MUSIC LESSONS

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1639, 9 May 1925, Page 8

MUSIC LESSONS

EACH PARENT’S DUTY.

(Contributed.)

Every parent should teach a child to play upon some sort of an instrument. Learning music has a reflex action upon one’s character. It does not always make a man good, but it has a tendency to increase self-con- , trol, patience, persistence, and these are qualities that every man . desires. Particularly -it is valuable for a girl to le&rn to play the piano or the harp. What is true of the piapo is still truer of the harp. Every woman looks angelic when she is playing the harp, no matter what her .personal attractions. “ I think if I had a small daughter,” says a recent writer, “ and she showed any inclination in that direction, I should first buy her a little Irish harp which she could handle easily and is not expensive, and then about her sixteenth birthday I wpuld present her with a full-grown harp.” Every child should be taught to play something, hut in choosing what she will play she should be allowed to follow her own inclinations. One does much better work in following one’s fancy than in going against it. Many parents think their children are unmusical when they have simply chosen wrong. It has been said: “To be brought up with beautiful music makes one want to be a part of it, ito really do something beside just listen,.” It is the parent’s duty not only to get his children acquainted, by the piano player and the phonograph, wifti good music, but by assisting him inproducing it.