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singing a composition by Bach or some other great composer, in which each singer is contributing to reproduce a noble work of art - this, in itself, is a highly desirable experience. But the process of learning to sing at sight has sometimes led far away from true æsthetics and has resulted in a certain debasing of the taste through singing inferior music. Vocal exercises for sight singing are necessary, and we can accept them as such, for they do not evoke the æsthetic sense; but bad songs taught to illustrate some point of technique are unnecessary and inexcusable.

IV

But the majority of the children who have private instruction in music take lessons in pianoforte-playing. It has become a custom; the pianoforte is an article of domestic furniture (and a very ugly one); pianoforte-playing is a sort of polish to a cursory education. But the reason is chiefly found in the fact that this is the line of least resistance: there are plenty of teachers of pianoforte-playing but few teachers of music, so parents accept that which is available.

There is here a confusion between performing music and understanding it. Learning to perform seems (and is) a tangible asset-something definitely accomplished; while merely learning to understand music seems to parents a vague process likely to have somewhat indefinite results. They want their children to produce tangible results in the form of 'pieces' well played. Here again we find the same misconception. Music in this sense is half titillation of the ear, and half finger-gymnastics. Such music instruction consists in finding the right key, black or white, holding the hand in a correct position, patented and exploited as the only correct method, putting the thumb un

der, and finally, after going through an almost endless series of evolutions covering many years and carried on at fearful cost of patience to every one within hearing, in dashing about over the glittering keys with an abandonment of dexterity positively bewildering. Nine tenths of the aspirants, however, fall by the wayside and some time later look back grimly on a long procession of endless hours almost wasted. One pictures to one's self a little girl of seven or eight seated before that ponderous and portentous mass of iron, steel, wood, wires, and hammers which we call a 'pianoforte' (sixty pounds of tender, delicate humanity trying to express itself through a solid ton), her legs dangling uncomfortably in space, her little fingers trying painfully to find the right key, and at the same time to keep in a correct position, struggling hard the while to relate together two strange things, a curious black dot on a page and an ivory key two feet below it, for neither of which she feels much affection. And then one pictures to one's self the same child at its mother's knee, or with other children, singing with joy and delight a beautiful song.

I do not advocate the abolishment of pianoforte-teaching to children, but I do advocate the exercise of some discrimination in regard to it, and particularly I insist that it should not be begun until the child has sung beautiful songs for several years and has developed thereby its musical instincts, and even then only when a child possesses a certain amount of that physical coördination which is absolutely essential to playing the pianoforte. For pianoforte-playing is by no means a sure method of developing the musical instinct in children. In the first place it lacks the intimacy of singing, and in the second place the playing itself demands the greater part of a child's

attention, so that often it hardly hears the music at all. Any method of teaching music is, of course, wrong which attempts to substitute technical dexterity for music itself. The foregoing is not typical of the most intelligent instruction in pianoforte-playing, for there are many teachers who reason these matters out, and there are some parents who see them clearly enough to allow such teachers a reasonable latitude. But it is true of pianoforte-teaching in general, as doubtless almost every one of our readers has had some evidence. It is obvious that even a slight capacity to play the pianoforte is useful and delightful provided one plays with taste and understanding, for one gets from it a certain satisfaction which mere listening does not give. I deplore only an insistence upon playing as the only means of approach to music; I question the wisdom of forcing children to play who are not qualified to do so; and I think playing should, in any case, be postponed until the musical faculties are awakened by singing.

When children show an aptitude for playing the pianoforte there exists still the important question of developing their taste. Playing loses much of its value if there is any lack of musical taste and judgment on the part of the teacher. An examination of the programmes of what are called 'pupils' recitals' will reveal how lax some teachers are in this respect. There is no excuse whatever for giving children poor music to play, for there is plenty of good music to be had and they can be taught to like it but the teacher must like it also. Children are quick to discover a pretense of liking, and it is difficult to stimulate in them a love for something which you do not love yourself.

These questions now inevitably

arise: 'How can children be taught music itself?' 'By what process is it possible for them to become musical?' Obviously through personal experience and contact with good music, and with good music only, first by singing beautiful songs to train the ear and awaken the taste, second by learning how to listen intelligently, and third (if qualified to do so) by learning to play good music on some instrument. Intelligent listening to music is obviously such listening as comprises a complete absorption of all the elements in the music itself. It is not enough to enjoy the 'tune' only, for melody is only one means of expression. The listener must be alive to metric and rhythmic forms, to melodies combined in what is called 'counterpoint,' to that disposition of the various themes, harmonies, and so forth, which constitutes form in music. The groups of fives, for example, which persist throughout the second movement of Tschaikowsky's Pathétique Symphony constitute its salient quality; the steady, solemn tread in the rhythm of the slow movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony defines the character of that piece; the weaving of the separate, individual parts in a composition by Bach is his chief means of expression, and his music is unintelligible to many people because they are incapable of answering to so complex an idiom; the latitude in melody itself is, also, very great, and one needs constant experience of the melodic line before one can see the beauty in the more profound melodies of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.

What we are seeking to do is to make ourselves complementary to the music. We need to see that æsthetic pleasure is not by any means entirely of the senses, but rather of the imagination through training of the feelings and the mind. We want our listeners to assimilate all the elements in a piece

of music and then to re-create it in the imagination. It is the office of art to express beauty in such perfect form as shall make us reflect upon it.

This principle applies, of course, to the appreciation of any artistic object whatsoever. One cannot appreciate Whistler's portrait of his mother by merely realizing that the subject looks like a typical Victorian dame, any more than one can appreciate Whitman's "To the Man-of-War-Bird' by locating Senegal. Whistler's idea is expressed through composition, drawing, and color, and each of these qualities has a subtlety of its own; the pose of the figure is a thing of beauty in itself; the edge of the picture-frame just showing on the wall, the arrangement of curves and spots on the curtain, the tone of the whole canvas- all these make the picture what it is, and all these we must comprehend and take delight in. Whitman's poem is a thing of space and is a thing of space and freedom; the sky is the wild bird's cradle, man is 'a speck, a point on the world's floating vast'; the poet's imagination ranges through the whole created universe and flashes back over vast reaches of time as if to incarnate again man in the bird. So this music, which reaches our consciousness through

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Observation, discrimination, reflection; cultivating the memory for musical phrases and melodies, disciplining the senses, enlarging the scope of the imagination, nurturing the sense of beauty these are the means and the objects of musical education for children. By such a process we attain in some measure to that joy which is one of the chief objects of art, and of which our present situation almost completely deprives us.

So let us say finally that we wage war here against patent nostrums, against enforced and joyless music-teaching, against the development of technical proficiency without taste or understanding; and that we uphold here a process of musical education which has for its object 'being musical,' and which takes into its fold every child, boy or girl, and keeps them there as man and

woman.

A COPPER KETTLE

BY E. NELSON FELL1

ONE day, the smelter naryadtchik, or foreman, walked into our office and said that he noticed signs of restlessness among the Kirghiz furnace men and that he believed they were preparing for a strike.

'You are silly,' I said; 'the idea is absurd; in the first place, the Kirghiz do not want anything which they have not already, and, secondly, they are quite incapable of organizing for any concerted action.'

"That sounds all right,' said the foreman, 'and would be all right in ordinary times, but they have been very much upset by the example of the Russians during the last year, and I think they feel they ought to be in the fashion, and call a strike themselves. Bad example is very contagious.'

The Kirghiz were employed around. the smelter for the rough unskilled work. The word 'unskilled' is the word usually employed for this class of work, but in reality no work is 'unskilled,' strictly speaking. Some work requires less judgment than other; but in any work, no matter how rough, the difference between practiced laborers and raw hands makes the whole difference between success and failure, no matter how watchful the foreman may be.

The presence of the Kirghiz at the 1 Mr. Fell tells the story of an actual experience which occurred during the years when he directed a large mining company in that portion of the Central Asiatic plateau known as the

works, at all, was an anomaly in the Kirghiz régime, for, by nature, the Kirghiz hate manual work, hate to dirty their hands, hate regular hours, hate discipline, will have nothing to do with it. But the works had been in operation for fifty years and more, and there had grown up with it and in it a body of Kirghiz who had adopted the life and to whom it seemed a natural mode of existence. At the start they were no doubt very poor, probably considered undesirables by their own kin, and life was very hard for them; I suppose that the idea of a regular supply of tallow and brick tea appeared very attractive, and they succumbed to the temptation and put their names on the payroll. With their brother Kirghiz they lost caste; but, as the works grew in age and size, they became used to it and their children grew up in it, and gradually more and more of them joined the ranks, until, with furnace men, copper-miners, coal-miners, limeburners, brick-makers, and carriers, there were over five thousand of them working for us. Especially since our arrival and the development of the works on a much enlarged scale, the working Kirghiz had grown in number and power and in respect for the dignity of work for work's sake. They were actually beginning to take a pride in their technical responsibilities, and in some respects their fidelity was extraordinary. The fidelity of the carriers was es

Kirghiz Steppes. The population consisted of pecially remarkable. Once a Kirghiz

Russian Cossacks and the original Kirghiz tribemen.-THE EDITORS.

(unable of course to read or write) has touched the pen with which you sign

his name at the bottom of a bill of lading, the goods you have entrusted to him are as safe as if they were in the vault of a modern bank building. Poor ragged bundle of cotton batting, he stands outside the office door waiting for his precious bill of lading, he and his party of five or six ragged bundles like himself, with a string of forty or fifty camels. Each camel is tied to a light wooden sled pinned together with wooden pins. They have just come up from the copper room, where each sled has been loaded with bar copper wrapped in fibre matting, and made fast with rope or rawhide. The animals are huge and unwieldy, desperately hard to control; no one but a Kirghiz can do anything with them at all; but one virtue they have they can look a blizzard in the face without blinking an eye; and this is very useful in a country where the winter is seven or eight months long. In fact, but for the camel, the Kirghiz would be helpless in the winter; horses must be fed, and they have no oats; cattle are quite useless, and the camel saves the situation; he yells horribly and spits often while the shafts are being fastened to his shoulders but he finally moves off and faces the storm, and with a few wisps of hay and a few pints of water he will reach the railway in the end.

The bill of lading is now ready and you call the carrier into your office. The bill calls for the delivery of twelve hundred bars of copper to the agent at Petropavlovsk within thirty days — a distance of nearly five hundred miles. You pay him the stipulated advance, he touches the pen while you sign for him, he folds the document, places it in his wallet, tucks the wallet into one of the many folds of wadded clothing which cover him, puts on his malachai (huge fur bonnet), which entirely covers his head and neck and as much of his face as possible, still leaving the

eyes free, looks round, says, 'Kosh, Bai,' (good-bye, master), and joins his companions outside. They are waiting for him unconcernedly in the driving snow which cuts into you like glass, and slowly the cavalcade moves off. It is growing dark and you are almost afraid to try to find your way in the storm to your house, which is not more than two hundred yards down the road; but these men drift away in the gathering dusk, into the desert where every track is swept away by the storm, straight into the eye of the wind, with their five-hundred-mile walk before them. But they will reach the end somehow, their faces scarred by the cruel wind, it is true; they will arrive within the allotted time, and they will deliver their precious tale of bars to the agent, and the number will be found correct. Of the hundred thousand bars which we dispatched we lost only two, and for those two the carriers paid in full in cash. This is a loss of two thousandths of one per cent and the loss was immediately made good. If any of our Western transportation systems can show a record of this kind, it has not been my good fortune to discover it.

Our case was not exceptional; through the whole vast expanse of Siberia, similar caravans are crawling across the interminable spaces. The railway has only recently been built, and even now there is only one. If you have not a large business of your own, you can employ one of the forwarding companies; they will accept your goods anywhere and forward them anywhere; if there is loss or damage, it will occur when your goods are on the Western railroad, but not when they are in the hands of these extraordinary carriers.

The quality of fidelity is curiously exhibited in the system of watchmen. If you have any property lying loose anywhere, an unoccupied house or any unprotected property, everything will

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