Music As A Language Part 3

It is advisable to limit the work at first to melodies which do not modulate to the relative major. Later on, when the children are fairly fluent, they can take these. At first they will have to make use of 'bridge-notes' at the modulation, but, with a little practice, they will soon be able to sing at sight to _lah_.

_Part-singing._

Children should not be allowed to sing part-songs until they can sing at sight in parts. The reason for this is that in the majority of part-songs the under parts are written too low for the child voice, and if they are _practised_ several times in succession, harm is likely to result. If, on the other hand, the songs can be read at sight, the parts can be interchanged, and the voices of the children do not suffer to the same extent. The greatest difficulty in teaching part-singing is a moral one: a child who takes an under part does not like the feeling of some one singing above her. The voices must be divided carefully for this work--some teachers prefer to get the balance on the side of the under parts, in order to avoid the feeling that it is necessary to shout in order to be heard! The ideal plan is to interchange the parts freely at the same lesson.

Exercises should be chosen at first in which the under part starts on a fairly high note and, if possible, before the upper part enters, in order to give confidence. The under part should also move freely, and should not consist of long holding notes. Exercises in which the parts cross afford excellent practice. Good instances of easy exercises are to be found in Nos. 9, 68, 80, 101, &c. in Book III of _A Thousand Exercises_; also in the many canons to be found in that book.

Sight-singing in three parts should always begin with exercises written in the contrapuntal style. There are instances of these in _Three-part Vocal Exercises_, by Raymond, published by Weekes & Sons. This book is also suitable for use where men's voices are obtainable, the two treble parts being taken by two tenors, and the transposed alto part by a ba.s.s.

A good series of part-songs is to be found in the Year Book Press, which only admits songs by standard composers.

CHAPTER VII

THE TEACHING OF TIME AND RHYTHM

It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of careful study before a teacher attempts to train children in a sense of time and rhythm.

Not only must an intellectual conception of the importance of the subject be arrived at, but a subconscious realization of it. The function of rhythm in the world should be perceived, and such natural phenomena as day and night, the seasons, the tides, and countless others, seem to be examples of the same principle. The same influence may be traced in social activities. Work cannot be organized and carried on where rhythmic order is not found, and no conception of the brain or of the artistic faculty can emerge uninformed by rhythmic continuity.

A human being imperfectly endowed with a sense of balance or rhythm is a danger to the community, and one who is entirely without this sense is spoken of as 'insane'.

In the training of the teacher it is well to call attention first to the rhythm of speech, before entering into that of music. Those who have had a literary education have already studied the metrical properties of poetry and prose. They will readily agree that such phrases as:

'My father's father saw it not.'

'Happy New Year to you.'

'Because I sought it far from men, In deserts and alone.'

'We must go back with Policeman Day, Back to the City of Sleep.'

can be thought of as written in [2/4], [3/4], [4/4], [6/8] times respectively.

M. Jaques Dalcroze has shown, through his Rhythmic Gymnastics, the extraordinary effect that rhythmic movements can have, not only on physical health, but on mental and moral poise. For highly nervous children some such work is of especial benefit, but for all children it is of great value. It should be supplemented in the ear-training cla.s.s by constant practice in beating time to tunes. The teacher begins by playing simple tunes, with strongly marked accents. The children should discover these accents for themselves, and should be taught to beat time, using the proper conductor's beats from the first.

The French time names--_ta_, _ta-te_, &c.--are invaluable in early stages. They are based on sense impression, and are picked up quickly by the children. By taking the crotchet as the unit to start with, the old-fashioned plan of exalting the semibreve, the least used note in music, to a primary place, is avoided.

If the order given in Somervell's _Fifty Steps in Sight-singing_ be followed, the question of complicated time will not be forced too early on the attention of the children. Pupils trained on other systems have sometimes been found incapable of singing melodies written in complicated time, even though they can beat time to the notes, giving the time names, without mistake. The same thing is noticeable in their instrumental work. This is due to the fact that one side of their training has been developed at the expense of the other--time at the expense of pitch. There seems little point in teaching a child such time-values as

[Ill.u.s.tration: (crotchet tied to first note of a quaver triplet, followed by four semiquavers and another crotchet)]

when it can only read at sight in the key of C major!

In taking an exercise in sight-singing for the first time with a cla.s.s at an elementary stage the following practice has been found beneficial:

1. The children sing the tune straight through at sight, without stopping, the teacher beating time. Mistakes are then pointed out and difficult phrases practised.

2. The children stand and sing the tune straight through again, beating time as they do so.

3. Individual children then stand and sing the tune by themselves, beating time. In this way the child gets to know the sound of its own voice, and the teacher can correct any individual faults of intonation, voice production, &c. Some children will always have an inclination to shout when they sing with others, partly through excitement and partly because they cannot hear their own voices in any other way. If this be permitted the quality of tone will rapidly degenerate, and the effect of the whole cla.s.s work will suffer.

Nothing is more delightful than to hear young children sing quietly, and without in any way forcing their voices.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TEACHING OF DICTATION

So long as the work done in ear-training is in the very elementary stages the best form of dictation will be:

1. Ear tests, consisting of two to three notes at a time, which should be written in staff notation as soon as possible.

2. Monotone time tests, which should be quite short, as the constant repet.i.tion of the same note in pitch is irritating to the more sensitive ears in a cla.s.s. This point is sometimes overlooked, with the result that only the less musical children get any real benefit from the tests.

By the time that children can sing at sight in the key of D major they will be ready to take down from dictation short melodic phrases in time and tune. A useful plan is for the phrase to be played over three times, the children listening carefully and beating time. They should then sing the phrase once through to _lah_, and write it down.

This method of dictation is more satisfactory than that of dictating a bar at a time, as it draws attention to musical phrases as a whole.

Later on it will be found possible to dictate in the same way longer and longer phrases. Incidentally the memory is being trained as well as the ear.

The cla.s.s should be accustomed to write phrases which do not necessarily begin on the first beat of the bar. The handwriting, exact position of accidentals, &c., should be carefully watched. With young children it is well to use ma.n.u.script books which have the lines ruled very widely apart--a little child's hand soon gets cramped if it is made to write in an ordinary ma.n.u.script book.

When a cla.s.s can take down simple melodies correctly it is time to begin two-part work. As a preliminary, get a child to play middle C on the piano, then to combine with it each of the notes of the scale of C major in turn. The cla.s.s will decide which of these two-part chords are pleasant to listen to. Opinion is generally unanimous in favour of the third, sixth, and octave, which will therefore be the basis of the first exercises in two-part dictation.

Plenty of practice should be given in isolated examples of these chords, in more than one key, before the cla.s.s attempts to combine time with tune. When they are ready for this, the work should begin with very simple phrases, with plenty of repet.i.tion to enable them to be quickly memorized. A later stage introduces the use of pa.s.sing notes. It is better to play the exercise through first without these, and when it has been written and corrected, to play it again, inserting the pa.s.sing notes.

Before a cla.s.s has finished the major keys it should be ready for the dictation of three-part chords. As the children are accustomed to the sound of the chord of the third on all degrees of the scale, it will be a natural experiment to play a particular combination of thirds, thus arriving at the triad. After this has been played on all degrees of the scale, the cla.s.s should be asked to decide which of these chords it will be well to get to know first. They will remember that the first three keys in which they learnt to sing were C, G, and F major, and will therefore suggest that the tonic, dominant, and subdominant chords should be chosen.

At this stage it should be pointed out that all the notes of the scale are contained in one or other of these chords. This is a seed which, if well planted, will suggest the first principles of harmonizing melodies later.

We must now work at the three chords carefully. Begin by making the cla.s.s sing them in arpeggio, and in a definite rhythm, so as to get precision. Each chord should be sung once very slowly, so as to get the notes correctly, and absolutely in tune; then twice more quickly, so as to get the feeling of harmony. This step is invaluable in its later results--a child will often be heard to sing different chords in arpeggio, when in doubt as to the chords to use in harmonizing a melody.

When the three primary chords are known the others may be added, together with the dominant seventh and the inversions, in all keys. This last step must not be hurried. The average cla.s.s rarely finishes three-part chords in less than a year, and unless plenty of time is given difficulties will crop up later, when four-part chords are begun.

It is not enough for children to be trained to listen to the actual notes of a chord--they must feel the mental effect, in the same way in which they felt these effects in the case of the notes of the scale.

A later step is to make use of the position of the chord in a sequence--for instance, the child soon gets to notice that many phrases end with the progression subdominant, dominant, tonic.

We now come to the consideration of the dictation of four-part chords.

These need not be sung in arpeggio. As a first experiment it will be necessary to play the chord to the cla.s.s with each note doubled in turn, so that they may feel the necessity for doubling the best note.

This experiment is most valuable, as it gets the child away from the cramping feeling of keeping a rule merely because it is mentioned in a text-book.

Plenty of phrases with the primary chords in root position must be taken before the other chords are treated. For at least a year the cla.s.s will not be able to _write_ four-part dictation; the time should be spent in identifying the chords when played.

The chant form is the best for elementary work. It is very simple, and can be adapted to every sort of sequence. Pa.s.sing notes, appoggiaturas, suspensions, &c., should be avoided at first. When the diatonic chords and their inversions are known the princ.i.p.al modulations should be studied. It will probably be necessary for the teacher to write her own tests, as there are very few books of chants published which contain enough exercises on the use of the easier chords.