The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1889-07-03
THE POWER
AN APPEAL FOR MELODY OF A
WHOLESOME CHARACTER.

AN APPEAL FOR MELODY OF A
WHOLESOME CHARACTER.
The "classic" All Right in Its Place, but
the People Want Popular Ballads and
National Airs-The Poor Love Good
Music Though They Cannot Buy It
Give the people music, and let it be both
popular and good.
Music rouses and trains the emotions, as
the gymnasium trains men in the exercise OF
their limbs Inward activities long dormant
or never before awakened are called up and
become new powers within the breast and
emotion nerves for action. The stupIdest
horse that goes UP hill to the sound Of bells,
the timidest soldier who marches to battle
with fife and drum, the most delicate girl
who spins round and round tireless In the
dance, the poorest laborer who sings at bis
work-any of them are good enough to prove
that music rouses and sustains the emotions.
But that IS not ALE 1t will discipline and
control emotion; that is the explanation OF
the art of music as distinguished from the
mere power Of musical sounds.
IT MAKES THEM BETTER
Have you ever noticed how men, women,
and children will stand around the door Of 9
saloon listening to the wretched version Of
some fine melody executed by gutter band'
Many who come to the door will not enter,
preferring to hear the music, such as it Is;
those who are inside will come forth with
lighted pipes and pause. Slatternly girls,
with ragged children in their arms; idle eI-
press drivers, and dirty, stone throwing, dog
worrying boys, will all stand still in wonder
ment and Joy. And what is it all about? A
cracked fiddle, wretched cornet, and harp
of which no two strings are in tune. trying
wildly to follow The Last Rose Of Sum-
mer"
The masses of the people want music and
if it be of suitable quality it will DO them
good.
The masses who attend the free, open air
concerts in the parks include many persons
of wealth and refinement. but as rule the
majority care nothing for what is usually
called classical" music. To them this means
something ground out with great e1ertion
by the performers, with much bleating and
gesticulation, full of many trills and phrases
and banging and changing, but without any
simple air in it which can be easily caught
up and remembered afterward with pleasure.
So if leaders of bands really desire to strike
the key note of the class Of music most popu-
lar with their audiences they should listen to
the selections given on the streets by the
organ grinders and the vagrant bands. They
will hear much that has been written by such
eminent composers as Mozart, Verdi, Schu-
mann and Sullivan They will find not un-
common old English ballads Of the same style
as the patriotic airs Of 1.-The Star Spangled
Banner" Hail Columbia, Yankee Doodle
and Marching Through Georgia" and they
will discover by no means iufrequent pretty
and catchy" airs from the comic operas.
The peasant songs Of France, Germany,
Switzerland, Italy and Ireland can also be
heard. In short, the free park concerts will
be greater success than ever before if the
music selected by the band leaders is both
popular and good.
And supposing that every Saturday after.
noon through the summer and early autumn
hard worked men can look forward to feast
of music that will soothe, solace and refresh
them. They will be there with their wives
and children, they will spend less on the whole
family than they would squander on them
selves in one idle afternoon; they will meet
friends and form new acquaintance and have
pleasant chats; they viii go home satisfied,
recreated, having had their exercise and coEN
pany, will DO likely to so to bed early.
BETTER THAN MEDICINE.
Tho rich have their grand operas and their
high toned concerts. They have their
musicales and their lat homes" But there
are thousands and thousands Of mechanics
and laborers and toilers-denizens Of un-
fashionable streets and sections-whose only
use of the emotional lfeis base, undisciplined,
and degraded Pleasure with many means
crime; restraint, the real handmade Of pleas
ure, is unknown; system, order, harmony In
their feelings, habits of self control, checking
tho impulses, moderating and .economizing
the feelings, guiding them to powerful pur-
poses and wise ends and wholesome joys-of
all this the masses are chiefly Ignorant; yet
al Sgood music would
teach and give.
The music of the churches has become so
prominent a feature that it attracts as many
listeners as the sermon, but the vast majority
of the poor do not 20 to church at all Yet
and a beautiful strain OF music, whether
sacred or secular, is as likely to cause sob
within the breast clad in fustian as within
one attired in silk.
Music will some day become q powerful
and acknowledged therapeutic. And it is
one especially appropriate in this excitable
age Half our diseases-some physicians say
all our diseaSes-come from disorder Of the
nerves. How many ills Of the mind precede
the ills of the body! Boredom makes more
patients than fever Want Of interest and
excitement, stagnation Of the emotional life,
or the fatigue Of oyerwrought emotion, lies
at the root Of half the i'll health Of our young
men and women Can we doubt the power
of music to break up that stagnationa Or
can We doubt its power to soothe, to recreate
an overstrained emotional life, by bending
the bow the other way! There are moods
of exhausted feeling in which certain kinds
of music would act like poison, just as whip
and spur which encourage the racer at first
tire him to death at last. There are other
kinds of music which soothe, and, if one may
use the word, lubricate the worn ways Of the
nervous centers
When good music ceases to be the luxury
of the rich and the-degradation Of the poor
it will open the golden gates Of wider and
happier realm of recreation for the masses.
It will have a marked influence on crime,
and it will promote thrift and increase the
sunl-now amentably snall-of the peoples
wholesome pleasures Chicago Times
CraftinS Part of a Nerve.
An interesting surgical operation is report