Fairhaven herald. [volume] (Fairhaven, Wash.) 1890-????, 1892-10-26
MUSICAL CULTURE.
WELL MEANING HINTS, BUT NOT
TOO KIND FOR, THE AMATEUR.


Itself - Radical Changes Concernin,
Instruments and Sex.
As speech to thought, as pictorial ar
to external nature, is practical music t.
music the element. And for this out
ward and audible art form music is de
pendent on human mediums, and those
human mediums require certain prepa
ration to fit them for the reception an6
the transmission of their message. Tt
some people, in whose natures musical
sympathy is strong, this preparation
comes easily and almost unconsciously
But the great majority need kind OF
acclimatization before they can breathe
and move freely in an element more OF
less strange to them, and this acclima-
tization is what we know as musical
culture"
Most people have some latent musical
faculty, and this is capable of develop
ment. The notion has at any rate died
out that it was effeminate for man to
play the piano and impossible for a
woman to play the violin. 1t is not 80
long since, in the upper classes, no girls
education w considered even approx
mately complete without large amount
of piano forte drill-music it shall not
be called-while certain proficiency in
this respect was too often held to atone
for the absence of all other culture.
The violin on the other hand was
held to be good only for men; perhaps
we should restrict the term and say for
fiddlers. Boys now and then learned a
little of the instrument at school-a
knowledge soon to be dropped and for
gotten. The difference now scarcely
needs to be pointed out. Boys and girls
in numbers, spd not few who are no
longer boys or girls, are learning to play
on the violin and other stringed instru-
ments. The discovery has been made
that, though virtuoso must begin early,
it is not necessary to practice half the
day at four or five years old in order to
be a good useful player at twenty.
Ensemble classes and school orches-
tras show that on our amateurs the truth
is at last davning that unlimited solo
performance is not the ultimate aim of
all music training; that while only
gifted few can attain to high individual
excellence and finish, the combination
of many atoms of good, too small to be
of any use singly, may result in an eff
feet which is not only good, but great,
so long as music, not self display, is the
object sought after.
1t may be roundly stated as general
truth that musical study proclaims itself
on the housetops, without ceasing for an
instant to assert itself in the garnet, in the
basement and at sundry intermediate
points. The students friends assist at
every stage of his progress; they are in
voluntary and mostly unwilling partici-
pators in his difficulties, his perseverance,
his triumph and his despair. Well for
them if two or three such dramas are not
going ON in the house at once, to say
nothing of probable puffs of melody and
harmony from next door or over the way.
That the character of musical practice
is far superior to what it used to be avails
these helpless ones but little.
To them it is an insignificant fact,
with the fact that for every
victim of coercion who formerly pound
ed wiry piano for couple of hours a
day there now are a dozen students of
various instruments and singers galore,
all practicing away for dear life Should
any link be missing in the continuous
chain of sound, it is filled up by barrel
organs, street bands, wandering ballad
singers, solos on the whistle and other
instruments.
Good, very good, no doubt. The mu-
neal crusader looks on the work and
himself. There must be
means to all end. Music requires ma
,hinery, and the machinery for music is |
being brought into most forward state |
# efficiency. But the music itself, |
whence in the future is that to come? |
The "enraged composer" and his troubles
iave long been favorite theme for the
,fforts of humorists. Yet the fact thus
represented is no joke, and in
he present condition of things it threat
ms to resume ugly proportions.
Music is homicidal, suicidal. 1t de-
,ours its own children and Stays itself.
)ueDCt, Iile dDstIC6 OF CeSSdIlOn OF
musical sound, is an absolute necessity
or musical thought. But putting on
me side the troubles of composers, who
Ifter all are comparatively few and far
the born poor things! to be
shmaels, their hand against every
nan and every mans hand against
hem, what ON the rest of the world is
he effect of TINS unceasing, often incon-
,ruous soundS 1t is easier to complain
han to cure, and far easier to point out
hese evils than to suggest any effective
emedy for them.
If architects and builders would take
nto consideration the diffusion of noise,
nd would do something to make walls
nd partitions music proof, it would be
much. There are continental towns
9th in France and Germany where
racticing is prohibited by law, except
I certain stated hours. For a large
nd enviable portion of mankind the
emedy agaiDst the evil lies in getting