The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1916-07-08
A. Jack Thomas. Bandmaster, U. $. A.

Our own Henry T. Burleigh
is doing more to preserve the nation
al element in our Folklore, than any
composer, white or black, today. The
| prejudice is only too widely diffused,
that an able or even q distinguished
composer, must of necessity. and with
out further pains, be also an able
teacher; while yet the indispensable
ness of further qualifications in a
teacher is so easily seen that pedogog-
ic science long since offered to eX-
plain, and experience has often proved
(as in the case of Mozart and Beetho-
ven) hat artistic ability and the ca
pacity TO teach are not so often or
so necessarily united that the n
may be safely inferred from the
greatness of the other. The teacher
should, indeed, possess the cultiva-
ton, the spirit, and the soul of an ar
tist-should be himself an artist
but, besides this, he should not be
wanting in the full vocation, the dex-
terity, the experience and the capac-
ity of the pedagogue. Seldom as this
many-sided fitness is either found or
attained, reflection will not fail to
make us confess its necessity.
My method of teaching. both in theory
and practice, has been the first been
directed in conformity with these
views. OF pure verbal aquaint the
scholar with the method of instruction
and direct him or her to the point of
artistic effort. From the first series
of notes (the major diatonic %scale),
the instruction assumes it's peculiar
and permanent character. While the
! scholar who is familiar with the
teacher perceives what to observe
and what to miss in the form of the
tune, the more able and diligent
Scholarships prepared among the
less gifted-will almost of themselves
| grasp the next necessary, or mex pos
sible point. or understand it without
difficulty from the course of articles.
The scholar is thus kept from the be-
ginning in artistic activity-in the at
mosphere of his future life. The
teacher also remains fresh and active,
and has no longer cause, either in his
or her work or m~editations, to fear
the old disheartening d~issension be-
tween Art and Science.
In conclusion of this rather long
preface, with single scholars, or
even with two or more, who sit at the
teachers side and watch the nov
| ments of his pen, or who often unex-
pectedly take the pen into their own
hands-to whom the teacher must
give advice or instruct them how to
proceed with a work already begun;
how to explain, to improve, OF to
avoid such and such a dubious point
for all these purposes this system of
instruction has proved most agreeable
and fertile of results. The more the
scholar can anticipate the teacher
the sooner he is able of himself to
discover an explanation or an expedi-
ent--to accelerate his work and prog
ress-the more successful, in my opin-
ion, is the teachers work. The mis-
takes of the scholar, especially in the
greater tasks of the fugue and the
sonata forms, provided they have
but one tenable position, may be
taken up and corrected at leisure,
thus enabling him at once to perceive
the discrepancy of his error with some
part Of his work. In artistic science,
where individuality and its subjective
sensation and volition give the last
decision in the moment of artistic
| Grafton, l do not hold it advisable that
the scholar should wholly avoid er-
rors. He should be thoroughly tried
and tested and have opportunity to
conquer himself by his own might. a
vanquished error is a progress; an
error merely suppressed threatens a
return.
Next week l will take up the Tone
and Note system.
A. JACK THOMAS,
Bandmaster 10th U. S. Cavalry, June
IL, 1916.