Evening star., 1914-05-03

NJ SOlQefl earring IS graduate OI q
- German conservatory OF music. Let
me tell You what he can do and where and
how he was taught. Perhaps you who read
this make some pretentions in the singing
line. If so, you may test your accomplish
ments as compared with those of my pet.
Hold your watch in your hand and try to
sing one minute without taking a breath.
You will find it difficult; but my pet will
carry one tone for full minute with perfect
ease. He can sing part OF scale, and have
every note true; and, what IS more wonder
full, when singing those scale notes he will
change from the major to the minor key
without any difficulty. We have a set of
attuned silver bells in a closet. My pet
initiates the tone of these bells exactly;
with the far-away sound that their being in
closed gives them. He can sing the song of
the nightingale and mimic the running
waters of the babbling brook.
There is no royal road to learning, and
nv pets accomplishments were acquired by
diligent application on his own part and
never-ending patience on that of his pro-
fessor in music.
DIET was Matched and raised and taught in
! one of the peasant districts of Germany,
where music, as an art has reached perfec-
ton; where patience, as a virtue, discounts
lob many times over. One of the most in
teresting sections of Germany of which l
have any knowledge is the peasant homes
of these professional bird breeders and train
ers 1t is not big business. There is little
hope of ever becoming billionaire at it;
but the German peasant IS plodder. He
is not an imaginative individual. He IS in
dustrious, and his desires are few, his neces-
sites still fewer, and those who follow the
business of breeding and training canary
birds give it their entire time, and are salts
fed with the life and the money they make.
Let us say that each one of these small
breeders will raise from two hundred to
three hundred male birds in a season. We
cannot count the females, because they sell
dom sing.
wish YOU could see the German peasant
bird trainers. Hans wears a homemade
head covering that resembles Turkish fez
more than anything else of the hat or cap
line. The professor has round jacket; he
has wide, clumsy looking pantaloons, and
wooden shoes which he removes just inside
the door, walking about the house in his
socks or bare feet, according to the degree
of cold.
The musical education of the male birds
begins when they are six weeks old. Hans
puts each bird into box about ten inches
long, with one small, round hole in the cen
ter Of the front. Birdy gets barely enough
light to enable him to find his seed and
drinking cups.
Long rows of these box cages are placed,
one on top of another, four or five deep, in
sound-proof room; for Hans wishes his
pupils to hear only such things as they may
initiate. Their music lessons are given every
two hours.
At first the birds hear just flute notes.
Next comes scale, which is played softly
and very slowly. Hans listens carefully;
for some of the birds are bound to be def
cient in the gift of initiating. With such as
those it is idle to waste time. The chop
note is the natural song Of the canary; but
no chop-note bird is permitted to remain
with the opera singers, lest these last learn
A - CTA1E nIIA MIN