president's address — SECTION J. 719 



at the breaking-up of the school with such vigour and precision 

 that the parents are deluded into the idea that singing is splendidly 

 taught ; but when all is done, not five per cent, of the children 

 could sing a simple melody at sight, or even recognise one of their 

 own school songs from the notes if they were put before them. No 

 school can claim to teach music adequately unless it is possible to 

 put an entirely new part-song into the hands of the children and to 

 have it sung correctly at first sight by the whole class. And I 

 verily believe that this result could be attained without any greater 

 expenditure of time than is now comparatively wasted in the futile 

 getting up of show pieces. The fact is that we are not yet emanci- 

 pated from the idea that music is a mere graceful accomplishment, 

 not worthy of serious study. 



And yet it would be difficult to find any subject of greater 

 educational value. In the first place it furnishes the child with a 

 new means of self-expression. To teach the child to realise and 

 express his own experiences is the first object of the educator, as 

 his name implies ; he is not to cram information into the pupil, but 

 to draw out from him — to teach him how to express what is 

 already there potentially. Hence the basis of all education is 

 language. The infant passes out of in-fancy — that is, inability to 

 talk, by learning to speak ; through speech he expresses himself, and 

 in expression realises himself ; at the same time he becomes capable 

 of receiving impressions from others, first through vocal and then 

 through written or printed speech ; and when he has learned to 

 read and write, his power of expression and of impression is daily 

 enlarged. Now music is a natural emotional language by which 

 feelings, only very imperfectly expressible in speech, receive their 

 instinctive embodiment ; and until the child has learned to sing, 

 his emotional nature is necessarily undeveloped, for it is only 

 through expression that development can take place. In fact, 

 children sing as instinctively as they speak, for there is more truth 

 than at first appears in Dogberry's dictum that reading and 

 writing come by nature ; if they didn't, they would never have 

 come at all ; but just as the instinctive speech of the child must 

 be reduced to order and form by training before it can be of much 

 service to him, so must his instinctive song. His artless 

 wood-notes wild must be cultivated and pruned until for every phase 

 of feeling the right musical expression at once suggests itself. It 

 may perhaps be thought by some that ordinary speech is quite 

 sufficient as a medium for emotional expression, and that indeed 

 all that can be expressed by music can be better and more intelli- 

 gibly expressed by articulate speech ; but that such a view is 

 possible, only proves how little the average educated man knows 

 about music. Every musician at all events knows the difference 

 between reading a rhapsodical account of a symphony and hearing 

 it played. Who can put into words the effect of Beethoven's C 

 minor symphony or even of such a simple melody as " Home, 

 sweet home " ? 



