TH E ETUD E 175 practical point} by Eminent T^c^ S TH E RCTlH^CRfi TEflC^E^ . LOUIS C. ELSON. MANY musical journals are agitating for the better support of the native artist in concert and opera at present, but among all the articles written upon this subject one rarely finds reference made to the merits of the native teacher. It may be readily granted that Europe stands in advance of America in the field of musical pedagogics, but this preeminence is rapidly dis-appearing since so many of our native teachers have studied abroad. It is true that the American teacher is not always an exact copy of the musical instructor of Germany or Italy, and it is well that it is so. Modifi-cations of foreign systems to adapt them more fully to the American student are to be viewed as an advantage, not a defect. The chief advantage, however, which the American teacher possesses over his foreign competitor lies in the fact that he more thoroughly understands the natures with which he has to deal ; he knows better how to encourage, how to elicit the best work that is in the pupil. I have frequently seen American teachers attain better results and produce more well-equipped graduates than foreign teachers of higher rank and of greater intrinsic abilities. There is always a degree of psychology employed in every kind of instruction, and the native teacher is here distinctly in advance ; he is almost always more in sym-pathy with his classes, and the closer rapport between teacher and pupil may be readily traced in musical results. EDUCATION . MADAME A. PUPIN. WHAT is an education? The youth of our country are attending the public schools to get an education. They are being crammed with masses of facts taken from pages of books, and expected to remember them without so much as a hint of how the memory is to be trained for this purpose; they are given abstruse sub-jects to study, uninteresting and incomprehensible to their youthful minds, which they learn (?) to-day and forget to morrow ; the lessons are of such number and length that the pupil's chief anxiety is whether he can retain them long enough to recite to the teacher the next day. Pupils and teachers are slaves to a system laid down by a committee or a superintendent, which illogical system seems especially designed to prevent pupils from thinking. Among the ancients, education did not consist in cram-ming into a person things from without, but rather in drawing out from the disciple what was within him. The method was by arguments and disputes. The master led his disciples to think, to reason, and to dis-cover truth for themselves. In this country musical education does not suffer from restrictions. Thanks to the musical journal,—a truly American product,—pupils, as well as teachers, are free to learn and adopt the latest and most progressive ideas. We have not so blind a reverence for tradition that we can not take up a new idea, if perchance it may not be better than the way of our forefathers. The American music-teacher is alive, energetic, progressive, and above prejudice; therefore, I say the American student of music had best get his musical education in this country, a ad then he may go abroad to breathe the musical at-mosphere for a while. RJilM^lCRfi TEACHERS . PERLEE V. JERVIS. WE are beginning to learn that our American teachers, as a whole, are equal, if not superior, to those of any country in the world, and in addition are gentlemen, which is more than can be said of some of the well-known teachers in Europe. Our American teachers are progressive, up-to-date, and not fettered by tradition ; the methods of two Americans, Dr. Mason and Mr. A. K. Virgil, are revolutionizing piano teaching in Europe as well as at home. Piano teaching has reached such a stage of advancement in the United States that pupils can get better teaching here, on the average, than they can abroad, and the ability and skill of a number of our prominent teachers are second to that of no others in the world. Let us stand by our American teachers, and in a few years we will astonish the foreign musical world as we already have the financial, diplomatic, military, and manufacturing world. flmHf^icHfi music . DR. ROBERT GOLDBECK. Is American music progressing? I emphatically say, Yes ! More than that, the United States of North America, essentially cosmopolitan, will, not any less than the older, strongly nationalized countries of Europe, advance upon a path which will steadily lead to the creation of the purely beautiful—an ideal far worthier of pursuit than the establishing of a special school. Dvorak's attempt to elevate negro melodies into sym-phonic themes is interesting, but it would be denying the inventive genius of the American composer to tempt or urge him to have recourse to the simple tunes sung and danced to on the plantations—tunes not composed by the negro, but by some half-tutored minstrel or natural musical genius in touch with the taste of the hour. Often very taking, such songs become widely known and sometimes rise to the character of national song, but they can not any more become the foundation of a new school than the French 1 1 chansons " or the German 11 Volkslieder." Our American composers, fast increasing in number, power, and skill, do not need to be bolstered up in that way. Examine their compositions, dear reader, and you will find that their ideal is much higher. This ideal, as intimated before, is the purely beautiful in music, which can only be approached by a fusion of all the schools, or, differently expressed, by a total setting aside of all that is "special school," national or otherwise. The general tendency is that way. The Italian, the French, the German style, all are fast losing their formerly more distinctive traits. The art of music is tending to uni-versal unity, and the American composer is particularly fitted to play an important part in that movement. TH E liEF T Hft^O. s. N. PENFIELD. IT is in one way unfortunate that modern piano music makes its chief demands upon the right hand, which thereby acquires a decided advantage over the left in endurance, in flexibility, and in the general re-sponding to the commands sent from the brain. Probably the fact that running passages can be more rapidly and skilfully performed by the right hand of the average piano-player accounts, in some part, for the fact that the bulk of modern music is written to correspond to this facility. Certain it is that upward of nine-tenths of the scale-passages and two-thirds of the arpeg-gios fall to the lot of the right hand. But the minute that the left hand has to show its dexterity in direct contrast with that of the right, we discover the dis-crepancy, and, unfortunately, our audiences also make the same discovery. This will not do. The left hand must have absolutely as smooth and as clear-cut execution as the right. This would be less of a problem if only etudes gave equal practice to the two hands. But etudes are, as a rule, as one sided as regular pieces. Kohler, Loeschhorn, and a few other writers of Etudes do better in this regard, and treat the left hand as though it had some rights of its own. In this state of things it behooves teachers and pupils to make a special study of the left hand. In ordinary scale practice with hands together it will probably be found that the right hand drags the left along and really plays a little the loudest. To correct this, the left hand should be practiced a good deal alone, and etudes giving special attention to this hand should have constant study. Bach's Inventions, with their wealth of melodic thought and exuberant fancy, can not be too highly recommended. They furnish the very best models for the composer and exercises for the conscientious player, and not the least of the advantages resulting from their study is that they make equal demands on the two hands, and the left hand must do just as nice work as the right. R STAl*TIiir4G STATE^E^T. CARL W . GRIMM. MUCH is said and written about bad (incompetent) teachers. It must be admitted that a number of teach-ers do not do the right thing. The majority of people actually believe more bad teachers exist than good ones. I do not incline to this view. On the contrary, I think that if one could make a critical estimate of teachers and pupils, it would show that in proportion to numbers there are many more bad pupils than bad teachers. A startling statement, perhaps, but undoubtedly true. Teachers, by sheer force of competition, are naturally compelled to excel each other, to employ and keep on the watch for improved methods; that belongs to the professional side of their life. Then, to succeed with men, women, and children they have to make it a point to make themselves agreeable and attractive ; that be-longs to the personal' side of their life. How many pupils out of ten do everything their teacher tells them ? How many pupils try to make the taking of a lesson pleasant to their teacher? How many parents even in-sist unrelentingly upon regular practice, and see to it that it is done by their children daily ? But how quick many parents are to tell the teacher what to do ! Are you a good pupil? one who always does everything, and exactly, as your teacher tells you ? TH E IDEALi. THOMAS TAPPER. IT is the inner senses that construct the ideal, the senses that delight in hearing, and seeing, and choosing, and creating wholly within. We must recognize these senses, and appeal to them, and delight in them, other-wise they remain inactive and we advance into life with a growing disbelief in their reality. We fail in securing the " fullness of life," because we are unable to be simple and truthful. Few learners believe in learning ; if they did so, they would follow simple directions with exactness. The learner who has sufficient strength of mind to do what he is told is, as the Romans would say, " a rare bird." We die to our opportunities when disbelief in the ideal overtakes us. To keep this misfortune away from ourselves and from others, we must cultivate the faculty of doing common tasks uncommonly ; of investing lowly duties with lofty purposes ; of finding in the ordinary processes of life extraordinary opportunities for self-expression. Then the inner senses seem to spring into being ; and the ideal with its on drawing force is ever with us, a thing in which we believe and for which we labor. —What is now universally known as the tempo rubato as a factor in musical expression was introduced at a very early period, probably with the advent of the first group of professional singers. While the precise words were not used, the nature of the rubato was, neverthe-less, fully discussed and explained in the olden musical treatises, where it was included in the more general terms of accelerando and ritardando.—uMusical Record
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