Records that Help the Music Teacher
It sometimes happens in this world that things work out much better than is anticipated. At the close of the war of 1812, the treaty of peace between America and England was a very incomplete and unsatisfactory document in the eyes of many statesmen, in that it made no mention of or provision for rectifying those matters which had been the occasion of dispute, yet it proved to answer the purpose, and there has been peace between these countries ever since-over a hundred years.
When the player-piano and the various types of sound-producng machines came into vogue, music teachers were greatly concerned, believing their occupation in danger, and they assumed a pose of hostility not unmixed with contempt. One very eminent musician coined the phrase "canned music" and wrote a scathing magazine article in which he deplored the growing prevalence of the same. In course of time, however, it transpired that the fears of musicians were groundless; the effect on the number of music-students was negligible, and the general interest of the public in music was actually increased. The fact is, if one has a hankering to make music with his own hands, these mechanical devices do not. quite fill the bill, yet they are a great blessing to those who, on account of age, lack of musical education, or pressure of occupation, are unable to acquire practical techincal skill on any instrument.
The writer has never, during the last ten years, met any music teacher who was prepared to claim that he had lost pupils, either actual or prospective, through the competition of "canned music."
It is surprising, too, to note how many skilled musicians find pleasure in the possibilities of the sound-reproducing machine. No one can excel personally on more than one or two instruments, but the pianist often enjoys listening to violin "records," the violinist to those of singers, the singer to orchestral music, and so on, ad infinitum. Much may be learned, too, and that very pleasurably, by listening to the records of great artists in the line of one's own specialty. Again, the writer once met with a professional v:olinist who made an occasional practice of playing his violin accompanied by a player-piano, and was considering the purchase of such an instrument, merely for his own enjoyment.
Help in Club Programs
But it is more particularly of the educational possibilities we wish to speak, and the easiest way to illustrate them will be to give a concrete example. A certain musical club in one of the smaller cities of central New York, having a membership of fifty or sixty, had been accustomed to give weekly programs, usually illustrating some particular composer or school of composition, preceded by the reading of an essay on the subject. The membership being overwhelmingly rich in pianists, with a slight sprinkling of singers and a still slighter trace of violinists, it was hard to avoid a. certain monotony in the character of the programs, broken occasionally by the appearance of a "guest" from outside. This year it was determined to give the programs a new cast, the subjects being, for instance, "Opera," "Oratorio," "Chamber Music," "Church Music," "The Orchestra," etc., and were in the form of lectures by various professional musicians engaged from outside, illustrated by programs prepared under their direction.
The present writer was engaged to cover the subject of The Orchestra. He desired to present a brief history of the development of orchestral music from the time of Haydn and Mozart up to our own day, but it was a matter of considerable perplexity how to prepare a program with the means at hand, other than to make large use of piano transcriptions, especially four-hand ones. This, however, would be practically putting the club back in the same old rut from which they were intending to escape. The answer came clear at last when he saw the program of the lecture on Church Music, which was delivered by the professor of that department in a certain Theological Seminary, where the available local talent was not sufficient to give the illustrations desired, used records on a sound-reproducing machine of well-known make.
The result proved so satisfactory that we determined to illustrate our own lecture entirely in that manner, and set about making up a suitable list of illustrations. The selection of available records was not quite as ample as we had hoped, and we were obliged to revise the lecture at some points, to conform to what we were prepared to illustrate, but in the end the result, proved quite satisfactory. The records actually used were as follows:-
One or two movements each from Haydn's Military Symphony; Mozart's G minor and Jupiter Symphonies; the Andante from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony; Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream Overture, an excerpt from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde; and the Largo from Dvorak's New World Symphony. It was originally intended to commence with a number from Bach's Suite in D major, for orchestra, and close with examples of the modern French school-for instance, Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun. This would now be possible, and would serve to round out the historical outline.