"See how sweet, Lyof Nikolayevitch! It already begins to hum in our ears; try it again, again."
We sang these chords both in school and out-of-doors, and in the park and on the road home, till late at night, and we could not stop or rejoice sufficiently at our success.
On the next day we attempted the scale, and the more talented ones went through it perfectly, the duller ones could scarcely reach to the third. I wrote the notes on the staff in the alto key, the most symmetrical, and I called them in French. The succeeding six lessons went just as merrily; we sang new chords—minor ones and modulations into the major—gospodi pomiluí,[1] "Glory to the Father and the Son," and a little three-part song, with piano. One half of the lesson was occupied with this, the other with singing of the scale and exercises which the pupils themselves invented: do-mi-re-fa-mi-sol, or do-re-re-mi-mi-fa, or do-mi-re-do-re-fa-mi-re, and so on.
I very speedily remarked that the notes on the staffs were not learned by observation, and found it necessary to substitute figures for them. Moreover, for the explanation of intervals and the variability of the tonic, figures are more useful. After, six lessons some were able to strike whatever intervals I asked of them, attaining it by an imaginary scale. Especially pleasing was the exercise on the fourths—do-fa-re-sol and the, like, up and down. Fa—the sub-dominant—especially struck them all by its force.
"How healthy that fa is!" exclaimed Semka. "How it cuts through."
Unmusical natures all fell behind; but with the musical ones our classes used to last three or four hours. I tried to give them an idea of beating time by the received method, but the thing seemed so hard to them that I was obliged to separate the tempo from the melody, and having written the notes without measure, to read them; and then, having written the measure—that is, tempo without sounds—by beating to read
- ↑ The Lord have mercy.
