But women have always delighted in playing and singing, even in those early periods of our history when music in this country was chiefly a thing of ear and memory, there being hardly any musical literature and very few professional instructors. In the middle ages, throughout the Renaissance period, and down to the last century, music was part of polite education for both sexes. At the present day a gentleman may go comfortably through life with no more, if as much, knowledge of music as a Board School child, and not be accused of lack of breeding. For a woman in the middle and upper ranks, music has remained an essential feature of education. Indeed, it has been made far too much of, and many years are often wasted in attaining a very moderate degree of executive skill, with little pleasure or profit, by those who have not sufficient natural ability to make prolonged study useful.
In the present century the musical education of women has made great strides. Every opportunity has been taken for latent talent to develop by means of the best instruction. The academies and schools of music have raised the standard of private teaching, besides directly educating vast numbers of students. The result is an ever-increasing number of really able performers and teachers, but very few composers. To the executive power of women there is no limit beyond that of the instrument. With regard to vocalism, there is the barrier of climate. We are not a nation of vocalists, and though there is a very large amount of respectable talent it is seldom that England produces a great singer.
One proof of the advanced musical education of women is to be found in their frequent presence as performers in high-class orchestras. It used to be a rare thing to see a woman appear on a concert platform in any capacity but that of vocalist or pianoforte player. Now she takes her place quite naturally among the “strings.” To play in concerted music means a wider training, and one that has only become possible to women in recent times.
The English have always been a music-loving nation. The records of early times show in what esteem music was held. The harp was the favourite instrument of our forefathers. The possession of a harp was one of the three things necessary to a gentleman or a freeman in Wales, and slaves were not permitted to play on it. A gentleman’s harp was never seized for debt, because he would then have been degraded to the rank of a slave. The minstrel was as essential to English social life in the middle ages as the cook or the henchman. A writer in the thirteenth century speaks of the good singers in England at the court of Henry II. Erasmus in the sixteenth century remarks of the English:--