Why We Love Music — Text and Context

Instruments were furnished at public expense. Credit for music gained current coinage on a par with history and chemistry. The introduction of principles of educational psychology led to selective admission and elimination and gave the teachers a basis for the administration of praise or blame in achievement. Few public school subjects can point to a similar epoch-making stride. These achievements today give youth a chance in music.

_Orientation in the grades._ For the musical life of youth at and soon after the high-school age, the training in the grades was most significant, and that, in turn, was rooted in a national awakening to the possibilities and the responsibilities of music in the earliest years in the home and the kindergarten. This awakening was strengthened by the recognition given art in general. Music early became associated with the speech arts, the dance, and other games. The development in the graphic and the plastic arts, though slow, was somewhat parallel with music for these early years. In the eight years in the grades there developed a process of selective opportunities for the pursuit of music so that freshmen entered the high school as a group fairly differentiated on the basis of abilities, opportunities, likes and dislikes, and ambitions for music.

This differentiation had a twofold effect on the high school: First, the elimination of pupils who, on various legitimate grounds, did not qualify for musical training at public expense at this stage and, second, the beginning of specialization for those who had previously found themselves or who at this stage made a happy decision. Thus the development of music in the high school has followed logically on the early development of music in the grades, and in like manner the development of music at the college level is now beginning to follow the development of music in the high school.

_Group activities in voice and instrument._ Youth is the age of learning by doing. This principle has been implemented in high-school education by the development of group activities, both in theoretical and in practical music, both in the curricular and in the extracurricular activities. Throughout, the emphasis has been on action. Instruments are supplied at public expense; opportunities are given for participation in programs of entertainment; and a stimulus has been climaxed by the introduction of local, state, and national contests for groups and for individuals.

The adoption of the principle of group instruction at this level has had many significant advantages. It draws large numbers of pupils into group activities for the social value of the activity in itself and for the social value of participation in public life. It has lessened the cost of musical education many times over by training ten or a hundred pupils in a group as effectively, in many respects, as they could be trained by individual instruction. Group instruction has, perhaps, been the strongest leverage for the motivation of musical pursuits in the school. It has increased the pursuit of individual instruction on the basis of discovered needs, for example, in the mastery of a particular instrument for participation in the band or orchestra or in the development of a voice discovered in the group. The individual instruction has thus been motivated and made to fit into particular niches in the musical groups or in the choice of vocational pursuits in society.

_Contests._ The development of contests both in individual and in group performance has had a profound effect on the development of music in youth and is destined to serve in large part as a clearinghouse. Educators recognize many drawbacks in the plan of contests. Preparation for the contests requires excessive time and highly trained teachers. A contest becomes an occasion for the revelation and the objectifying of differences in individuals and groups. It involves some little expense. It tends to discourage the pupils who cannot qualify.

But let us look at the other side. In the state of Iowa, for example, the state-wide contests, which have been conducted for about the past ten years, have done far more than anything else to vitalize music education in the high school. Four years ago I became acquainted with a group of ten girls who came from a little town three hundred miles away. They had not placed in the contest; they had had no chance. I supposed that this contest would be the last that we should see of them, but the next year they appeared in a body--happy and optimistic, in a fighting mood--and won honors. I asked how they accounted for their success, and they said, "When we got home and reported that we had had no chance in the state contest, the commercial club of our town raised a purse and employed a teacher to come into the high school and train us in music." When the commercial club goes into its pockets in the interest of putting music on the map in its community, music is beginning to function in that community.

Nobody cares to tune a fiddle for four years; but, if he has the opportunity to play a tune, he will gladly keep the fiddle tuned. This fact has been shown on a large scale as a result of the contest plans. Not only have the final local, district, and state contests become goals, but every daily practice has gained an objective and is a topic for social conversation. The contests have made each participant critical of his own performance and the performance of the group and have also made each ambitious for improvement. They have raised standards of selection in musical material. They have resulted in the giving of higher musical education to large numbers of gifted persons whose talents would not otherwise have come to the serious attention of parents or educational interests. The methods of judging these contests have been greatly improved in the direction of offering encouragement where encouragement is due without discouraging more modest attainments where they are indicated.

Educators used to think that football was the only thing that would arouse enthusiastic support in the field of avocational activities for youth; but, as I have witnessed the attitude of high-school pupils in training for musical contests, heard reports of the attitudes of the parents and the backers, and watched the culmination of enthusiasm at the annual contest, I can say that there can be, for youth, as substantial enthusiasm in contests of music as there is in football. In other words, the youth of the state have entered into music in the spirit of play, with determination to train well, play hard, and win if possible. Enthusiasms for a center of interest in public and in private have been found in this music.

_The hearing of music._ Within the past forty years, also, America has for the first time begun to hear music, good, bad, and indifferent. When the first phonograph came to our city, the host at an evening reception furnished music in a mysterious way. He had installed the phonograph in a niche curtained off in the hallway so that the direction from which the sound emerged was difficult to detect. He played three or four songs by a male quartet, which were richly applauded by his audience on the supposition that he had stationed a male quartet somewhere in the house. Music had come into the social group in a mysterious way.

Throughout the foregoing discussion I have stressed musical performance because action is the way of youth, the way of education, and the way of any preparation for the listening mood and critical attitude. The development of the opportunities for listening has, of course, been unparalleled in the history of the world. The masses are given the opportunity of hearing good music. Many have taken the attitude of sneering at the music offered by phonograph and radio on the grounds of quality of rendition and of choice of type; but it is safe to say that what is offered is what people want, and there is some basis for saying that to a great extent what people really want is what is good for them. On the other hand, the furnishing of music at all levels has unquestionably had the marked effect of raising the American level of musical appreciation step by step. People can be educated to listen, and in a marvelous way the radio has really taught people to listen. You cannot learn to swim without going near the water. Radio has had the effect of discouraging some persons from the development of musical skills in performance, because they realize that what they can hear is so superior to anything that they can do. On the other hand, radio has stirred the musical interests of the masses into appreciation of the possibilities of music at their respective levels and not only has made them whistle the tunes but has encouraged them to participate in various modes of performance. Listening to the "canned" music has certainly gone far to develop the ability for listening to legitimate music on the stage.

Some years ago I had the privilege of being the guest of the city of Copenhagen for a week. Among the entertainments offered by the city was a grand opera. The invitation came in the form of a large, beautifully engraved card of marked distinction and good taste. Attached to it was the actual ticket to one of the best seats in the house, and the price printed on this ticket was, in American money, twenty-three cents. It can be said almost literally that, when grand opera is played in Copenhagen, people of all classes come out and tend to listen with appreciation and more or less discrimination. The people have been educated to hear music. It has been brought down to their level. Therefore music functions in the social and home life of that city. Music of a very high order furnishes the entertainment in the parks and the public halls. That tradition is fast coming to this country, and the effective training of our youth will do much to hasten the day.

(1) The high-school age is the most significant period for the development of an avocation.

(2) With the coming time for leisure, education for avocation is a sound educational policy.

(3) It is fortunate that musical education at this age is elective.

(4) Education for musical taste must be gradual, not by leaps.

(5) Expansion of high-school music may advantageously be extracurricular in large part.

(6) Music contests have greatly aided in the promotion of musical education.

(7) The radio and the phonograph have in recent years been the most effective media for the dissemination of musical information.

(8) It is quite natural and well that the fervor for music should cool off for many at the end of the teens.

Questions to Consider

(1) Should the schools supply musical instruments at public expense?

(2) If so, what selective procedures and restrictions should be set up?

(3) Is the author's conception of the characteristics of adolescence generally accepted by educators?

(4) What are the evils of music contests?

(5) What are some of the unfavorable musical effects of the radio?

(6) What problems arise in connection with the change of voice in boys?

(7) Should the high-school _a cappella_ choir exhibit the vibrato in singing? (See the author's _The Vibrato in Voice and Instrument_, University of Iowa Press.)

(8) How can high-school musicians render larger religious, social, and patriotic services in the community?

Discuss These Situations

(1) Last fall (1939) I saw seventy-eight marching high-school bands with over 6000 instruments in a two-mile parade on the morning before a football game at the University of Oklahoma. Here was a cross-section of the youth of the state, many of them Indians; all in uniform in dancing march for musical display. Consider pro and con the implications of this phenomenal outbreak of music from (a) the musical, (b) the social, (c) the educational, and (d) the economical points of view.

(2) There is a splendid tendency at present to integrate the school with social life, community services, and part-time employment. What features in such integration seem most promising for music?

Chapter V THE MUSICAL TEMPERAMENT

What makes a musician temperamental? Tell a musician he is temperamental, and he will take offense. Yet perhaps the thing in his personality of which he is most proud is the possession of a musical temperament. This characteristic inconsistency has a basis in psychological fact; namely, that the exhibition of artistic temperament frequently leads to attitudes and actions which the rest of the world may criticize and view with amusement; but, on the other hand, the finest expressions of musicianship would perhaps be impossible without the possession of an artistic temperament.

Many persons who pass as musicians are neither temperamental nor musical. A great many of those who ply the art of music do not have musical minds in any basic sense. Their art consists in certain skills often built into a purely matter-of-fact organism. I therefore see no reason why such people in the musical world who do not show any artistic temperament have any reason to boast of the fact.

The highly temperamental musician is a species of genius in some degree. As such, he has been described by musicians, scientists, and psychiatrists in a very copious body of literature on the subject, especially that dating since the time of Lombroso, who regarded all geniuses as degenerates. The modern psychiatrist has frequently presented a picturesque view of the temperamental person in terms of the rising science and art of psychiatry, which is supposed to explain all deviations from normal behavior in terms of psychopathology. The old saying was that we are all more or less sane; the psychiatrist today says we are all more or less psychopathic. The current literature on mental hygiene is characterized by this point of view. Another point of view has proved fascinating since the coming in of Freud, in that deviations of this sort are accounted for in terms of suppressions, defense reactions, and other manifestations of the libido. Much light is thrown on the problem by the great musician's exaltation of the artistic mind in action, thus revealing essential temperamental traits on the basis of first-hand experience and artistic theory. A temperamental musician is the most merciless portrayer of his own species. Since the temperamental person is always an interesting person, all of these accounts are lively and each revealing from its own point of view, giving us much genuine insight into the nature of the temperamental person in all fields.

Descriptions of the musical temperament are, as a rule, vivacious and luminous, thrillingly interesting. If a competent analyst would follow Stokowski for one day during the season and picture in high lights, full of concrete examples, the experience and behavior of this great conductor from the whirl of emotional enthusiasms and conflicts into which he awakens in the morning to the convivial abandon during refreshments after the evening performance, we should have a spicy and animated picture of the musical temperament. If written by the smart commentator in the columns of _Esquire_, it might even be racy. Such pictures have often been drawn in fragments. A similar picture might be made exclusively by direct quotation from biographies, autobiographies, and letters of great musicians, such as Beethoven and Wagner, whose lives are now on record. The temperamental musician is not competent to analyze himself because he does not see himself as others see him. Literary chats about musicians are full of quirks and eccentricities giving realistic examples of a temperamental life. These might be organized into a fairly complete characterization of a distinctive musical temperament.

All such exhibits would be of the emotional type, dramatic extravaganzas, interesting and significant, and there are many such extant. The inceptive science of the psychology of music takes a different point of view, aiming to account for the highly temperamental person partly in terms of heredity and partly in terms of inherent elements in the situation in which he lives and performs. The music psychologist must content himself to deal in a cold analytical way with verifiable and orderly facts in order to contribute something toward a scientific foundation for a systematic and functional psychology of the musical mind. In attempting this approach, I realize how tame and stilted such an effort must seem to the fiery musical temperament; and even at its best the psychologist will regard the account as speculative, because it is seldom based upon experiment. I have delved into musical biography and autobiography of great musicians with an eye toward the discovery of their outstanding mental characteristics from a psychological point of view. On this basis I must make a bold venture by attempting to trace the elements in a musical situation which lead to the development of temperamental behavior and thus contribute toward the answer to the question, "What makes a musician temperamental?"

_Physiological irritability._ The highly-gifted musician responds physiologically to sound stimuli to a very high degree because he has inherited a genetic constitution which is anatomically and physiologically exceptionally responsive to sound. In other words, quite apart from consciousness of sound or thought of music, his physical organism responds to acoustic stimuli of all kinds which keep nerve and muscle in a state of tension. This tends to create a state of unrest and irritability. Without leading to actual hearing, it may arouse associations of a sort of dreamlike or dramatic nature which may play a very large role in the conscious life. It may create a state of well-being and happy associations, but perhaps more frequently irritation and noxious day-dreaming associations and emotional eruptions. The sounds may come from a squeaking chair, the sizzling of a kettle, the song of a bird, the cry of an infant. Most frequently sounds affecting the organism in this way are inconspicuous and commonplace in the environment; but they may often be strong; such as, the rattling of a train or the chattering in a crowd, of which the musician does not become conscious, although physiologically irritated.

_Tonal sensitivity._ All great musicians are highly sensitive to sound in all its elements. A physiological irritability acoustically leads to a profuse awareness of sounds. This sensitive and selective hearing gives the musician a richness of material in the musical medium. He becomes intolerant and rebellious to disturbing sound stimuli which have no such effect upon unmusical persons. To him, the world of sounds has infinite richness of resources for musical pleasure, but equally exceptional resources for the suffering of musical pain.

_Artistic license._ To the trained musical individual sounds are heard as different from what a matter-of-fact listener hears. The hearing of pitch, loudness, time, and timbre is not in the ratio of 1:1 with the physical sound, but always runs into artistic analysis and interpretation with artistic license. The musical interval, the dynamic phrasing, the rhythm, and the tone quality are always heard in relation to their artistic setting. Here we find auditory illusions operating in their fullest glory. The pitch value varies with the quality of the sound. Time may be a substitute for stress and vice versa. A subjective rhythm is richer and far more realistic than the physical rhythm. The quality of tone is heard in relation to its musical meaning. To the musician, the hearing is not so much a question of true pitch, formal accent, temporal rhythm, or vowel quality as it is a matter of musical balance and a recognition of artistic deviation from the true. Meticulously exact performance of a Bach score would be musically intolerable. Notes are frail symbols. The performer must interpret even the shortest measure rhythm or single note value. Thus, while fine sensory discrimination in all the aspects of sound is essential for correct hearing and tone production, the more essential thing is his ability to play with artistic power and impulse in hearing and producing artistic balance and artistic deviation from the rigid. In this artistic balance and deviation, he may be guided by certain artistic rules, but his direct emotional interpretation is far more significant. In this lies individuality. He is constantly tempted to be extravagant.

Thus, in all the variants, combinations, and modulations of pitch, loudness, time, and timbre, the musician hears, feels, and gives meaning to fine and subtle distinctions, many of them quite divergent from the physical tones. At this level, temperament shows itself in exceedingly fine responsiveness to tones which may be a matter of utter indifference or impossibility to the unmusical. This capacity is largely inborn, both in the way of sensitivity to sound and a general nervous, if not neurotic, disposition, and is in itself enough to make the musician different from other people. Artistic license as a medium for self-expression is, therefore, clear evidence of a musical temperament.