MUSICAL NOTATION
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MUSICAL NOTATION
idea which will enable him to produce the required tones. To accomplish this, there should be placed upon the board a musical phrase making a definite passage in itself, such as the first two measures of America or of The Star-Spangled Banner, often called a motif. After the pupil has looked at it, have it rubbed out, and let him sing it as a whole and not endeavor to spell it out from note to note. This ability to fuse the three sets of general ideas into a specific one must take place in connection with such a motif, for such fusion cannot take place if the pupil is thinking simply from note to note. Intelligent reading other than musical reading requires the seeing not only of words as wholes, but of words in groups which form a particular part of the sense. This is a point much emphasized in beginning reading with little children. This capacity is essential for the reading of music; but in music it has a double value. Not only does it help in reading, but it gives an opportunity for discerning the concrete musical ideas essential to all musical enjoyment. In suggesting the writing and rubbing out of motives, we have given, only one of many ways which the teache. can employ in accomplishing this result.
The ability to conceive and produce motives that combine to constitute a song prepares us for the third important phase of music-study: the grouping of these motives themselves in larger musical works. The fugue, the sonata, the symphony are but complex and elaborate developments of a few fundamental motives. The more clearly one can grasp the motif and the greater the tenacity with which he can hold it in memory, the more effective and vigorous will be the material of his musical appreciation and the greater the likelihood of his grasping the artistic purport of what he hears.
Instrumental music offers the most effective material for the development of this capacity. The instrumental teacher, instead of limiting his pupils to the musical experience of the pieces they themselves can play, should widen their experience not only by his own playing but by arranging for them to hear others play. Such hearing, however, will lose much of its educational effectiveness, since pupils are in danger of being overwhelmed by the complexity of these larger compositions, unless the teacher guides them by showing them how to concentrate their attention so as so observe the structure.
Modern invention has very greatly widened the possibility of such study. By means of perforated discs and rolls (see PIANO-PLAYER) it is possible to hear music, both in quantity and quality, that a few years ago was available only for exceptionally situated persons. Firstclass schools
feel the necessity for a projection-lantern as an aid in making concrete the material of nature-study, geography, history and the like; and it will not be long before such schools will feel the necessity of supplementing this with instruments by the aid of which the best musical compositions can be heard as many times as are necessary for training in musical appreciation.
With the insight which is given by the tracing of the subjects and the motives of which they are constituted comes an awakened interest, not only in the compositions themselves, but in their composers and the times in which they were produced. Thus the personal, technical training widens into its artistic and human interests, and supplies material not only for the foundation work of those who go on to the study of applied music in some of its multitudinous forms, but for all those who are moved by the concord of sweet sounds.
CHARLES FARNSWORTH.
Mu'sical Notation. Musical notation is generally spoken of as the art of representing tones by written or printed characters. This, strictly speaking, is true only for a few individuals who have such accurate tone-memories that a single note on a page will awaken in their minds the exact pitch it represents. For the majority of music-readers the notation awakens first in the mind general ideas, the combination of which enables the reader to think the given tone from its notation. In this article the various characters of musical notation will be grouped according to the ideas that they awaken. These can be classified in two large divisions: i. e., those of structure and those of interpretation. If one will think over the tunes of Yankee Doodle and America, he will have in his mind the forms of two distinct tone-designs, and it makes no difference with these designs whether they are shrieked out on a circus calliope or artistically rendered by a concert violinist; the designs of the two tunes remain unaltered in each performance. Ideas that have to do with this form or design of the tune we put under the division of structure; but, when we turn to the manner of the performance of these tunes, we find that we have definite ideas also. We wish Yankee Doodle to go in a tripping, gay manner, while America requires a dignified, stately and slower fashion; and we see an infinite difference between the performance of the calliope and that of the concert artist, because of the ideas of interpretation which are added to those of structure.
Musical notation deals chiefly with the ideas of structure, and these will be chiefly considered in this article. When one hums America, a regular pulsation is set in motion, as "loud, soft, soft, loud, soft, soft" by
