The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-09-04
Children Who Fail In Music HdUe Never Been Taught
 To Love It." Says Mrs. Cora Scheffer Anthonv
By DOLLY DALRYMPLE

ENTLE voiced, sweet faced, witf
 r charming personality and lot,
 of temperament Mrs. Cora Schef
 fer Anthony, who has just arrived in Bir
 mingham to take charge of the kinder
 garten and preparatory department 0
 the Southern School of Musical Art. chat
 ted with me yesterday about her methods
 of teaching children and something about
 her own musical career, all of which
 found most interesting and entertaining l l can imagine nobody who could have Ia more beautiful influence over children
 than Mrs. Anthony; her manner is mos,
 ingratiating and her magnetism most compelling and even 'grown-up," as I am found myself listening spell-bound as
 she told me about the little modern A B
 C's and Gs methods that are used
 nowadays to interest the little tot from 31f years old up Into the teens.
 It Is all so different from the old time
 way of seating a poor little child at the
 piano and cracking him over the knuckes note; 1t Is so different from putting a
 child down to Five Finger Exercises
 as they used to and making him play
 things that meant nothing on the face of the earth to him.
 Now; well, it's just like a fairy tale teaching music Is, the way Mrs Anthony does 1t. and, best of all. the fundamental
 principle is to make the child love music and not dread the practice hour as he would a dose of ipecac
 You can't help but listen and love all that she says, as Mrs. Anthony tells the child in her quaint. attractive way of how God created music along with the very first things In this great big world-the birds and the bees and the babbing
 brooks singing their merry little tunes as
 they go their way and of how the human voice was then created and thus to man
 was given the most beautiful musical in-
 strument to play on that was ever known, and then she tells of how the vari- ous musical instruments were made to initiate the human voice--the violin and the violincello and the harp and the or gan-and. oh! well, before she's half way through you sort of wish, with the old verses that 'Time would turn backward In It's flight and make you a child again Just for tonight" so that you might be taught all this beautiful music lore
 Many parents contend that their chil- dren are not musical. that they have no desire for music, that they have no tal- ent for it. Mrs. Anthony said interest edly Now, a few years ago such statement would have been unanswera ple but it is no longer so. In order to be- come musical now, natural talent, in the heginning. Is not necessary, a naturally good ear is not necessary a natural sense of rhythm is not necessary, natural n y,11Ic Is perseverance Is not necessary. None of the preliminary conditions which were necessary a decade ago are needed now, because the teacher can make them, S 1t were, to order. He can develop in his pupils the things necessary to make them musical But If your children are mu- sical, If their ear is good, if their taste is naturally correct, if they rejoice in music-then so much the better. The same methods which make musicians slowly out of duller children will advance your talented ones with a rapidity and thoroughness which will surprise you"
 You have seen the sons and daughters Of your friends sent to school and con- servatoies' continued Mrs. Anthony, where a musical education has been guaranteed, and you have seen many of them-nay, most of them-fail. Perhaps they have abandoned the study of music altogether. Perhaps they have learned to rattle waltz or a two-step without heart or care. Possibly, they have prac- ticed Beethoven sonata or a Bach fugue which they play in such a way as to weary themselves and finally after term Of one, five or 10 years they retire from the field vanquished, disappointed, | heart sick. And why? The simple truth is that the children who have failed were never taught to love music. The mere mechanism-the dry theory of the art I ,A-I while it's beauty has not been shown to them. It was as if the spirit of music | were immured In some dark prison, like | a damsel in a medieval romance, com passed about with every imaginable diff 1 ficulty; and the poor little children have been expected to emulate the heroes of old-to brave all opposition to overcome every obstacle in order that the damsel | might be freed-that the musikgeist might | be theirs. In the old romances but one | hero in thousands met with success, and | so it has been with the little pilgrims | who have wandered through the dismal | places of the world of music. One has | become a musician while 1000 have re- | mained stiff, uninteresting, conventional l amateurs, or have abandoned music en- | tirely. You know inexpressibly weari- | some. under the older methods, the ele- | study of music is. You have | seen little girls and boys puzzling over | which they could not under | stand. You have seen them struggling | with their sharps and flats. their sixteenth | notes and thirty second notes. their added l lines and time signs, their rests and | ties. their crescendos and diminuendos, and all the mass of technical knowledge l which they are obliged to acquire before, too late. the beauty of the art begins to unfold itself before them. You have seen them dawdlng over their music read Ing, yawning over their scales and finger exercises. and driven into state of ner- vous irritation by hours of lonely prac- tice with no companion but the drawing room furniture. and the clock which they more intently than the music book, until its hands indicated the close ,f the hour.
 Every teacher of music has tried to get away from these annoying, unsatis- factory methods" Mrs. Anthony said, and few of us have succeeded, I am nglenook Methodist church at spend- he-day party. The. guests passed the %f,,rr Po