Smyrna times., 1892-11-23
MUSICAL CULTURE. j
WELL MEANING HINTS, BUT NOT
TOO KIND FOR, THE AMATEUR.

Music Is HOmicidal and suicidal-It De-
yours Its own Children and Stays
Itself - Radical Changes Concerning
Instruments and Sex.
As speech to thought, as pictorial art
to external nature, is practical music to
music the element. And for this out
ward and audible art form music is de-
pendent on human mediums, and those
human mediums require a certain prepa-
ration to fit them for the reception and
the transmission of their message. To
some people, in whose natures musical
sympathy is strong, this preparation
comes easily and almost uncOnsciously.
But the great majority need a kind of
acclimatization before they can breathe
and move freely in an element more or
less strange to them, and this accima-
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 q man to
play the piano and impossible for a
woman to play the violin. 1t is not SO
long since, in the upper classes, no girls
education was considered even approx
mately complete without large amount
of piano forte drill-music it shall not
be called-while a 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
iddlers. Boys now and then learned a
little of tho 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, and 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 a 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 dawning 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 ef-
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 u general
truth that musical study proclaims itself
on the housetops, without ceasing for an
instant to assert itself in the garret, 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,
compared with the fact that for every
victim of coercion who formerly pound
ed a wiry piano for a couple of hours a
day there now are 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
| l., Dkh
peripatetic instruments.
Good, very good, no doubt. The mu-
sical crusader looks on the work and
congratulates himself. There must be
means to all end Music requires ma
chinery, and the machinery for music is
being brought into most forward state
of efficiency. But the music itself,
whence in the future is that to comet
The ''enraged composer" and his troubles
have long been favOrite theme for the
efforts of humOrists Yet the fact thus
cOmically represented is no joke, and In
the present condition of things it threat
ems to resume ugly proportions.
Music is homicidal, suicidal. 1t de-
YOURS its own children and slays itself
Silence, the absence or cessation OF
musical sound, is an absolute necessity
for musical thought. But putting on
one side the troubles of composers, who
after all are comparatively few and far
between, the born poor things! to be
Lshmaels, their hand against every
man and every mans hand against
them, what on the rest of the world Ii
the effect of this unceasing, often incon
gruous sound? 1t is easier to complain
than to cure, and far easier to point out
these evils than to suggest any effective
remedy for them.
If architects and builders would take
into consideration the diffusion of noise
and would do something to make wall,
and partitions music proof, it would b,
much. There are continental towns
both in France and Germany wher,
practicing is prohibited by law, excep
at certain stated hours. For a larg,
and enviable portion Of mankind tn,
remedy against the evil lies in getting
used to musical sound, and so uncon
scious of it.-Nineteenth Century.