Why We Love Music

Music is unique among esthetic appeals in that it demands immediate response in the form of praise or blame. The orator demands immediate response; but his appeal is to reasoning, not to feeling. The painter, sculptor, and poet demand esthetic response, but this response is delayed and does not keep the artist on the tip of his nerves to receive it. The musical appeal is all the more emotional because it is not only an appeal for personal recognition but for the aggrandizement of the noble art. The musician at all ages and all stages of advancement can perform for his own pleasure in isolation, but even here the demand for praise or blame on the spur of the moment is emphatic and essential.

It is, of course, fully recognized that at his best the musical performer is not conscious of making a direct appeal for approval by others. His objective is rather that of self-expression and experiment in the execution of an artistic skill. He is often aware of a negative attitude in his audience, and he may take an attitude of aloofness or superiority toward the audience, recognizing its incompetence. Yet back of it all, there may be even a distant hope of approval in a coming generation or the critical judgment of the select few; but the attitude of the immediate audience or the public toward his performance plays heavily upon his unanalyzed feelings and moods.

The bases for musical praise and blame are notoriously inadequate, be they meaningless approval, empty flattery, or censorious criticism. A general attitude of spontaneous approval without knowing or giving reasons among listeners in general is praiseworthy as an expression of good will; but for serious purposes we must question the competence of the listener for the response manifested. The fault may lie in the listener's ignorance of the art of music, his incompetence in recognizing elements of merit, his failure to credit the performer in relation to natural ability or purpose. Praise or blame may also carry or miscarry in so far as it may wisely serve to motivate or discourage the performer on the specific issues involved in the performance. With the sudden popularizing of music, the incoming tendency is to associate music with the beginning of a scientific approach to the understanding of the music and the musician. This situation is changing at a gratifying rate for the good of music. It is worth while to consider in some detail the factors in this progress.

VANTAGE GROUNDS

Artistic insight. The extraordinarily rapid introduction of real music education in the grades and in the high school and college curricula, and even in graduate study, is changing the attitude of the listener by increasing his competence. Children and youth now hear more good music and hear it presented in such a way as to increase their understanding of it. At the college level music is presented as an academic subject, with primary emphasis upon the art of hearing music together with some knowledge of history and content of music. The training of high-school teachers of music has changed radically in a generation from the mere development of proficiency with an instrument or voice to a deeper insight into the nature of the art, its history, and its roles. At many levels well-developed courses in music appreciation have acquired a permanent status and have proved a good foundation for further penetration into the art of the appreciation of music. This implanting of points of view and development of esthetic attitudes in the academic instruction in the schools is hastened to fruitage by the popularizing of music for the masses through radio and phonograph as well as through the penetrating of the skills acquired in school into the home and social institutions. The popularizing of good music, where public entertainment in the parks and other public places is of good musical quality and furnished free or at popular prices, is a great help in developing a critical attitude even among those in other respects quite uneducated. Therefore, we may say with great satisfaction that training in the art of hearing music has come upon the educational horizon in America in a very promising way.

The scientific attitude. We are constantly impressed with the analogy between scientific insight into the nature of music and the corresponding insight in other sciences, such as botany or astronomy. A child starts out with an inborn capacity and urge for the love of flowers; but as a student of flowers he soon encounters many marvelous revelations. On the one hand his horizon is broadened by acquaintance with larger and larger classes and varieties. He learns to see relationships to habitat. He learns to trace scientifically the laws of their evolution, the methods of artificial breeding and development of new plants, and even the beauty in their usefulness. On the other hand, he turns to his microscope and discovers not only the external parts visible to the naked eye but the internal structures, their modes of evolution and development, even down to the discovery of the mechanisms of heredity through the genes, which are so small that we know them only by inference from what the microscope reveals. The natural history of music is analogous to that of such a material science.

This scientific insight into the structure and function of music goes hand in hand with the development of the artistic insight into the nature of the esthetic values from the point of view of the art of music. Thus the student of music is now furnished the facilities for increasing his power of appreciation of music and a critical awarding of praise or blame from two complementary points of view: a study of the art and a study of the science of music.

Terminology. The mere matter of terminology here plays a very important role, as is now being demonstrated so successfully in the recent developments in the field of psychology of music and acoustics. Take, for example, the concept of tone quality. Until a few years ago there was probably not a single adequate statement of the nature of tone quality in the entire literature on music; and yet this is the most important element in music. In the past the listener and the student have generally approached the subject in an attitude of acceptance or rejection of the unanalyzed impression, but often with no more competence than that with which the ignorant shepherd appraises the grandeur and meaning of the heavens above on a starlit night. The teacher, as a rule, said "This is beautiful," or "This is ugly," without being able to give the reasons why, for want of a tangible terminology. The teaching and development of tone quality therefore has wallowed in a slough of despond. Recent researches in the field of musical acoustics are ushering in a new era. The structure of tone quality has been dissected, and its parts have been adequately described and defined. This is leading to an improved musical language. The same is true for other musical concepts. Thus, through the systematic development of musical terminology, there will gradually develop a scientific classification of the various aspects of the musical medium which is essential not only for the learning of music but also for the awarding of praise and blame.

Musical talent. With this development of a knowledge of the nature of music, the scientific student of music has turned to the analysis of the nature of the musical mind attempting to assign specific roles to musical heredity and musical training and environment. Hazy concepts of the gift of music have been subjected to scientific analysis, experiment, and measurement. From this, it is being demonstrated that it is impossible to award praise or blame without taking a reasonable account of the innate fortes and faults of the performer which determine in large part the direction and limits of achievement or failure. The recognition of this fact, of course, plays its fundamental role in the early encouragement or discouragement of the inceptive musician, in the recognition of the purpose of his education, and in the motivation through training.

PARTIES CONCERNED

The pupil. Modern education has revealed the importance of a student-centered and student-originated learning process as opposed to the traditional and institutional direction of development of the individual. The question of self-praise and self-blame, satisfaction or dissatisfaction on the part of the child or youth, is of course of first importance both in the initial stages of orientation and throughout the course of specialization and achievement. Instead of imposing regimentation, the home, the school and the private teachers tactfully aim to assist the child in the discovery of his natural interests, resources and promises which aid him in the building of his personal convictions. But emphasis is laid upon the principle of self-determination in the light of progressively available reasonable facilities for self-appraisal. This refers both to the appreciation of music and to the development of musical skills. This principle of self-determination has frequently run amuck in the hands of progressive educators, capital P. But it is a fundamental and permanent principle for the development of personality and motivation in specific pursuits. The child will soon discover that in order to pursue his interests and satisfy himself in performance he may have to work hard, conform to requirements, be patient, and make sacrifices; but his first goal is to feel satisfaction in what he is getting and in the worth-whileness of the pursuit.

For these things he will find an analogy in any form of play, physical or mental, into which he enters in a wholehearted way. This feeling of self-approbation comes easily in the musically talented where the urge for music is clearly manifested; but with moderate talent this attitude of self-reliance needs cultivation. And in the assumed absence of talent, there is need of assistance in the real verification of this absence. The greatest danger lies in the intrusion of prejudice and social pressures. This principle of self-determination is of most importance in those fields which are to be pursued primarily as a source of self-expression and pleasure in the pursuit as distinguished from the pursuits which are essential for the earning of bread and butter and the maintaining of social status.

The teacher. The recognition of this principle of self-determination and the sustained will to achieve has revolutionized the art of teaching, or we may say better, has laid the beginnings for an art of teaching. One of the greatest obstacles the teacher encounters is the traditional social demand, and often the recognized objective in the profession, to make everybody musical. Finding that there is no adequate natural interest and no marks of gratifying achievement are developing, the teacher settles down to the sledge-hammer method of forced development. We must therefore bespeak for the live music teacher the right to refuse to make gold out of iron. The private teacher's fee and the tuition of the school are, of course, the temptations of the devil to face the situation with complacence. The constituency granting lenience in this respect has the right to expect that, in turn, the teacher understands and has exercised the effective means of self-discovery, self-orientation, self-determination, and self-motivation on the part of those who are on the border line. In this art, the profession has made but little progress so far. The constituency also has the right to impose the obligation upon the teacher to respect the individuality of the gifted and to give all types of freedom to the pupil commensurate with his natural line and degree of successful achievement in developing appreciation for various types of music.

In breaking with the traditional routines of musical drill, the teacher must first of all give up the attempt to cast the musical mind of the child in the mold of his or her own pattern. This principle has acquired its greatest significance in dealing with the highly gifted, where it is clearly substantiated by the musical history of precocious children. The public must acquire tolerance for the principle of giving musical facilities to child and youth in proportion to this self-determination and demonstrated ability to achieve. The great musician and the musical virtuoso are not fostered by educational or social conformance but primarily by the enjoyment of the principle of free determination and development of divergent personality.

The critic. The music critic unfortunately, as a rule, is a newspaper man and must conform to the pressure methods of efficiency in writing down. This newspaper ability has often been the basis for the unfortunate selection of musical critics. On the other hand, the thoroughly competent musical critic, if he were to ply his art as a technician, would find but small outlet for publication and a negligible constituency of readers. He would face, most discouragingly, the fact that many of the performers on the stage do not have critical knowledge of what they are doing and are not interested or even capable of reading the highly technical and critical analysis of their performance. So we must be tolerant with the musical critic.

If music were a simple thing or had a specific goal, such as the development of a logical proposition, the task of the critic would be easier. But, as it is, he is dealing with a highly fluid and chaotic state of affairs when he is supposed to aid the common reader in assigning praise or blame to the performance. One of the most striking faults of the work of the musical critic is his lack of words—lack of concepts which are discriminating and logically definable. We tolerate his splashing of his personal likes or dislikes as if he were competent to boil down our feelings of the situation into a fair assaying of praise or blame of the performance. One difficulty lies in the demand for writing in smart and emotional style. Among critics there are rare individuals who have a fine artistic insight and a balanced esthetic judgment in regard to what is good or bad in music. But we seldom see their names in the musical-review columns.

Phonophotographic recordings reveal art principles which had not been discovered in the musical world through hearing, and yet functioned very largely. They enable the critic to use scientific language in the description of achievement and assign praise or blame on the basis of identifiable and describable grounds. We can now photograph the sound waves of a performance at any distance from the source of sound and convert this into an analyzable performance score. As a whole, this principle cannot be available to the musical critic who must render an immediate opinion. But we have a right to expect that he should have a scientific knowledge of the types of facts which are revealed in such objective records. He is living in a new musical era in which the qualifications for the critic are as new as they are for the artistic and scientific orientation of teacher and performer.

The public. I can recall the time when the possession of a piano and piano lessons for the darling girl represented almost the sole ambition of the mothers in our state aside from the spontaneous and untutored self-expression in song. The public demand has changed. Instruments have changed. Methods of teaching have changed. Understanding of the art has increased. Cosmopolitan tastes have spread. Knowledge of the science of music has become aligned with knowledge in other sciences. The public rapidly learns to demand all these things and take the right for granted. The ambition of the mother, the objective of the teacher, and the expression of the youth of fifty years ago are coming to be historical curiosities. The art of music in America is coming to a wholesome fruitage and is becoming associated with present-day academic learning. For the first time in history it reaches out into the remotest corners of the land and many of the technical aspects of the art and new concepts of the musical medium are fast becoming common-sense knowledge and therefore add in the just awarding of praise or blame.

THOUGHT REVIEW

Principles

(1)

Music is designed to give pleasure when heard, and therefore calls for immediate affective response.

(2)

Capacity for esthetic response varies with natural talent and training, both artistic and scientific.

(3)

It is important to know "where to laugh and when to laugh."

(4)

For scientific description of likes or dislikes we need a discriminating terminology.

(5)

As every scientific discovery and invention gradually becomes common-sense knowledge when popularly known, so artistic judgment tends to crystallize into common-sense feeling.

(6)

Musical criticism may be chastized and chastened into balanced and critical judgment, relatively free from emotional explosions.

(7)

The spontaneous and natural smile or frown is often more eloquently telling or cutting than words.

Consider These Questions

(1)

Is the conventional response to music affectedly temperamental?

(2)

Why is listening intently to a major musical performance more exhausting than listening to an equally engrossing lecture on "International Relations?"

(3)

Was the English visitor right when he said, "You have no art, because whatever you have you display"?

(4)

Does insight into the nature and structure of the thing beautiful tend to lessen or to strengthen the artistic appeal?

(1)

During the last twenty years in a Midwestern city of 30,000 people music has "come to town." Curricular and extracurricular music in the schools has been tenfold what it was during the foregoing twenty years. Music clubs and other musical activities have greatly increased. The community often takes as strong an interest in local, district, state, and national contests in music as ordinarily attaches to football. Discuss the effect of this upon (a) the musical, (b) the social, (c) the recreational and (d) the educational life of the community. Evaluate the change in interest and capacity for assigning fair praise and blame to music.