MUSIC, TEACHING OF. As there are three possible parties to any musical transaction, the composer or maker of the music, the performer or reproducer of it, and the listener or appraiser of it, it follows that the art of teaching, as applied to music, naturally falls into three categories: (1) the teaching of the nature of music itself ; the teaching of singing or playing some instrument or of conducting; and (3) the teaching of the appreciation of music. This last manifestly should be the same thing as (I) but without the creative incentive.
The teacher and the self-taught in all three categories have obviously one supreme obligation in common, namely, to train the ear with a serviceable exactitude to detect musical tones and to relate them instantaneously with each other into sensible and delightful order, whether together as chords, or in succession as melody, or in a succession of chords, or a combination of melo dies, as in harmony and counterpoint.
Teachers of singing, and of playing, have the added task of inducing their pupils to hear the whole, of which what they are singing or playing is a contributory part—to see the whole build ing of which they themselves are an essential brick. Consideration of the art of teaching as applied to the act of singing and playing lies beyond the present purpose. But it may be noted with satis faction that in the present day a steadily increasing attention is being given to the crucial matter of ear training. Aural exercises and ear tests are now common in practical examinations, but have yet to become adequate and universal. It is astonishing that they have been so neglected that to-day Doctors of Music can still prob ably be found who cannot with ease give an instant and accurate account of even a few simple chords as they are played, but would "rather see that done on paper." Incidentally the teaching of the art of reading music offers problems and interests of its own to teacher and taught alike. It is with some quite good musicians a life-long problem to learn to correlate the efforts of eye and ear and voice (in singing) or fingers (in playing) into one well-synchronised act. In the study
of a field of literature, or poetry, through the medium of reading it would be a heavy handicap to any lover of fine thought to have to struggle with the mere problems of reading as he went along, and in music there is no reasonable hope of an effectual national culture without a recognition of the proved need and possibility of teaching small children to read music before they leave school.
At the present day it seems quite exceptional, either in a school or in a place of worship where singing is expected, to find even the melody of the tune supplied to the scholars or the congrega tions. Indeed it seems probable that if by some magic wand all the "Words only" editions of hymn books and song books in the whole country could be transformed into "Melody editions" for twenty years, a standing, but apparently needless, difficulty would be automatically removed. The present writer met a young air man during the recent war, who, being driven to find relief from war in trying to make melody for himself, had actually to invent a queer and original notation of his own by the 'ise of numerals in which to write down his melodies.
It is interesting here to note that the thousand-year-old Sol-Fa syllables, by which notes are still to this day set down and learnt, were originally the result of an effort by Guido, a monk of Arezzo, to teach music-reading by associating the first syllable of each line of a certain hymn to St. John the Baptist with one of the six degrees of the hexachord. Just as the monastic schools of Europe contributed to the teaching of music much that was based on immediate experience, so also have our own choir schools, attached to the cathedrals, collegiate chapels, and to some churches. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the great hope of d broad basis of music teaching and of general musical culture lies in the ordinary schools of the country, and to some extent also in that choral singing which is so wholesomely associated with the act of worship.