Music As A Language Part 6

All those who teach ear-training should keep a book in which they write on one side of the page the proposed scheme of work for each lesson, and on the other the actual work done. All sorts of things may happen in the course of the lesson to upset the proposed scheme. The children may find the new work easier, or more difficult than was expected, a question from a child may suddenly reveal a piece of ignorance which necessitates a digression--every teacher is aware of the 'unknown quant.i.ties' in cla.s.s work. Unless the proposed scheme of work is checked by what is done in each lesson, there will be difficulties later.

Again, each lesson must form a definite link between past and future lessons. It is often a temptation to a teacher of initiative to draw attention to a new aspect of the subject, in which she happens to be specially interested at the time, when the previous work is not in a fit state to be left, even for two or three lessons. Something happens to make her realize this, and the new piece of work is hurriedly left--suspended in mid-air, as it were--and is not referred to again until an accident recalls it to her mind. Such teaching certainly has the charm of novelty to a cla.s.s, but we must remember that one of the faults of childhood is an undue readiness to pa.s.s on quickly to learn 'something new' before the previous work is secure.

In taking a lesson the teacher should aim at speaking in her ordinary voice. Inexperienced people sometimes imagine that it is necessary to shout when speaking in a fairly large room. But provided the voice is clear, and the articulation good, a low voice carries just as well as a loud one, and certainly produces a greater sense of repose.

Another fault to avoid is monotony of tone--we need 'modulations' in speaking just as much as in music, and a cla.s.s is keenly, though often unconsciously, susceptible to this. A change of position is helpful. The voice of the mistress will brighten at once if she comes down from the platform and walks about a little. But she must never turn her back on a cla.s.s when actually telling them something. Musical people, who have not the same experience in such matters as the ordinary teacher, constantly do this, and will even hide the greater part of a blackboard when pointing to notes of a tune.

In beginning a lesson the maximum effort will be gained if communal work be taken before individual, i.e. sight-singing before dictation, extemporizing, &c. The reason for this is obvious, a certain momentum is thus generated, which is impossible later, when the force has been diffused.

Before a tune is sung at sight the cla.s.s should a.n.a.lyse it, giving the key, time signature, starting note, modulations, sequences, general construction, &c. Remind the children from time to time that the last sharp in a signature gives the _te_ in a key, the last flat the _fah_; that when modulating to the dominant key the _fe_ of the first key becomes the _te_ of the second, in going from a key to its subdominant _taw_ becomes _fah_, for the relative minor _se_ becomes _te_, and for the relative major _taw_ becomes _soh_. Also that if in a minor key _taw_ occurs in an ascending scale pa.s.sage, or is taken or left by leap, it is a sign of a modulation to the relative major.

In starting the tune the tonic chord is played, and the teacher beats a whole bar, together with a fraction of the next if the tune begins on an off-beat, before the cla.s.s takes it up.

Do not _tap_ time when beating: it cultivates a habit of inattention on the part of a cla.s.s. Nor should the teacher beat time when the cla.s.s is doing so, unless for a moment, to correct an error. One reason for this is that if the time signature be anything but [2/4] or [6/8], the teacher's arm moves in a different direction in certain beats from that of the cla.s.s facing her, and this is most confusing.

Never correct a mistake by singing the right note yourself. This would be teaching by imitation--as we teach a bird to sing a tune--not teaching by method.

Remember that we are not aiming at artistic performance in a sight-singing cla.s.s, so do not hammer away at a tune until the performance of it has reached your ideal. If you do, your aim is 'performance'--not sight-singing.

If a child makes a mistake in dictation, do not tell it what is wrong, unless you are very short of time. Get it to sing the phrase it has written to Sol-fa names--in this way it will find out its own mistake.

In writing notes, either on the blackboard or on ma.n.u.script paper, it is not necessary to fill up all the s.p.a.ce between the lines, as is done in printed music. If children are allowed to do this, they will spend a long time over their exercises. Teach them to turn all tails of notes _up_ which are written on lines or s.p.a.ces below the third line, and _down_ for those above. The direction of the tails of notes on the third line itself will depend on the context. These directions refer, of course, to the writing of melodies. It is often necessary to remind even grown-up students that accidentals must be placed _before_ the note affected, not after it; also that a dot after a note which is written on a line must come on the s.p.a.ce next above, not on the line itself.

Children often forget that the leading note in a minor key invariably carries an accidental.

We must now say a little on the subject of revision. It is a fault of the young teacher that she often entirely neglects this, with the result that her cla.s.s can only sing accurately at sight, and do dictation in, the last key learned. During the first few lessons in a new key it is certainly inadvisable to give exercises in the preceding ones, as the whole attention must be concentrated on the new tonality. But other keys should be taken at least once in three weeks. An impatient person may say: 'But properly taught children could not forget so soon!' Yet, at times, we are all hazy on almost any subject, but it does not follow that we are either fools, or badly taught: we are simply human! After all, machines get out of order, so why not the most complicated machine of all--the human mind?

Again, it is only the inexperienced teacher who thinks her cla.s.s has been badly taught by her predecessor. Many a student in training is inclined, after the first lesson with a new cla.s.s, to come to the distracting conclusion that the children know 'nothing'. This generally means that, after the holidays, the former work needs a little revision before new work is begun.

In taking a fairly advanced cla.s.s a teacher is often worried because there is not enough time in a single forty-minute lesson a week to touch on all of such subjects as chords, cadences, extemporizing, transposition, &c., in addition to sight-singing and dictation. It is certainly quite impossible to do so, and this is one of the reasons for apparently slow progress. But there is, however, a good side to the difficulty, for such work ought not to be hurried, and it is well to leave a little breathing s.p.a.ce between the references to it.

Teachers are sometimes heard to speak with regret of the high spirits of their cla.s.ses, which lead to restlessness. But we should never regret _force_ in a child, and we must realize that all pent-up force needs a safety-valve. It must be our business to direct such force into safe channels. Keep the children really busy, give them plenty to do, and there will be no cause to regret their vitality.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TEACHING OF THE PIANO

It is impossible, within the limits of a chapter, to do more than dwell on a few practical points connected with the teaching and organization of this work in a school. As was said in the preceding chapter, the ideal for all young children who are about to learn the piano is that they should first go through a short course of ear-training. If this be done, the progress in the first year's work will be about three times what it would otherwise be. If the ear-training be done along the lines suggested in earlier chapters, the child will have been taught to sing easy melodies at sight, she will have approached the question of time by means of the French time names, she will have learned to beat time with the proper conductor's beat, to find notes on the piano, and, what is more important, to know these notes by sound, in relation to fixed notes.

In this way some of the processes which a child goes through in beginning to learn the piano are taken one at a time, in company with other children, and are therefore not hurried.

When the time has come to begin the piano, the child should join a _cla.s.s_ for this for one year. Such a cla.s.s should not exceed six in number. During this time she will add to her knowledge the first principles of fingering, will play easy exercises for fingers, wrist, &c., and will learn a few easy pieces and duets.

From the very first she will be taught to a.n.a.lyse a piece before she begins to play it--she will find out the key, time, cadences, sequences, pa.s.sages of imitation, modulations, &c. If the melody be within the range of the child's voice she will then sing it, beating time as she does so. After these preliminaries it is only a question of technique to learn to play it. The last stage will consist in learning the piece by heart. The day has long gone by when it was considered a sign of exceptional musical gift to be able to do this. All experienced teachers know that, provided a child is having its ear trained by some such method as that suggested above, it can learn a piece of music by heart almost entirely away from the piano. That is to say, instead of the wearisome repet.i.tions which were formerly necessary before a piece could be played by heart, it is possible, directly the technique is mastered, and in many cases before this is done, to learn the piece away from the piano. The benefit of this is obvious, and the nerves, both of the player and of the unwilling listeners, are the gainers.

A little thought will show that it should be no more difficult for average children to learn a piece of music by heart in this way, than for them to learn a piece of prose or poetry by heart. The initial steps are exactly the same--the language has to be known, and it is then a question of memory, and memory alone. Who would think of learning poetry by heart by the process of repeating it aloud a hundred or more times?

Yet this is what was formerly done in the case of music.

Sixty years ago no girl was considered educated who could not play the piano a little. Since then a reaction has begun to set in. The standard of playing has gone up to such a degree that parents are often heard to say that their child is not musical enough for it to be worth while to teach it an instrument. This is a pity. Music is used so much in our daily life that we cannot do without our 'average performers'. The soldier marches best to a tune, the sailor heaves his anchor to a song, the ritual of all forms of religion needs the aid of music; we need it, not only in the pageantry of our processions, but in the solemn crises of life and death. For these purposes artists of the first rank are not necessary.

Every child, however apparently unmusical, should be given its chance, at any rate up to the age of twelve years. During this time, the stress should be placed, for the unmusical child, not so much on perfection of technique, but on the ability of playing easy pieces really well, and to read at sight such things as duets, song accompaniments, &c.

If, in addition, the children have joined an ear-training cla.s.s, they will, at any rate, be intelligent listeners for the rest of their lives to other people's playing.

For all children, sight reading should form part, not only of every lesson, but of every day's practice. Many books for sight reading have been published, well graded, some of them beginning with little pieces in the treble clef only, and going on to advanced tests. The following are a few, selected from many other excellent ones:

Schafer (3 vols., published by Augener).

Hilliard (5 vols., published by Weekes).

Somervell (2 vols., published by Augener and Weekes respectively).

Taylor (1 vol., published by Bosworth).

As a child will need more than one such book in the course of her study, and as she cannot play the same test twice, a plan has been made in some schools for the music to be sold second-hand from one pupil to another, through the medium of a mistress, in the same way in which ordinary school books are sometimes pa.s.sed on. This reduces the expense of constantly having to buy new books for sight reading. Another plan is to establish a lending library, each child to pay 2_d._ or 3_d._ a term.

In the teaching of 'pieces' music mistresses should bear in mind that children must, from time to time, revise those which they have finished.

Nothing is more irritating to a parent than to be told by a child that it has 'nothing to play' to a visitor. The mistress who is anxious to get a pupil on as quickly as possible often overlooks this point, and an entirely wrong impression is given of the child's progress to the parent.

We now come to the vexed question of the interpretation of music by children. An interesting point can be noted about the practice of the early cla.s.sical composers. They were accustomed to give the minimum amount of indication as to tempo and general detail for the performance of their works.

And to what conclusion does this lead us? Surely this--that these giants in music recognized the necessity for every performer of their works to express _themselves_ through the music, subject to the broad conditions laid down by the composer. As Hegel said: 'Music is the most subjective of all arts.' And is it not true that it is this constant necessity for personal interpretation, so strongly felt by the majority of artists, which gives the permanent interest to music?

We say, 'by the majority of artists', for now and then we meet an artist who seems to have strayed from the path of beauty, and who is devoting his energies to an ascetic determination to keep alive one particular interpretation of a composer's work, or works; who dictates these interpretations to his pupils, and who talks of other artists who feel the bounden duty of self-expression through the said works as 'outsiders', and 'not in the cult'. Such musicians do not appear to see that such an att.i.tude is 'idolatry' pure and simple. They have not pondered the well-known anecdote of Brahms, who, when asked by a singer whether his interpretation of one of his songs was 'the right one', answered: 'It is one of the many hundred possible interpretations.'

A word must now be said on the organization of instrumental work in the school. It is important that this should be in the hands of one person, who will not only keep a supervising eye on questions of method, choice of music, lengths of lessons and practising, &c., but who will evolve some means of testing the progress of the pupils every term, in the same way in which their progress is tested in other subjects. The progress of the individual pupil should not be a secret between herself and her particular mistress!

It is a good plan to arrange a short recital every term in a school, at which from twenty to twenty-five pupils should play at a time. Such recitals should not exceed more than 1-1/4 hours in length. Nothing is more wearisome to the outsider than to listen to amateur performances which stretch out to two and sometimes to three hours' length. If the above plan be adopted, no child will be able to play more than one short piece. A mistress who is ambitious for the success of a few specially gifted pupils will sometimes suggest that a recital shall consist of the performance of two or three of these only, and that each pupil should play more than once.

Such suggestions should be frowned at.

What we want, if we have an educational end in view, is not so much to give the few musical children in a school the opportunity of gaining experience in playing in public, and indirectly of showing their progress to an admiring audience, but we want to give every music pupil in turn the same opportunity.

All children need experience before they can play to others in such a way that they not only do themselves justice, but give pleasure to their listeners.

Pieces played at such recitals should invariably be by heart. The nervous pupil may possibly break down at her first appearance, but she will be quickly succeeded by a more confident player, the little victim of 'nerves' will be soon forgotten, and the experience gained in this way is invaluable.

Before a recital a rehearsal should be held in the same room in which the recital is to take place. Few people seem to realize the immense difference made to children by a change of environment at such a time.

The pupil who will play her piece on the piano without one mistake to her mistress, and in the room to which she is used, will often be troubled at playing it on another piano, and in another room.

A child was once known to break down in an evening recital, and when asked the reason, said: 'I have never played that piece before with a candle near me, and I didn't like the shadows on the piano.'

This sort of remark gives a real insight into the child mind.