A NEW FORM OF PIANISM.
A certain person sent her little girl to me for lessons; on one occasion I called on the parent to insist on the practicing, when I was informed that Mr. "so and so, who is a Licentiate in Music of a London College, never made her practice scales, and he played the piano wonderfully; he used to make it rock."—Selected.
* * *
PUZZLE DEPARTMENT
The following are the solutions to the various puzzles in the Children's Page of The Etude, issue for February:—
Picture Puzzles: Chadwick, Rubinstein, Hawley.
Buried Musicians: Bishop, Smith, Heins, [de] Bériot.
Anagrams: Meistersinger, Danse Macabre, Hungarian Rhapsody.
Musical Notation: Gade.
We have received correct answers to puzzles from Arlie Moore, B. Reuss, Genevieve Lochner, Cora E. Osteroot, Katie Holz, Carrie M. Steinman, Martha Trudgen, Harold Gaspar, Emma L. Marquart, Vera Evers, F. E. Crumb, Wm. McLay, Robert Crawford, A. B. Hummert, L. Weber, Olga Schnabel, Meta H. Wickham, Herman Tunick.
NEW PUZZLES.
Each of the following sentences contains the name of a musician. The letters composing the name occur consecutively:—
1. What river did you cross in going from New York to Brooklyn?
2. There will be no confab to-night.
3. Count the cost and make sure.
4. That is her wood and not yours.
5. Who does not long to be a child again?
ANAGRAMS.
The following represent (1) a transposition of the letters spelling the name of a celebrated comic opera; (2) a well-known composer and pianist; (3) a favorite piano composition; (4) a very successful opera.
1. I made hymns of corn.
2. We dare skip.
3. It can avoid the tin tone.
4. Value as an arctic lair.
* * *
THE CHILDHOOD OFSOME MUSICIANS.
Dear Little Boys and Girls Who Read The Children's Page:
During this new year of 1904 which has just begun for us I am going to write for you a series of articles telling you about the childhood of some of the musicians who made the music of the nineteenth century.
We will talk about the little beginnings of these great people, of the little thoughts and efforts which began when these great people were very little people, just like you, eight, or ten, or twelve years old; and about how the little thoughts and endeavors of these little people grew and grew into great and beautiful results, so that we who live so far away from them just love to hear of the things they did, and said, and thought.
We will talk about some one who wrote music, and that will be Chopin; and of some one who tried to make the music which has been written easier to understand and to play, and that will be German Hans von Bülow. Then perhaps we will have some one who made people happy all the world over with the music of her glorious voice; I mean Adelina Patti. She was a dear little girl—wait till you hear the things I have to tell you about her. Then I'm going to tell about some one who made grand music with her nimble fingers—Clara Schumann, such an interesting little fräulein. That is enough to promise for the present, and I hope in reading and thinking about the things which happened to these simple little boys and girls who grew up to be great musicians you will find something which will help you to love and understand music even better than you do now.
The other day one of my little pupils threw her hands up over her head and cried out, "Oh, I want to be the greatest musician in all this world!"
"Well," I said, "to wish that is to have taken a sure step toward being a great musician."
To have the desire—that is it. To want to be something very great and wonderful, to desire it so much that you are willing to do all that is necessary to become so great that, a hundred years from now some one will be telling the children of the twenty- first century the brave story of your life.
You children who are reading The Etude now are going to become the musicians of the future. Which ones of you are going to take up the work of the great men and women of the past, and carry music upward and onward to greater, and more beautiful perfection than it has yet reached?
This is what you must practice for. Don't practice scales just simply for the sake of practicing scales, but practice them as a preparation for the work, the great wonderful work which is waiting for you to do when you grow up.
I think that when you come to see that all the success of the musical folks with whom we will become acquainted this year began with the way they practiced their scales and finger exercises, you will see, also, that in your practice now you too may lay the foundation for a splendid career.
In The Etude for April we shall have some very interesting reading about the childhood of Frederic Chopin.—Helena Maguire.
* * *
MUSIC SCHOOL TALKS.—I.
The Editor of The Etude is pleased to be able at this time to announce that Dr. Clarke, Professor of Music in the University of Pennsylvania, will prepare a series of short talks on the original and modified meanings of many terms used in music. We suggest that teachers of clubs test their pupils rigorously to see if they have learned thoroughly the essential points in regard to each term. These tests should take the form of "Questions and Answers." Thus: What was the origin of the term "Music?" What change has taken place in the meaning? What is the origin of the word "Scale?" And so on. The teacher can make use of the same methods as those applied in the public schools in the way of preparing a lesson.
One of the most entertaining and at the same time instructive ways in which an inquiring mind may seek for knowledge is by questioning "words," making them tell where they came from, how they arrived at their present shape, and how they came to bear their present meaning. Words are very strange things. Some of them, like the word sac, sack, sacque, have persisted through nearly all languages without any change of meaning; some have in a comparatively short time come to have a meaning exactly the opposite of their original meaning; for example, in the English of the sixteenth century prevent meant to assist, and let meant to oppose; and now prevent means to oppose, and let means to permit.
MUSIC.
In the course of these articles we are going to question some of the words that are used in the Art of Music, and, if possible, make them give a complete account of themselves. First of all, we call on the word music to tell us where it came from, and how it came to mean what we call music. This is the account that it gives of itself.
Long ago—a thousand years and more before the birth of Christ—those wonderful people, the Greeks, invented a myth that all art, science, and knowledge were under the special care of nine divine beings whom them figured as beautiful women called Muses —in Greek, Mousa; hence all branches of learning were called Mousike, which means "presided over by the muses." As the Art of Music grew in estimation and development, the word Mousike became more and more restricted in its meaning, and, instead of meaning all the sciences and arts, began to mean music in our sense. After the Romans began to study singing and playing upon instruments, they borrowed the word from the Greeks, but wrote it Musica, and meant by it just what we do when we say music.
SCALES.
There can be no music without scales, so we will apply to this word, scale, to hear what it can say of itself. Whenever men want to give a name to some new thing the first thing they do is to try to find out some resemblance between the new thing and something with which they are familiar. Some one was struck with the fact that a series of sounds rising gradually in pitch resembled a ladder, and with a happy thought called it the "ladder" of sounds. Ladder in Latin is Scala.
DIATONIC.
But it was soon discovered that all scales were not alike, and it was necessary to find some more words to join with the word scale to distinguish one from another. So the word "Diatonic," which means "through the tones," was invented to signify a scale which moves through all the letters without omission or repetition.
CHROMATIC.
In order to describe a scale which gave nearly all the letters in two forms a word was borrowed from a totally different science, that of light or color, and this scale which gives two shades of every letter was called chromatic—from the Greek name for color, Chroma.
TONE.
We come now to a word, tone, which finds it very difficult to give a clear account of itself; it has to mean so many things. It is quite sure that it was born in Greece and its original name was Tonos, and it meant, literally, "straining or raising the voice." Then because singing up the scale necessitated a gradual straining or raising of the voice, Tonos came to mean a scale. Then in some way it got the meaning of a whole step between two sounds; then, as though it did not have enough work put on it, it began to mean any musical sound, and last of all the quality or kind of a sound, as a violin tone, a flute tone, etc. So it will be seen that of the words we have questioned so far, the first meant originally all the arts and sciences; the next meant a ladder; next a ladder that went through all the letters; next a ladder that had different shades of color; the last, which originally meant stretching, has now literally been stretched to cover so many meanings that it does not feel quite sure which one it ought to consider its most appropriate.—H. A. Clarke.
