[6] I do not mean by the foregoing that I consider a fair degree of expertness in reading music “at sight” an impossible attainment for children. What I have said has been entirely in reference to our public schools as they are at present constituted, and to the arrangements now made for the teaching of music. The teaching of sight-singing requires the services of an expert, more time than our schools now give, and a more scientific method than that now employed.
[7] Now published by the Boston Music Company, 26 West Street, Boston, Massachusetts.
[8] Counterpoint, for example, is, strictly, note against note, two melodies parallel to each other; æsthetically, counterpoint consists in illuminating, illustrating, or developing, a phrase or theme by _parts_ of _itself_--what in architecture would be described as making the ornament grow out of the structure.
In the preceding chapters I have dealt with special musical subjects, and have constantly referred to music as a distinct and independent art having its own reasons for existence. I have dealt, also, with some of its special functions as well as with its relation to the education of children. In the present chapter it is my purpose to discuss music in its relation to communities large and small, and this necessitates treating it on the broadest possible grounds.
By community music I mean, first, music in which all the people of a community take part; second, music which is produced by certain members of the community for the benefit and pleasure of the others; and third, music which, while actually performed by paid artists, is nevertheless somehow expressive of the will of the community as a whole. I shall take no refuge behind generalities or theories of æsthetics. I want to reach everybody, including the person who says, “I don’t know anything about music but I know what I like,” and that other extraordinary person who says, “I know only two tunes, one of which is ‘Yankee Doodle’”--each of these statements being quite incomprehensible, since it is a poor person indeed who doesn’t know what he likes, and anybody who knows “Yankee Doodle” has no excuse whatever for not knowing what the other tune is, or, so far as that goes, what any other tune is. I am, in short, appealing on common grounds about a common thing. My only question is this: If there is a means of interesting, delighting, and elevating a large number of people at very small expense, by something which they can all do together and which brings them all into sympathy with one another, and if the result of this coöperation is to produce something beautiful, is it not worth doing? I intend to make as full an answer to this question as space permits.
