Music And Life - free ebook by Thomas Whitney Surette

Read as playlist

Music And Life

Thomas Whitney Surette

37 chapters

4 hour read

Read as playlist

Selected Chapters

37 chapters

MUSIC AND LIFE

MUSIC AND LIFE

MUSIC AND LIFE A STUDY OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN OURSELVES AND MUSIC BY THOMAS WHITNEY SURETTE AUTHOR OF “ The Development of Symphonic Music ” AND (WITH D. G. MASON) OF “ The Appreciation of Music ” BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1917 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THOMAS WHITNEY SURETTE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published March 1917...

22 minute read

Read Chapter

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author desires to express his thanks to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly for permission to use, as a part of this book, material from a series of articles that appeared in his magazine....

58 minute read

Read Chapter

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

During the last twenty or thirty years there has been an enormous increase in the United States of what may be called “institutional” music. We have built opera houses, we have formed many new orchestras, and we have established the teaching of music in nearly all our public and private schools and colleges, so that a casual person observing all this, hearing from boastful lips how many millions per annum we spend on music, and adding up the various columns into one grand total, might arrive at

5 minute read

Read Chapter

I. DISTINCTION BETWEEN MUSIC AND THE OTHER ARTS

I. DISTINCTION BETWEEN MUSIC AND THE OTHER ARTS

Any discussion of the art of music,—of its significance in relation to ourselves, of its æsthetic qualities, or of methods of teaching it,—to be comprehensive, must be based on a clear recognition of the one important quality which is inherent in it, which distinguishes it from the other arts and which gives it its peculiar power. Painting and sculpture are definitive. It is not possible to create a great work in either of these mediums without a subject taken from life; for, however imaginative

4 minute read

Read Chapter

II. THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC

II. THE ELEMENTS OF MUSIC

The primal element in music is vibration. Sound-waves in some ordered sequence—silent till they strike our ears—are formed by our ingenuity and sense of order into patterns of beauty. They exist in time, not in space. They are motion. And these vibrations are the very substance of all life; of stars in their courses, of the pulse-beats of the heart, of the mysterious communications from the nerves to the brain, of light, of heat, of color. The plastic arts are static. Painting has the power Scul

5 minute read

Read Chapter

III. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MUSIC

III. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MUSIC

Music deals first of all with feeling or emotion. But since emotion may be guided by the mind and transfused by the imagination,—since emotion is not a separate and isolated part of our being,—so music may be so ordered by the mind and so transfused by the imagination as to become intellectual and imaginative. It is true that the greater part of the music produced and performed deals only with emotion, but this is equally true of literature. The popular novel is nine tenths emotion, one tenth mi

4 minute read

Read Chapter

IV. “BEAUTY IS TRUTH, TRUTH BEAUTY”

IV. “BEAUTY IS TRUTH, TRUTH BEAUTY”

I have already stated that the other arts have for their ideal that fusing of subject and expression which in music is complete, and I have further stated that the purpose or object of music is to present emotion ordered and guided by the mind and illumined by the imagination. In this latter respect all the arts are alike. It is in the very nature of their being that they seek to find the heart of the great secret. The purpose of painting and sculpture is not to present objects as objects, but t

6 minute read

Read Chapter

I. TRAINING THE SENSE FOR BEAUTY

I. TRAINING THE SENSE FOR BEAUTY

In what I have to say about music for children I am not unmindful of the diversity of American life, and of the prevalent idea that Americans do not pay much attention to music (or to any other form of beauty) because they live in a new country in which the greater part of their energy is devoted to subduing nature and carving their fortunes. As a nation we are said to be too diverse to have evolved any definite æsthetic practice, and we suppose ourselves too busy with the practical things in li

9 minute read

Read Chapter

II. THE VALUE OF SINGING

II. THE VALUE OF SINGING

In the first chapter I discussed the qualities and properties of music as such—music, that is, in its pure estate, unconnected with words as in songs, or with words, action, costume, and scenery, as in opera. And now, in writing about children’s music, it is still necessary to keep in mind that, even when music is allied to words, it has the necessities of its own nature to fulfill, and that the use of suitable or even fine words in a child’s song does not change this condition. In beginning thi

5 minute read

Read Chapter

III. CURRENT METHODS OF TEACHING

III. CURRENT METHODS OF TEACHING

The most common fallacy in our teaching consists in putting knowledge before experience, or theory before practice. Children are taught about music before they have had sufficient experience of it. They are taught, for example, to pin pasteboard notes on a make-belief staff; they are told that one note is the father-note and another the mother-note (one supposes the chromatics to be irascible old-maid aunts); all sorts of subterfuges are resorted to in an attempt to teach them what they are too

3 minute read

Read Chapter

IV. WHAT SHOULD CHILDREN SING?

IV. WHAT SHOULD CHILDREN SING?

But even these artificial and false methods are less harmful to children than are the poor, vapid, and false songs by means of which their taste is slowly and surely disintegrated. Now the nature of music is such that many people are unable to see why one child’s song is better than another. There is a considerable number of people having to do with children’s music who seem quite incapable of distinguishing between a really beautiful folk-song and a trivial copy of one. Long association with th

4 minute read

Read Chapter

V. THE FALLACY OF THE INEVITABLE PIANOFORTE LESSON

V. THE FALLACY OF THE INEVITABLE PIANOFORTE LESSON

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 confusio

5 minute read

Read Chapter

VI. THE REAL GOAL

VI. THE REAL GOAL

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 a

3 minute read

Read Chapter

I. IDEALS OF PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION

I. IDEALS OF PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION

It is characteristic of our compliance in matters educational that of late years we have seen subject after subject added to the curricula of our public schools, and have cheerfully voted money for them, without having much conception of their value or of the results attained by introducing them. Education is our shibboleth, our formula. The school diploma and the college degree constitute our new baptism of conformity. We do not question their authority or their efficacy. They absolve us. Our p

6 minute read

Read Chapter

II. THE VALUE OF MUSIC IN PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION

II. THE VALUE OF MUSIC IN PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION

In the last chapter I referred to the qualities in music which make it especially valuable for children, and what I said there applies with equal or even greater force here. Any one who has compared town or city life in this country and in Europe, and has seen what a pleasure, and what a civilizing influence music may become when it is properly taught in childhood, must realize how great a loss our people sustain by the neglect of singing. We are only now beginning to realize how long it takes t

5 minute read

Read Chapter

III. FALSE METHODS OF TEACHING

III. FALSE METHODS OF TEACHING

That compliance of ours to which I have referred is nowhere more evident than in the large sums we spend on the teaching of music, and in our ignorance of the results. School boards and school superintendents usually possess little knowledge of the subject and have no means of knowing the quality and the effect of music teaching save by such evidences as are supplied by the singing of the children at the end of the school year. No one asks what the one thousand or the fifty thousand dollars spen

8 minute read

Read Chapter

IV. GOOD OR BAD MUSIC?

IV. GOOD OR BAD MUSIC?

For eight years, then, in our public schools children are taught—as far as may be—to sing at sight. Is there a fine song which presents a certain difficulty, it is placed in the book at the point where that difficulty arises, and is treated as a sight-reading test. It is subjected to analysis as to its melodic progressions, each of which is taken up as a technical problem. This is precisely the method so often and so fatally used in connection with poetry. The Skylark’s wings are clipped; the Gr

6 minute read

Read Chapter

V. ATTEMPTS AT REFORM

V. ATTEMPTS AT REFORM

I have drawn the foregoing conclusions from an extended observation and experience of public school music, and I ought to add—lest the record seem too despairing—that in a considerable number of places intelligent and open-minded men and women have been doing their best to stem the tide of inferior music and of artificial methods of teaching. During the last two years I have been serving on an unpaid advisory committee appointed by the School Committee of the City of Boston to improve the teachi

5 minute read

Read Chapter

VI. OTHER ACTIVITIES IN SCHOOL MUSIC

VI. OTHER ACTIVITIES IN SCHOOL MUSIC

One of the encouraging signs of our advancement is in orchestral playing. School orchestras have become important features of school life, and the excellence of some of the orchestral playing is remarkable. It often outshines the singing, and it is frequently self-contained, being under the direction, not of the music teachers, but of the head master or one of his assistants. In this department of music teaching, as in the singing lessons, much depends on the attitude of the head master. In our

4 minute read

Read Chapter

I. MUSIC BY PROXY

I. MUSIC BY PROXY

In the preceding chapters I have dealt with special musical subjects, and have constantly referred to music as a distinct and independent art having its own reasons for existence. I have dealt, also, with some of its special functions as well as with its relation to the education of children. In the present chapter it is my purpose to discuss music in its relation to communities large and small, and this necessitates treating it on the broadest possible grounds. By community music I mean, first,

5 minute read

Read Chapter

II. OUR MUSICAL ACTIVITIES

II. OUR MUSICAL ACTIVITIES

As a preliminary to this discussion it will be well to look at the present status of music among us, and to see how near we come to this necessary intimacy with the art. In any small American community the first impression one gets about music is that it is useful to fill up gaps. At the theater, before public meetings, at social affairs of one sort or another, music is performed to a ceaseless hum of conversation or while people are entering and leaving. The art becomes, in consequence, like th

8 minute read

Read Chapter

III. WHAT WE MIGHT DO

III. WHAT WE MIGHT DO

I have indicated in a former chapter something of our needs as regards the musical education of children. The problem before me now is how to persuade American men and women into active coöperation in making music. It is obvious that there is only one way of doing this, and that is by singing. Only an infinitesimal number of people can play musical instruments, but nearly everybody can sing. To play requires constant practice. Singing in groups does not. In their right estate every man and every

10 minute read

Read Chapter

IV. AN EXPERIMENT

IV. AN EXPERIMENT

I live in a town of some six thousand inhabitants which about answers to the description given near the beginning of this article. There was a singing society in the place about thirty years ago, but since then there has been little choral singing. Two years ago I asked some thirty people to come together to practice choral singing. I then stated that I should like to train them if they would agree to two conditions: first, that we should sing none but the very best music, and second, that our c

4 minute read

Read Chapter

V. MUSIC AS A SOCIAL FORCE

V. MUSIC AS A SOCIAL FORCE

Leaving this actual experience and its effects on the community, let us ask ourselves what this singing means to the individuals who do it. In the first place, it makes articulate something within them which never finds expression in words or acts. In the second place, it permits them to create beauty instead of standing outside it. Or, to speak still more definitely, it not only gives them an intimate familiarity with some great compositions, but it accustoms them to the technique by means of w

9 minute read

Read Chapter

I. WHAT IS OPERA?

I. WHAT IS OPERA?

The form of drama with music which we loosely call “opera” is such a curious mixture of many elements—some of them closely related, others nearly irreconcilable—that it is almost impossible to arrive at any definite idea of its artistic value. A great picture or piece of sculpture, a great book or a great symphony represents a perfectly clear evolution of a well-defined art. You do not question the artistic validity of “Pendennis” or of a portrait by Romney; they have their roots in the earlier

3 minute read

Read Chapter

II. OPERA IN THE OLD STYLE

II. OPERA IN THE OLD STYLE

The “Florentine Revolution” was an attempt to create an entirely new type of opera in which all tradition was thrown to the winds. To “Eurydice,” the best known of these Florentine operas, its composer, Peri, wrote a preface, from which we quote the following: “Therefore, abandoning every style of vocal writing known hitherto, I gave myself up wholly to contriving the sort of imitation (of speech) demanded by this poem.” (Is this, indeed, Peri speaking? Or is it Gluck, or Wagner, or Debussy?) In

7 minute read

Read Chapter

III. WAGNER AND AFTER

III. WAGNER AND AFTER

Then came the second great operatic reform,—that of Wagner,—which was supposed to free us from the old absurdities and make of opera a reasonable and congruous thing. This, Wagner’s operas, at the outset, bade fair to be. In “Der Fliegende Holländer,” “Tannhäuser,” and “Lohengrin” there is a reasonable correspondence between the action and the music; we can listen and look without too great disruption of our faculties. Wagner’s librettos are, with one exception, based on mythological stories or

7 minute read

Read Chapter

IV. WHEN MUSIC AND DRAMA ARE FITLY JOINED

IV. WHEN MUSIC AND DRAMA ARE FITLY JOINED

I have referred to these various inconsistencies and absurdities of opera, not with the idea of making out a case against it; on the contrary, I want to make out a case for it. This obviously can be done only by means of operas which are guiltless of absurdities and of melodramatic exaggeration, which answer the requirements of artistic reasonableness, and are, at the same time, beautiful. This cannot be said of “Cavalleria Rusticana” (Rustic Chivalry—Heaven save the mark!), “La Bohème,” “La Tos

7 minute read

Read Chapter

V. OPERA AS A HUMAN INSTITUTION

V. OPERA AS A HUMAN INSTITUTION

These various works have long since been accepted by the musical world as the great masterpieces in operatic form. Many of them are practically out of the present repertoire of our opera houses. Were we to assert ourselves—were the general public given an opportunity to choose between good and bad—we should hear them often. And who shall say what results might not come from a small and properly managed opera house, with performances of fine works at reasonable prices? Opera is controlled by a fe

2 minute read

Read Chapter

I. WHAT IS A SYMPHONY?

I. WHAT IS A SYMPHONY?

In the first chapter I discussed the nature of music itself in order that I might clear away certain popular misconceptions about it and arrive at some estimate of what it really is. In the intervening chapters I have dealt with various phases of music: I have discussed it in connection with words or action, as a sociological force, and as a matter of pedagogy, and in so doing I have had to take into consideration all sorts of non-musical factors. Now the symphony is “pure music,” so called; it

7 minute read

Read Chapter

II. HOW SHALL WE UNDERSTAND IT?

II. HOW SHALL WE UNDERSTAND IT?

It is obvious, then, that the only possible way to understand a symphony is to accept it as it is and not try to make it into something else. Music is not a language; it does not exist in other terms, but is untranslatable. When a trumpet blares and you make any of the conventional associations with the trumpet, such as a battle, a hunt, a proclamation, a signal, off goes your mind on a stream of alien ideas that may carry you anywhere and that will certainly carry you farther and farther away f

8 minute read

Read Chapter

III. THE MATERIALS OF THE SYMPHONY

III. THE MATERIALS OF THE SYMPHONY

I have said that the symphony evolved slowly under the laws of its own being, and I wish to state briefly and (as far as possible) in simple terms how that evolution came about. If I should go back to the very beginning I should have to point out that the primal difference between music and noise consists in the intensity of vibration and in the grouping of the sounds into regular series by means of accents. A series of unaccented tones does not make music. If a clock, in striking twelve, should

12 minute read

Read Chapter

IV. TONE COLOR AND DESIGN

IV. TONE COLOR AND DESIGN

Such has been the development of the elements of symphonic music. The processes I have described are the natural processes of an art which is continually striving for wider and deeper expression. And, speaking humanly, it is not too much to say that within ourselves there should take place a complete analogue to that development and to those processes. The connection between ourselves and the sounds may graduate all the way from complete unconsciousness of their significance (even though we hear

4 minute read

Read Chapter

I. THE UNITY OF THE SYMPHONY

I. THE UNITY OF THE SYMPHONY

For the ordinary listener to a symphony the one great difficulty lies in “making sense” out of it as a whole. He enjoys certain themes and is, perhaps, able to follow their devious wanderings, but he retains no comprehensive impression of the symphony as a complete thing, and he may even never conceive it as anything more than a series of interesting or uninteresting passages of music. Now, it is obvious that an art of pure sound, if it is to have any significance at all, must have complete cohe

8 minute read

Read Chapter

II. STAGES OF ITS DEVELOPMENT

II. STAGES OF ITS DEVELOPMENT

The history of the symphony is the history of all art. It moves in cycles; it marks a parabola. It began as a naïve expression of feeling; it learned little by little how to master its own working material, and as it mastered that, it became more and more conscious in its efforts; as soon as new instruments for producing it were perfected, it immediately expanded its style to correspond to the new possibilities; as its technique permitted, it continually sought to grasp more and more of the elem

7 minute read

Read Chapter

III. CHAMBER MUSIC AS AN INTRODUCTION TO SYMPHONIES

III. CHAMBER MUSIC AS AN INTRODUCTION TO SYMPHONIES

My object in writing all this about the form and substance of the symphony, and in drawing comparisons between it and the novel or poetry, has not been to lead my readers to understand music through the other arts, for by themselves such comparisons are of small value. I have dwelt on these common characteristics of the arts because they exist, because they illuminate each other, and at the same time because they are too little considered. The only way to understand music is to practice it, or,

2 minute read

Read Chapter

IV. THE PERFORMER AND THE PUBLIC

IV. THE PERFORMER AND THE PUBLIC

I have spoken of certain social conditions which affect music unfavorably. There has been always a certain outcry against music because of its supposed emotionalism. The eye of cold intelligence, seeing the music-lover enthralled by a symphony, raises its lid in icy contempt for such a creature of feeling. The sociologist, observing musical performers, wonders why music seems to affect the appearance and the conduct of some of them so unfavorably. The pedagogue, who has his correct educational f

2 minute read

Read Chapter