New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1922-08-27
By H. E. Krehbiel

II were NOT convinced that nature
las raised barrier to save us from
such fate would shudder at the cf-
forts of women's musical clubs. women
who teach music, women who write
about music in the newspapers and
men who make machines which make
music automatically to make out Of us
nation of musicians. Much as / love
the art (and one must have an abnor-
NAL capacity for affectionate apprecia-
ton who, as I have done, can sit on
the critical bench--which is not neces-
sarily that of the scofer-for three
quarters of his life), cannot think of
anything much more dreadful than a
people wholly given to making and u.s.
tening to music. For one thing, music
is too little intellectual. There is not
enough cerebral exercise in the enjoy
ment Of it to justify all that is claimed
for it. Poets talk of it in Strain Of
hyperbole which is sometimes not far
removed, except in form of expression,
from that INDUCED in by the essayists
If the music clubs who tell US all about
che rise Of harmony or the merits of
Jazz in fifteen minutes, elucidate clas-
sicism by telling how Beethoven
played the G sharp minor sonata for
blind girl in the moonlight and char
seterize the Romantic period by de-
scribing the iovelorn Schubert in the
household Of Prince Esterhazy. Some
great composers have had great minds,
end so have some great performers;
but the brains of thousands of singers
end instrumentalists are of the same
order as the brains OF thousands of
hodcarriers or bricklayers. Blind Tom
played the pianoforte we'll and made
acceptable pieces in imitation of those
which he learned from the playing of
his teacher; and Blind Tom was an i'm
Eecile.
Since we have begun to mix music
teaching with psychology we are told
that stcpendous advances have been
made in musical pedagogics. We used
to think that aptitude in sense percep-
ton, good ear" and desire as we'll
as capacity to make music were essen
tial to musical education and con6I-
tions precedent to music study in chill
dren. But since we have learned that
universal moral redemption is attain
able through music, we know that the
dispositions implanted by nature have
nothing to do with the case A child
that can't sing because it has neither
voice nor sense of pitch, nor desire to
sing, must be made to sing, and can be
made to sing by the new pedagogics.
Good boys are all musical boys; good
girls are all musical girls. Naughti-
ness fees before knowledge of tones.
| read q book recently which told how
themes heard in a symphony might be
fixed in the memory by diagrammatic
lines, how such memorizing would
make the world harmonious and put an
end to war. Music creates morality
ergo, all good musicians are good peo-
pie! Learn to sing, or play, or TO en-
Joy music and you shall instinetively
have acquired knowledge of the law
and the prophets and delight in obedi-
ence to the decalogue and every other
code of ethics. Yet lives of artists
do not always remind us how to make
our lives sublime except as they some
times serve as warnings and admoni-
tions.
AS music, true music, is the art
which is talked about most and prac-
ticed least, there is more nonsensica,
palaver about it than any other art.
When 1t tends to induce virtuous con.
duet it does so in the manner of every.
thing else In this world which appeals
to the emotions. tits just as likely &c
loosen the fibers Of an immoral nature
as of one innately prone to morality
II It disposes one to yield to desir,