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Music Talks With Children

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<h2 id="id00478" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXIV.</h2> <h5 id="id00479">HOW ONE THING HELPS ANOTHER.</h5> "Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."—Berthold Auerbach. Just at the end of our Talk about Music in School, I said that music was the most powerful of all the studies for giving joy to others. In this Talk we shall try to learn what the studies do for each other. Once more—and we must never get tired if the same thought comes again and again—let us remember that music is thought expressed in tone. Classic music is great and strong thought; poor, unworthy music is weak, perhaps wrong or mean thought. Further, we have learned that thought may be good and pure, and yet that of itself is not sufficient. It must be well expressed. In short, to thought of the right sort we must add knowledge, so that it may be set before others in the right way. Now, it is true that the more knowledge we have, the more we can do with music. We can put more meaning into it; we can better perform all the exacting duties it demands; we can draw more meaning from its art, and we can see more clearly how great a genius the composer is. Besides these things, a well-trained mind gets more thoughts from a subject than an untrained mind. Some day you will see this more clearly by observing how much better you will be able to understand your own language by possessing a knowledge of Greek and Latin. All the school studies have a use, to be sure—a direct use—in giving us something to help us in life in one way and another. But besides this, we get another help from study; namely, the employment of the mind in the right way. For the right way of doing things which are worthy of the heart, gives power and good. It is the wrong way of doing things that causes us trouble. Some studies demand exactness above all this,—like the study of Arithmetic—others a good memory,—like History—others tax many faculties, as we have seen in our Talk about School Music. Some of the studies are particularly valuable to us at once because they make us do. They may be called doing studies. In Arithmetic there is a result, and only one result, to be sought. In Grammar every rule we learn is to be applied in our speech. Manual training demands judgment and the careful use of the hands. Penmanship is a test for the hand, but History is a study touching the memory more than the doing faculty. School music, you see at once, is a doing study. Not only that, it is full of life, attractive, appealing to the thoughts in many ways, and yet it is a hearty study—by that I mean a study for the heart. If you have noticed in your piano music the Italian words which are given at the beginning of compositions, you may have thought how expressive most of them are of the heart and of action. They are doing words particularly. Allegro is cheerful; that is its true meaning. It directs us to make the music sound cheerful as we sing it or play it. What for? So that the cheerfulness of the composer shall be for us and for other people. And Vivace is not merely quickly, but vivaciously. Now what does vivacious mean? It means what its root-word vivere means, to live. It is a direction that the music must be full of life; and the true life of happiness and freedom from care is meant. So with Modcrato, a doing word which tells us very particularly how to do; namely, not too fast, spoiling it by haste, nor too slowly, so that it seems to drag, but in a particular way, that is, with moderation. Music takes its place as a doing study; and as we have already discovered, its doing is of many kinds, all requiring care. Singing or playing is doing; reading the notes is doing; studying out the composer's meaning is doing; making others feel it is doing; everything is doing; and doing is true living, provided it is unselfish. Let us see if there is not a simple lesson in all this. To seek it we shall have to say old thoughts over again. Music itself uses the same tones over and over again; it is by doing so that we begin to understand tone a little. The school studies try the mind; with the tasks increased bit by bit, the mind is made stronger. Thus is Strength gained. By the tasks demanding exactness, the thoughts must not be scattered everywhere, but centered upon the thing to be done. Thus is Concentration gained. By making the hand work with care and a definite purpose, Skill is gained. By demanding of the thoughts that they must seek out all the qualities of an object, Attention is gained. By placing things and signs for things before us, we are taught to See. By educating us in sounds, we are taught to Listen. When we have a task that admits of a single correct result, we are taught Exactness. Now, from all we have learned in these Talks about music it must be clear that all these qualities are just what are needed in music: I. Strength of thought for Real doing. II. Concentration for Right doing. III. Skill for Well doing. IV. Seeing and listening for the cultivation of Attention. V. Correctness for the Manner of doing. We sought for a simple lesson. It is this: Let us learn all we can that is right and worthy for the strengthening of the mind, for the cultivation of the heart, for the good and joy of others; for these things are the spirit of music. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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