CHILDREN AND MUSIC.

Evening Star, Issue 12943, 5 May 1908, Page 5

CHILDREN AND MUSIC.

A feeling of love, admiration, and even reverence, for good compositions, can bo established at a very early age in children by encouraging them to thins 0 f the old masters as real people, who thought of and wrote beautiful music for us. 'this can be none by reading aloud any interesting anecdotes taken from the lives of the great musicians, or, better still, by the teacher first reading up the subject and then tolling his pupil what he knows. Of course, this last method involves more trouble on the part oi the teacher, but the stories arc made much more real to the child in this way. i It wall be of great advantage if a picture can be found illustrating the story. If this 1 be impossible, there should be no difficulty m showing a portrait of iho composer about whom the anecdote is being told. For instance, what can be more charming than the stoiy of little Handel, who, in spite of his lather’s determination to repress his talent | and to bring him up to become a lawyer, j persuaded uis mother to hido a clavichord in i the garret of their- house, where he spent ■ many hours playing on his beloved instrument : alter the other members of the family had i retired to rest? And what more attractive ’ picture could a child have to hang in his room than that by Margaret Dioksee, of the Handel family, who, having been roused hi tile night by sweet strains of music, find the child, George Frederick, seated alone at the clavichord? Surely this little figure, clad in his nightshirt-, would be enough to soften the heart of adamant! The reproduction of this beautiful picture can be bad for ■ a very trilling sum, and it generally has great powers of fascination over a child pianist. It seems extraordinary that so many teachers of music are satisfied with bringing up their little pupils without fostering any real love for the great tone poets or" their i works. An intelligent little girl of about eleven years of ago, who had been taught the piano for four years by a qualified mistress, was asked if she liked Beethoven. She looked amazed, and replied: ” Beethoven, what’s that?” She was then told the story of the ‘Moonlight Sonata,’ and she immediately became interested, and wished to hear the music which had so attracted the blind girl, oven wondering when she herself would be efficient enough to learn it. This child worked very hard at her music, and in a few days managed to play quite nicely a short piece by heart, because she knew that if she accomplished this she would hear another anecdote. Yet her music mistress had told her parents that it was useless to continue teaching the j little girl, as sire took no interest in music, 1 and had made no progress for over a year, j Probably, if a dozen children under "twelve years of age, who had received some sort of : musical education for several years were picked out haphazard from almost any town or district, it would be discovered that quite half that number would be entirely ignorant that such men as Bach, Beethoven, etc., had ever existed; and the rest would only look upon them as people whose only idea had been to write dull music “with no tune in it,” or at best, they would associate their names with difficult passages wliich were I utterly meaningless to them, and which were a source of trouble tn both teacher and pupil. I This feeling would be entirely swept away if the “anecdote” plan were generally adopted. It involves very little trouble on the part of the teacher, who would be amply repaid by seeing the pupil’s interest awakened, j Supposing a half-hourly lesson be given twice a week, might cncc a week ton minutes be devoted to an anecdote. This only takes up ten of the sixty minutes allowed weekly for music lessons, and the young pupil will be foulid to attend much more closely to his work if he sometimes allowed something apart from the ordinary routine. Should the child show signs of inattention, the anecdote should be reserved for a future occasion. When a child is reading music, and is not paying sufficient attention to the marks of expression, say (supposing the composer to be Haydn, for example): “ Haydn wrote that passage ‘staccato ; then why play it ‘legato,’ when he took as much trouble to show you how he wished it to be played?” This always has an excellent effect; 'especially if the child has been brought Up to look upon Haydn as a person to whom ’she owes a great

debt, fop is bo not “ the father of symphony ? ” It is a mistake to allow a child to think that because he happens to strike all the notes _ that are written at the right time, that he is necessarily playing correctly, or that he is making music. A small part played intelligently and artistically is a far greater achievement than a whole sonata thumped out without any thought or expression.—‘ Montreal Family Herald.’