Apart altogether from teaching performance, or mere reading, the art of teaching as applied to music itself seems to have lin gered, up to the present, in what are naturally first stages. Just as the first stage of teaching a small child its mother-tongue is naturally that of imitative repetition, so in music the communi cation of the art from mind to mind has, broadly speaking, con tinued to dwell, up to the present, in that region where imitation of the practice of admirable composers is urged upon the learner, or where, at the best, the composer's customs and ways are re duced to certain bye-laws (necessarily with many exceptions) treated as laws, or even as high principles, and invested with an authority often pathetically falsified by events. To take a noto rious example, the excellent bye-law against the writing of so called consecutive fifths in similar motion between any two parts (say a tenor and a bass part) is laid down in almost all text-books, and yet it is cautiously set aside by many, and by others freely flouted, obviously not for caprice, but faithfully.
Still, in spite of the conspicuous absence of an accepted way of teaching music on any logical and generally comprehensible basis —an absence, that is, of any corpus of teaching based on broad principles which commend themselves to the common sense of all men—good sectional teaching has been evolved, either by fol lowing the general course of musical history, or by following merely the particular practice of one period (such as that of the 16th century, for so-called Strict Counterpoint) and sometimes even of one towering, dominating mind (such as that of Bach, for Fugal Counterpoint). There has consequently been a volumi nous and careful output of useful treatises which have done much to help the student, if also often to puzzle him as to the why and wherefore of their inhibitions. These treatises usually still divide musical study into what seem to be arbitrary partitions.
Our leading colleges and academies of music, as well as our university musical faculties, have, up to the present, prescribed courses, both of teaching and of examination in music, broadly under the following six sectional heads :—harmony ; counterpoint; fugue and fugal counterpoint ; musical form ; musical history; composition. The gaps, the overlappings, and the confusions of such a system are glaring, and increasingly disconcerting to teach ers and students alike.
To name but one gap, it will be noticed that melody is not itself a fixed subject of tuition at all, though a moment's thought would probably cause 999 out of any i,000 teachers to admit gladly that if their pupils in all the other sections came to them after a special course in melody, and in the mastery of melodic sense, construction and analysis, their powers to cope with and co-ordinate the rest of their musical studies—including Harmony, Counterpoint, Fugue, Form, and the whole range of Composition —would be measurelessly enhanced.
Again, to name but one of the many overlappings, harmony and counterpoint are practically and admittedly inseparable. It is as impossible to detach harmony from counterpoint as it is impossible to do the simplest cross-word puzzle without thinking both vertically and horizontally. Yet they are definitely divorced for study, though all good teachers help their pupils to the habit of unified thinking.
Finally, to name but one confusion, counterpoint may still be taught by one good teacher (following perhaps Rockstro and R. 0. Morris) as a method of acquiring understanding of sixteenth century musical style, and by another equally good teacher (fol lowing perhaps Albrechtsberger via Macfarren) as a mere arti ficial method of restricted mental exercises under temporary bye laws. As a result, perhaps in the same music school or university, a student may be counselled in his counterpoint exercises to write gracious melody, mostly consisting of steps of a second and leaps of a perfect fourth or fifth (not because they accord with musical principles, but because Palestrina wrote in that way), and in another room he may be told mainly to restrict himself to one chord in a bar and to write a given number of notes to that chord in each exercise, and he may be allowed to leap diminished fifths and major sixths in the process as he pleases, so long as the one chord is maintained.
Obvious as are all three kinds of drawbacks, present-day teach ers of music can at least claim the merit of sending students to consult and emulate the personal perfections of the composers who seem most trustworthy and admirable. But it is clear that we await a new and simpler teaching, more impersonal, more tolerant yet more precise, based on high common-sense.
Three notable factors in today's position as to the gen eral teaching of music throughout the country may here be briefly noted, one of which is new. The first is that the mere technical difficulties of performing music (whether vocally or instrumentally) seem to musical aspirants so numerous and for midable as perpetually to side-track the essential work of the teacher. When a mother says "I wish my daughter to learn music" she naturally means her to learn to play or sing, and to that both time and cost are constantly devoted.