak spot in our higher musical curricula, the course in 'musical appreciation' which so many idlers follow as a 'royal road' to a musical education (although it is found in none of the Royal Conservatories of Europe), will have no excuse for being retained, for our high school pupils will already possess it in sufficient measure to pursue with zest the hard technical courses the mastery of which is necessary to the making of a real musician.
While the American people have shown themselves opposed to the conduct or subsidization of music by the national government, as this has been often proposed in plans for a national conservatory, we have seen, in the case of Wisconsin, that this does not apply to the state governments, at least in respect to the featureof popular education in music. Still less does it apply to the conduct of music by the municipal government. For many years the 'city fathers' of most American municipalities have provided band concerts in the public parks during the summer season. The programs of these concerts, however, until quite recently, were planned with little regard to education of the people in appreciation of the best music—the selections being of the so-called 'popular' order, the prevalent opinion of the directors being that the mass of the American people did not enjoy music of a high order.
A few far-seeing men, whose prescience was based on long and intimate acquaintance with the musical taste of every class in the community, had a confident faith that if selections of the best music were placed on the programs of the park concerts the public would become rapidly educated to prefer them to the other selections. This was done, and the result showed that the proposers of the innovation had been, if anything, too reserved in their prophecy. From the very beginning the new selections met with favor. Music lovers, many attending for the first time, crowded into the parks to hear the concerts and, by their intense interest during the performance and enthusiastic hand-clapping at its close, they not only silenced opposition, but even converted it into approval.
Said Arthur Farwell, supervisor of municipal music in New York from 1910 to 1913, in 'The Craftsmen' (Nov., 1910): 'The little comedy of resistance to classical music on the part of the average American man ends when he finds himself one of fifteen thousand similar persons—as happened repeatedly in New York this summer—listening in perfect silence to the great musical imaginings of the age by that most wonderful of instruments, the modern orchestra in the hands of a capable leader.'
New York is the acknowledged leader of American cities, and in many respects is their model in this development of municipal music from the most defective of instrumentalities for educating the people in musical appreciation into possibly its most effective one. Accordingly the story of the regeneration wrought in this municipality will indicate better than any other account the movement in the same direction all over the country. And for purposes of record it is well to quote Mr. Farwell, who in his official position was mainly responsible for the revolution:
'Municipal music in New York falls within the province of two departments, the Department of Parks and the Department of Docks and Ferries. It has been customary in the past to have frequent band and orchestral concerts at the Mall in Central Park with organizations of some size, and to have weekly concerts by smaller bands of twenty-one men and a leader in a number of the other parks. It has also been customary to have concerts nightly on all of the nine recreation piers on the North and East Rivers.
'Without describing the status of most of the music in the past, it may at least be said that the administrations supporting it let the work out to many independent band leaders, without requiring the upholding of musical standards, or having the means to uphold them, and without even suggesting such standards.
'The task of the new department heads, Charles B. Stover, Commissioner of the Department of Parks, and Calvin Tomkins, Commissioner of the Department of Docks and Ferries,[59]was therefore to place the work of providing municipal music upon a basis admitting of musical standards, and thus to make possible the systematic carrying out of new and progressive ideas.
'In the Park Department, Commissioner Stover's firstact in extending the scope and influence of the municipal music was to increase the number of music centres. Most important of all, he increased the number of symphony orchestras to two, and opened a new music centre for orchestral music at McGowan's Pass in the upper end of the park, where there is a natural amphitheatre. The crowds from the upper East Side that frequent this portion of the park are made up of persons who for the most part have never heard a symphony orchestra. It is an interesting fact that at the first concert given them there was much curiosity, but little real response, up to the performance of a movement from a Beethoven symphony, which brought forth prolonged and enthusiastic applause until an encore number was played. The concerts at McGowan's Pass have grown steadily and rapidly in popularity, eager audiences of from four to six thousand, or more, assembling at every performance....
'One other feature of fundamental importance in any truly national development, a feature wholly new, has marked the season's concerts in Central Park. This is the establishment by Commissioner Stover of a rule that each of the two orchestras shall perform one new or little-heard composition by an American composer each week. This is a step of the utmost moment, not so much in the mere gaining of a hearing for the works now performed, as in the recognition of the composers of our own land as a factor in the creation of America's dawning musical democracy.
'On the recreation piers the band concerts provided by the Dock Department have been enjoyed by many thousands. An innovation there has been to classify the program, and give the concerts distinctive character on different evenings—an Italian Opera Night, American Night, Wagner Night, Folk Songs and Dances, German-Slavonic Night, etc....
'In these activities of only a single summer, it willbe seen what a vista of possibilities has been revealed. If these developments have any meaning whatsoever, they have a meaning of the deepest sort for every American city and village. The magnitude of New York's operations is not the most important point. We are most deeply concerned with the spirit of these progressive activities, a spirit which may find its appropriate expression wherever there exists a community, large or small, which senses the upward trend of American humanity and democracy.'
M. M. M.