Spirit and Music Part 3

Ideas on the subject of the teaching of Music are changing at such a rapid rate to-day that the position of the teacher as an interpreter may well receive some consideration. The study of psychology and the many new discoveries in the realm of mind bid fair to revolutionise our conception of teaching: the old standards are fast becoming obsolete.

Once the idea of education was more or less to get something into the pupil, the newer ideal is to get something out: instead of compression or repression the process is now regarded as one of expression. We aim at developing the latent faculties and exploiting the hidden resources of the mind. It is a.s.sumed that the various qualities and abilities are embodied in mind, just as the possibilities of the oak were implanted in the acorn: it is the function of the teacher to ensure the requisite conditions under which these qualities may come to fruition.

From this it is clear that the modern teacher is more occupied in teaching the pupil than the subject. The old method of grinding in scales, scales, and yet more scales until those scales had become second nature is recognised as being worse than merely futile. What can it profit a pupil if he gain the whole world of scales and lose his artistic soul? So also with other points, the centre of attention is transferred from the subject to the pupil. Furthermore, the wise teacher recognises that as music is a part of life, so the understanding of music should lead to a larger comprehension of life. There are no watertight compartments in our lives, everything is acted upon and reacts: all life is of a piece, and nothing comes out of the mind in exactly the same condition as it entered. Things become transformed and a.s.similated in the process of mental digestion. Consequently the discerning teacher knows that he is working in terms of life through the agency of the music. He is helping to modify, form, or transform the mind of the pupil through his memories, he is moulding his character: and his character weighs in the eternal scales. The teaching thus stands on a base that is wider than life itself, and such a teacher is invested with a dignity and worth that can never attach to the time-server or the crammer.

The Royal Academy of Music gives the Licentiate diploma for (_a_) teachers and (_b_) performers: this is a technical distinction without any real difference. It is the function of both alike to reveal and to pa.s.s on a message of spirit. The performer pa.s.ses it on to an audience of many, and the teacher to a little audience of one. Teachers are "artists to whom the most priceless material has been committed."[16]

There is an idea abroad that those who are not clever enough to perform can always take to teaching, but this is of course a lamentable perversion of the truth. There are diversities of gifts, but the same spirit, and certainly as high a degree of spiritual perception is necessary for the teacher as for the executive artist. The teacher has merely chosen a different technique for its expression. Not so many years ago the teaching profession was known as "the refuge of the dest.i.tute," but we are changing all that with the revaluation of values which is being forced upon us by the logic of events. In course of time the old type of teacher must become as extinct as the dodo.

[Note 16: Canon J. H. Masterman.]

Effective teaching can never be done to pattern, for the simple reason that pupils are not machines or blocks of wood and cannot be turned out to sample. Every pupil is unique: he is the inheritor of a spirit which is peculiarly his own, and of a body in its endowments and proportions unlike that of anyone else, and in his nervous system he possesses special pre-dispositions and "potentially linked paths" which provide him with particular adaptabilities and traits. Were the teacher to treat every pupil alike, his scheme would probably truly fit none of them: but as a matter of fact each one of them calls for insight and special treatment. So the teacher learns from every pupil, and the experience garnered from contact with the many phases of human nature renders his judgment the surer and his sympathy the more sound. But this, quite obviously, is mind-moulding and character-building, with the emphasis laid upon the teaching of the pupil rather than the subject.

The three generally accepted divisions of mind are (_a_) intellect; (_b_) feelings; and (_c_) will; and in these directions the teaching of music should have far-reaching effects upon the culture and the outlook.

Observation is the root of all mental growth: it supplies the mind with the necessary food for development and expansion, and according to the range and definiteness of the evidence supplied by the senses, so is the foundation laid for a good memory and a lively quality of imagination.

The earliest lessons will thus be a stimulus to mental growth: the pupil will learn to take in by the eye and the ear, and what he takes in will enable him to understand and to appreciate more and yet more. He will be taught that everything in music means something, and even exercises will be invested with a meaning and a purpose of their own. Purely mechanical work has gone, never, we may hope, to return: and meaningless music is discarded in favour of that which expresses something. It may ill.u.s.trate a mood or an emotion, a scene, an action, or a fairy tale--it matters not what so long as it possesses a meaning to lend it point and purpose.

So right from the beginning the action of the pupil will be the expression of the emotions and ideas that hold sway in his mind.

In this connection we may quote an actual instance. A teacher writes:--"A young pupil (age 14) came for a lesson, playing Farjeon's 'Prelude and Pavane.' She had learnt the 'Prelude,' and had had one lesson, a fortnight before, on the 'Pavane.' We went through the technique, and I told her a little about the 'Pavane'--when it was danced, the derivation of the name, and so on. When she played it, she played it very, very slowly, but quite correctly and finished in detail.

I asked her if she liked it quite as slowly as that, and she replied that she thought 'the Court ladies with their long dresses would not be able to dance any quicker' and that it 'sounded grander very slowly.' So I left it." This, we may add, is an ill.u.s.tration of method quoted by a teacher in a diploma Examination paper, but it aptly shows the new spirit. The teacher had no mind to force her own views upon the pupil.

Had she insisted that the dance should be played more quickly, she might have spoiled the child's mental picture and destroyed her interest in the piece. The incident also points the way in which the pupil's observation, imagination, and powers of deduction were being stimulated, so that, as we have been endeavouring to show, the music--of value for its own sake--was also ministering to the larger end of life-growth.

The world of affairs and the world of education see to it that our intellect and will are duly and properly brushed up, they exact their penalties in default from the stupid and the invertebrate, but the feeling and emotional side of the nature is too often ignored. It is left to develop by chance instead of being nurtured by design. As a consequence a vast amount of distorted feeling exists in the world, and a very great deal of emotion is repressed. Music is at once a means of cultivating the rightful feelings towards life, and an outlet for the repressed emotions. The interpreter recognises that his true function is to serve his day and his generation, and so he places this ideal of Service in the forefront of his vision. If he subst.i.tute Selfishness he is permanently wrongly adjusted to life, and nothing can go truly right with him. He is off the lines of his spiritual evolution, and Nature will take pains to impress the fact upon him: she has her larger vision to which he must, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, conform. The teacher, in handing on the torch, will thus be able at the very outset to point to this ideal of Service, exemplified in finding out the beauty or the meaning of the music, and in pa.s.sing it on for the benefit of others in song or sound.

Repressed emotions are now recognised as a potent source of trouble, both mental and physical. In the adolescent stage of youth vital forces surge through the body, they are perhaps indefinable but they are none the less potent. "The emotions are there, and it is for us to find the way in which we can best turn them upward: the time has pa.s.sed when we need or can deny their existence, or their expression."[17] These emotions cannot be permanently repressed, they are too deeply embedded in the self: they may find an outlet in the amours of youth, or in some other way. But music offers a means and a channel through which these emotions may flow in useful direction, and this is a most valuable service. Failing legitimate expression they not infrequently find an inappropriate or distorted outlet. There is discord within, and it is far better that the discord should be resolved harmoniously rather than ill, or not at all. The study of music at this period may thus result in marked benefit to the physical health in a perfectly natural manner: for to forbid any expression to these emotions would be much as if we forbade a canary to sing or a lambkin to jump. If they can be reflected in "pure joy" in song we may indeed be sure that the outlet they are finding is a happy one. The subject is a very important one, but it leads us far afield from the present scheme. The reader who is interested may find further treatment of this topic in the present writer's "The Hidden Self, and its Mental Processes."

[Note 17: Ernest Hunt. "The Hidden Self."]

The modern teacher has progressed beyond the stage of imposing his own standard of judgment upon the pupil. By introducing the element of musical appreciation and making the pupil familiar with a wide range of musical ideas, he will gradually build up his power of discrimination and judgment and his standard of taste. These are no fixed things, but will grow as the experience of the pupil himself grows. As his sympathy and insight also increase, so will his knowledge of the good and evil of music progress. This is a vastly different process to any arbitrary enforcement of "this is good and that is bad" standards, and indeed it is but a poor compliment to any teacher when we find pupil after pupil a more or less complete imitation of the same original.

One thing that is conspicuously lacking in the world to-day is the ability to be one's self. Suggestion and habit are ever at work to kill originality and to stifle self-reliance and initiative. Thousands can copy, few can invent. The reason may be that only the few are able and willing to go to the fountain-head of spirit, where there is the infinite variety of universal thought to be their inspiration. The many are content to live their teachers' ideas over and over again, building their lives and abilities on quite ordinary models in a quite ordinary way. In music we already possess far too many "dittos," ditto programmes, ditto compositions, ditto renderings, and ditto ideals.

Praise the Lord for originality wherever it may be found. The conventional goes round and round in a circle, like a puppy after its own tail: but originality rises at each revolution and so reaches on and up, in progress like a spiral. So to-day the teacher fosters originality, shaping it with kindly criticism or helpful suggestion, but never d.a.m.ning it with a fatal "don't." Education's maxim to-day is "Do; but do better next time."

In this larger view of teaching, the technique, though not despised and rejected, is relegated to its proper place in the scheme of things. The cult of the head and the heart predominates, and the whole course of the instruction is an integral part of the training for life. If it be true that we are making "houses built without hands, for our souls to live in," then music is determining no small part of the architecture for the student who follows the gleam. The inspired teacher (and, without the vision, teaching must ever be the veriest drudgery) is engaged upon one of the n.o.blest of tasks as well as one of the most responsible. We may even hope that one day the world will awaken to this fact. Incidentally teachers themselves, by thinking more n.o.bly of their tasks, can do much to dignify their calling. They are truly in the van of progress, and "with the power of the Spirit almost untried and the possibilities of Prayer as little known, with the inheritance of Love still unclaimed and the ocean of Truth yet unexplored, life is full of an immensity of purpose."[18]

[Note 18: Kirkham Davis. "Where dwells the Soul Serene."]

CHAPTER VIII

THE SOUL OF SONG

"All the hearts of men were softened By the pathos of his music: For he sang of peace and freedom, Sang of beauty, love, and longing: Sang of death, and life undying In the Islands of the Blessed, In the Kingdom of Ponemah, In the land of the Hereafter."

_Longfellow_

The power to sing is innate in practically everybody, and the number of people who are actually incapable of any musical expression through the voice is really very small. Suggestion plays an important part in this matter, for there are few children having mothers or nurses who sing to them who fail to pick up and imitate that singing. The reason is fairly clear, because every idea in mind tends to pa.s.s into action unless something intervenes to stop it: consequently the child having the idea of singing in mind, simply from having heard others sing, has the initial impulse to song. As he gradually acquires the control and co-ordination of his faculties, song will follow as a matter of course.

On the other hand if the child never hears anyone sing, from where is the motor impulse to come?

Those good people who boast that they cannot sing have very often, by the simple denial of their ability, ensured a kind of mental atrophy in the function. It is quite a usual thing for us to fasten unnecessary limitations upon ourselves by refusing to believe in our own powers, and most of us have a large stock of very real inhibitions, which prevent us from doing things otherwise well within our capacity. If we do not believe we can do a thing, as a rule we do not try: or if we try, it is in a half-hearted, beaten-before-we-start kind of fashion. Thus we find that as a matter of experience things generally do turn out for us according to our belief. It is in this spirit that a man professes himself unable to tell the difference between the National Anthem and "Pop goes the Weasel." There are cases, of course, where the individual may be able to distinguish the tunes mentally, and yet may be unable to sing them correctly, or even to vary the tones of the voice according to the desired pattern: in this case the fault probably lies in a lack of the power of co-ordinating the various activities. The necessary a.s.sociations between the hearing centres and the motor centres for the control of voice have not been built up. But they can be so built, and then the inability to sing vanishes. A person who can speak has the necessary machinery for song, and to say that one has "no voice" is mostly nonsense.

Many people possess quite good voices until they learn singing. Their natural apt.i.tude, which so largely depends upon the models they may have had for imitation in the earliest days, is possibly quite excellent.

Then comes the Voice Specialist on the scene with his pet theories for improving upon Nature, and he gets busy. He may have his ideas upon "breaks," registers, and a thousand other details. Perhaps he has written a book on the way in which Nature has made a botch of the voice, creating it in a number of sections like a fishing rod, specially to provide an interesting and lucrative profession for the voice trainer.

On the other hand he may be wise enough to thank Heaven when he finds a good natural voice, and leave it alone. Voices when naturally used have beauty, ease, compa.s.s, and an even tone without break throughout: this, we a.s.sert, in spite of the fact that many a famous contralto possesses apparently two voices, so marked is the break. There is a technical alteration of the working of the vocal chords at a certain pitch, but with a rightly-used voice this is automatic and unfelt: the whole body is full of such wonderful adjustments. To be called upon to deal consciously with such details is generally proof that they have gone wrong. Your attention to your digestion is enforced by dyspepsia: n.o.body notices a perfectly acting digestion.

Some voices are expressive and carry emotion easily, while others are hard and inelastic. Some correspondence in the temperament will nearly always be found. Therefore the teacher who works at the voice (which is a means of expression of the temperament) without touching the inner characteristics, is like the man who tries to make an ill-regulated clock keep time by altering the hands. Lack of tone colour is not to be cured by cultivating a number of different sizes and shapes for the mouth and a selection of a.s.sorted smiles for the features. If a person feels sad, he will talk sadly. Carrying the same principle into song, we find that a voice naturally shows the timbre appropriate to the mood.

Therefore in order to ensure proper tone colour the prime requisite is imagination and the ability vividly to call up and experience the various emotions. It will be evident that we are endeavouring to impart into vocal work precisely those same principles which we a.s.sert to be fundamental to the whole of music, namely--the importance of the idea as behind, distinct from, and manifested through, the technical means. The vocal machinery must necessarily be in first-cla.s.s order, but the influence of the mind upon the body is so intimate and so extraordinary that even technical acquirement hangs to no small extent upon mental working.

Seeing that song, then, is to be the vehicle for emotion, even though that emotion be so tenuous as almost to defy verbal expression, for the most part we ally words and music. The timbre of a voice, singing tones without words, might carry a message to the sensitive, just as the inflection of a voice may be exquisite joy or suffering to a lover: but it would be insufficient to move the average hearer to any response. The reason is that there is always a dual process at work in mind: there is the sense-perception of the actual sound, and a brain-recognition of its meaning. This latter must be supplied by the hearer himself from his own imagination or experience. The non-musical mult.i.tude has neither, and is therefore unable to complete this second process of recognition. Thus the hearer hears, but does not understand. It is probably for some such reason as this that we resort to words to make the message clear. Herein lies the importance of the words themselves, and of the diction of the singer.

Quite notoriously, many singers entirely fail to make their words intelligible to the listener, and in the majority of cases this is due to insufficient stressing of the consonants. Vowel tones carry, while consonants do not. If we want to shout to anyone we call out "Hi" or "Hey": never by any chance do we try to reach them with a "P-p-p-p-p" or a "T-t-t-t-t," and for precisely this reason. If, therefore, a singer wishes his words to carry to the end of the hall he must needs exaggerate his consonants to allow for this loss in transit: the vowels will look after themselves. Then, although the balance of the words as they are uttered may be a trifle distorted, they will nevertheless reach the hearers in due proportion. Comfort in listening is greatly increased when this sense-perception is clear and unambiguous, and the brain-recognition is easy by reason of a certain familiarity. When the sense-perception is blurred, as in faulty diction, extra work is thrown on to the brain: listening then becomes a strain, and the brain is fatigued with supplying the details which it supposes the singer to have intended. The listener has, as it were, to put in his consonants for him, to dot his "i's" and cross his "t's."

Some singers distort their vowel sounds almost beyond recognition, and many pupils seem to be definitely taught to adopt the habit. Then "and"

becomes "awnd," and the various words take on new disguises after the reputed Oxford model of "He that hath yaws to yaw, let him yaw." Singing is but glorified speech, it is not a thing apart, neither is there one language of the speaker and another of the vocalist. This distortion may be due to affectation or to ignorance, but in either case we could well do without it. In cases where the actual production of the voice is mechanically stiff, rigid, and therefore distorted, it is not likely that we can secure a free and flexible musical elocution. We do occasionally meet singers whose diction is delightful to hear because of its absolute freedom and complete naturalness, but these only serve to heighten by their excellence the shortcomings of the many.

Consideration of the manner in which the words are put forth leads us to the matter of the words themselves. It is difficult to find even a modic.u.m of meaning, to say nothing of spirit, in much of the verse that achieves musical setting to-day. A critic in a London Daily some time back inquired if all our native poets were paralysed, the query being suggested by an examination of a representative batch of songs. But the poet is hardly to blame for the present state of affairs. In the wedding of words and music, the usual routine is for the author of the lyric to submit his effort to the composer for his consideration. The composer will neither select nor waste his time in setting the better cla.s.s of verse because, as he says, the publishers will not look at it. The publishers will not print and issue it because, so they say, the public will not purchase it. The public might very well retort that they get precious little chance to listen to it, since royalty ballads come first: nor to come in contact with it, for the ordinary dealer does not stock it. There, then, is the vicious circle quite complete. But the poets are not paralysed, they are merely inarticulate by reason of this commercialisation of Art. At the best of times the average lyric author has a difficult and somewhat heart-breaking task to dispose of his wares, and we need not further harrow his artistic soul by suggestions of literary impotence.

It must, however, be admitted that on the whole there is an extraordinary poverty and bareness of idea and inspiration in the general run of songs: neither Nature nor Love are themes that can ever be finally exhausted while human nature remains as it is, but the treatment can be so stereotyped that it eventually wears threadbare. It is possible to become thoroughly weary of roses and gardens, and gardens of roses, gardens without roses, and gardens where we hope there will be roses. It is such a pity, too, that there are so few rhymes to "love."

Yet even in dissatisfaction there exists the element of progress: if we are bored with the present style we shall demand something better, and the demand will create the supply. But to swing from bareness and boredom to the other extreme of abstruseness and complexity is no remedy: in these latter qualities there exists no special compensating virtue. Listening to a song as it is sung is very different to reading the verse at leisure. The sense of the song must be caught as it flies, the verse can be read and re-read if necessary, until its meaning be clear. It is no progress, therefore, to worship the turgid and obscure, whether in words or music, or both. We may pretend that we appreciate things because we cannot understand them, but that is only a concession to convention and a convenient way of smothering artistic conscience.

Of late an outcry has arisen, on the part of wise men in exalted station, about "beastly tunes," but surely if a tune can attain sufficient popularity to earn the picturesque adjectives of the academic, there must be some element in it which has escaped the attention of its detractors. The Southern Syncopated Orchestra, which played for some lengthy period in London a little while back, showed that popular music might yet be extremely clever and artistic in scope and performance. There were high-brow musicians who would not even go to listen to such, but preferred to condemn it unheard: the loss was emphatically that of the high-brows. Humour abounded in this little band of performers on such a strange array of instruments, and it appeared as if the players enjoyed their work no less, at any rate, than their audience. Yet their programme was full of "tunes." Is any tune in itself "beastly"? Or is it that the brain-recognition, to which we have alluded, decks out the tune in sordid or sweet trappings according to its own nature? We certainly know that in other directions we are apt to see things according to the colour of our own mental vision.

These tunes, however, that have become so popular, have the three essentials of music strongly marked: they have decided rhythm, attractive melody, and harmony at times quite good. Are we to try and attract the mult.i.tude to music by muddling up or emasculating rhythm, or by eschewing melody and banishing anything that intrigues the ear, and by supplying an harmonic scheme that awakens no brain-recognition and cannot in consequence be understood? Well, the conventional suburbanite may gush over such indeterminate and invertebrate music, saying, "Yes, isn't it just too lovely," but the rough and tumble individuals who make up most of the world will plump for the "tune" every time. Give him what he wants, and then induce him to want something better, but avoid the mistake of trying to turn him into a musical vegetarian while his meat-eating appet.i.te has no liking for the diet.

The incongruity of some of the songs we hear sung is truly appalling: we find a charming maid, love for whom might honour any man yet born, singing "Less than the dust,... even less am I," and so on. Lies, all lies, even though she lie melodically with charm and with apparent conviction. We have pa.s.sionate love-songs sung by guileless individuals who would be inexpressibly shocked if you explained to them the meaning of the sentiment to which they had been giving utterance. There are operatic scenas, dealing with abduction and all sorts of uncomfortable situations, and again youngsters declaim of their somewhat indecorous emotions with gusto and--let us hope--a sublime insensibility of all that they imply. They are warbling words to music, but they are not singing, for the meaning is not there. The fault, of course, lies in the traditional idea that all aspiring vocalists must learn certain things, just as that all pianists should go through a corresponding round of instrumental compositions. Why should they? Many of these cla.s.sical examples that we accept as the right things to sing or play are hopelessly antiquated and out of date: they would not stand a chance as new compositions to-day. Antiquity itself is only a recommendation if we are collectors of curios. The literature of Art is far too comprehensive for anyone to study it all, we can but touch a fragment of the whole: why, then, should that fragment be determined by tradition and custom alone? Will anybody's clothes fit me: am I not likely to secure a better fit by being measured for my own? And why should not the same consideration apply to my mental outfit? It is the same desperate fear of originality and initiative, coupled with a certain unwillingness to take individual responsibility: it is the "ditto" idea again, and yet a writer has said "imitation is suicide." Let music be studied historically and in its development, by all means, this indeed is necessary: but to spend hours and hours learning to play or sing something just because "everybody does it" is the sheerest waste of time, unless the music so played or sung still bears a living message for the performer.

Protest might also be registered against the unadulterated rubbish that is put forward as a translation when a song or operatic excerpt of foreign origin is rendered in English. Of grand opera even the _Daily Telegraph_ is moved to say that "the translations are in most cases literary nightmares." Mere baldness might be excused, and even doggerel overlooked, but one has only to turn to almost any of the current standard translations of foreign songs to see that the matter is worse than this. To expect a student to get up and partic.i.p.ate in this verbal foolishness and inept.i.tude, by endeavouring to express as genuine the balderdash that poses as sentiment and sense, is an insult to his or her intelligence.

Finally there remains the "graveyard" school of composition. Here we have the author or composer, or both of them, seeing the world much worse than it is, and think that they do Art a service by putting their realistic conceptions on permanent record. We would join issue with all the various methods--song, literature, drama, and painting--of giving the unpleasant a wider and more effective publicity. The suggestive nature of all of these negative things cannot be overlooked, and should not be underestimated. The Biblical advice is to the point: "Whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good report: think on these." The graveyard and realistic schools reverse this sage precept, saying, in effect, "Whatsoever things are nasty, unwholesome, and disagreeable--make the most of them: they will always appeal to a certain section whose minds are correspondingly unpleasant." We prefer the "pure joy" gospel, as being nearer the truth: for spirit is ever pointing the vision upward to what we may become, instead of allowing it to grovel around in the very unpleasant circ.u.mstances in which some people are liable to find themselves. The outward vision is transient, the inner vision can build eternal realities. "Are we to beg and cringe and hang on the outer edge of life,--we who should walk grandly? Is it for man to tremble and quake--man who in his spiritual capacity becomes the interpreter of G.o.d's message,--the focus of Divine Light?"[19]

[Note 19: Kirkham Davis, "Where dwells the Soul Serene."]

CHAPTER IX

MUSIC AND EDUCATION

"Music is not only a source of n.o.ble pleasure--everyone admits that, at any rate in theory--it is a form of intellectual and spiritual training with which we really cannot afford to dispense"

_Sir Henry Hadow_

We may agree that education consists in the bringing of the latent possibilities of the individual into action, and one of the most important parts in the process of education is played by memory. The fact that memory places on record our first impression of a thing is the reason why we are able to recognise it on the second occasion: otherwise we should have to make its acquaintance afresh every time. It is memory again which enables us to retain the mental pattern of an action we have once performed, and so to do it the more easily a second time, and on subsequent occasions. Thus we see that everything we express, whether in word, thought, or deed, leaves its mark within us: this impress is, as it were, a brick in our life's edifice, and it has added something to that disposition of mind which const.i.tutes our character.

Mental growth is thus profoundly influenced by the things we express, for whatever we express forthwith becomes part of ourselves. Anything, therefore, that teaches us to express the fine, the n.o.ble, or the beautiful, leaves the self by the fact of that expression with the impress of that fineness, n.o.bility, or beauty henceforth in the character. We do not mean that by the utterance of a praiseworthy sentiment a man at once grows estimable, but we do mean that the sentiment according to its intrinsic value and worth has become an element in his make-up. We observe every day in the contrary direction that giving vent to continual complaint soon makes a person grow sour-minded: and incidentally it also makes him grow sour-visaged. It is frequently possible to tell a man's philosophy from his countenance.

Those whose efforts are devoted to preaching a violent discontent seem to run to type, acquiring a discontented kind of countenance to match their views. Equally so a person whose outlook is more balanced, and whose character is gentler, will gradually inscribe a finer type of characteristic both in mind and body. The case is very much the same with Art. Those to whom Art stands for beauty and love must necessarily be building themselves of their thoughts, and so be tending towards their ideal. Thus so far as music becomes the expression of spirit and love, so far its influence upon the individual is permanent and progressive in these directions.