724 president's address — section j. 



The most formidable difficulty in the way will be the securing 

 of competent teachers. It is a counsel of perfection, I fear, to 

 suggest that no one should be registered as a secondary teacher who 

 cannot read music ; though there is nothing inherently more 

 drastic in this demand than in requiring that every teacher should 

 be able to read print and writing. Certainly it would be best that 

 every form-master should teach singing to his own form ; but until 

 the increase of musical cultivation has made this possible, it will 

 probably be necessary to have a music teacher for the whole school. 

 But it is essential that the form should be taught separately, so that 

 the needful individual testing may be applied. If the whole school 

 is taught together, most of the boys will just sing by ear and imita- 

 tion, and some will not bother to sing at all. One of the most 

 practical steps that could be taken would be the formation of a 

 Music-teachers' Association on the hnes of the one which was 

 initiated in London two years ago, the objects of which are stated as 

 follows : — 



The motto " No examinations " is inscribed on the banner of the Music- 

 Teachers' Association. The following are its stated objects : — 



(i.) To promote progressive ideas upon the teaching of music, especially 

 with a view to the more educative treatment of the subject in schools. 



(ii.) To press upon heads of schools, and to stimulate and maintain 

 amongst teachers, a recognition of the important and often overlooked fact 

 that music is a literature, and should be taught and studied from that point 

 of view. 



(iii.) To insist most strongly — as a preparation for this " art of listening " 

 — upon the necessity of systematic ear-training from early childhood. 



(iv.) To promote class-singing, in which singing at sight shall be the 

 chief aim, as an invaluable means of ear-training and of the cultivation of 

 rhythmic and melodic perception. 



(v.) To realise that the amount of time at the disposal of the average 

 boy or girl for the overcoming of the technical difficulties of an instrument 

 is, in the nature of things, usually insufficient to make them even passable 

 executants, and therefore that it would be a w se thing to devote a certain 

 amount of time to bringing the pupils into living touch with music itself, 

 by means of carefully graded classes, in which the teacher should play to 

 the pupils, giving them a simple and intelligent description of the form and 

 character of the music, asking questions from time to time, in order to ascertain 

 how much has been grasped by the class. 



In conclusion, let me say that it is not the production of a 

 Melba or an Ada Crossley or any number of similar great artists 

 that will warrant us in claiming that Australia is a musical country, 

 but the general diffusion of such musical knowledge as I have tried 

 to indicate, amongst all classes of the community. " All deep 

 things," says Carlyle, " are Song. It seems somehow of the very -^ 

 central essence of us. Song ; as if all the rest were but wrappings 

 and hulls. The primal element of us ; of us and of all things. 

 The Greeks fabled of Sphere-harmonies ; it was the feeling they had 

 of the inner structure of Nature ; that the soul of all her voices and 

 utterances was perfect music. See deep enough and you see 

 musically — the heart of Nature being everywhere Music, if you can 

 only reach it." 



