MUSICAL COURIER
24
June 15, 1922
and most important work the supervisor has to do. Without it no vocal music is possible and the pupils will not like their work as the product does not sound well. They will not read as well for they will not make the effort if the product is not musically pleasant.
This making of beautiful vocal music is the strongest motive you can place before your pupils to get them to work hard at their music.
This has come to me with added force the last few weeks as our boys’ glee clubs have been getting ready for contests. These glee clubs are groups of boys with unchanged, changing and changed voices in the seventh and eighth grades, singing four-part music for male voices especially arranged for them. There are about forty clubs and each club numbers from thirty to sixty members and most of them meet at the noon recess several times weekly. What is it that keeps them at it? It is the beautiful music they make. This is especially striking as it is so unexpected from boys in these grades. In closing, let me repeat, don’t forget to have beautiful vocal music all the time, and every time in your school rooms, and be satisfied with nothing less.
Sturkow-Ryder Gives “De Luxe” Concert en Route to New York
Theodora Sturkow-Ryder has probably more innovations in piano playing to her credit than any other artist. Her latest achievement was a “de luxe” concert given on board the Piano Club’s Convention special train en route to New York, when an extra baggage car was the concert hall. In this extra baggage car—especially carried for this purpose— were two new pianos, so Mme. Sturkow-Ryder gave the piano men two programs, playing the “Tannhäuser” march by Wagner, Rachmaninoff’s C sharp minor prelude and the Chopin D flat waltz—all for two pianos—with the Apollo player piano. Her program also included the Nicode
Tarantella’ and the Poldini “Etude Japonaise” which brought her rounds of plaudits. Some of Mme. Sturkow-Ryder’s May dates were as follows: Grand Rapids (Mich.) • Wichita, Winfield, El Dorado and Hutchinson (Kan.) ; Enid (Okla.) ; Canton, Marietta and Lima (Ohio). During the first week in June she appeared in New York.
Florence Irene Jones’ Pupils in Recital
A violin recital was given in New York on June 2, by pupils of Florence Irene Jones, assisted by Rose Dirmann, soprano; L. A. MacKown, Jr., cellist, and Winifred Rohrer, accompanist. In addition to many ensemble numbers there were solos by Sylvia Levensohn, Henry \ ilia, Marie Seidl, Alice Schwartz, Frieda Schwartz, Eleanor Elies and Andrew Stencel. The ensemble class furnished the accompaniment for Eugene Kovalsky in the andante from the second concerto by Seitz, and for Richard Brill in Kohler’s “Gipsy Melody.”
Current Engagements for Lawson
On June 6 Franceska Kaspar Lawson was soloist for the class day exercises of Friends’ Select School, Washington D. C. That she is a favorite there is evidenced by the fact that this was her third engagement. The soprano was scheduled to appear on June 14 at Muskingum Col-lege . New Concord, Ohio, with the Oratorio Society in Gauls “Joan of Arc” and Victor Herbert’s “Call to Freedom. Tomorrow, June 16, Mrs. Lawson will sing m Pittsburgh for the radio, broadcasting from the Pittsburgh Press station.
Tracey Pupil Makes Favorable Impression
In the recent concert given in Cincinnati by the artist-pupils of Minnie Tracey, Hazall Levy, wife of Louis Levy director of the Jewish Hospital there, is deserving of special mention. She was absolutely professional in Gluck’s Orpheus a fact that is more significant when one considers that she had never taken a lesson before coming to Miss I racey. In addition her acting was good and all in all, she made a most favorable impression.
Dux Returning Soon
Both making their second trip to America, the giant liner Majestic will bring Claire Dux, soprano, when she sails from Southampton on June 7. Miss Dux has had a brief stay of one month in Europe, and on her return will make some new records for Brunswick before journeying to Chicago to smg a number of different roles during the Ravinia Park opera season.
MUSIC AND PUBLIC EDUCATION
By GEORGE H. GARTLAN Director of Music in the Public Schools of New York City
DON’TS IN MUSIC TEACHING
A Brief Account of Some Points in Classroom Teaching, as Outlined by T. P. Giddings, of Minneapolis
Maier and Pattison to Play in Paterson
Guy Maier and Lee Pattison will appear January 18, lWd, next before the Friday Afternoon Music Club at Paterson, N. J. Another date recently booked for these pianists, who are now touring Australia, is at the State 1 eachers College in Springfield, Mo., where they will give a recital of music for two pianos on February 23, 1923 • and on February 24 they are to play in St. Louis, Mo. '
Godowsky Sails for Buenos Aires
Leopold Godowsky sailed from New York, May 31 on the Munson liner Southern Cross, bound for Buenos Aires where the pianist will give the first recital of a South Amer-ican tour. After several concerts in the Argentine, Mr Godowsky will be heard in Uruguay and Chile, reaching Brazil m September, where he is to play in Rio de Janeiro during the National Exposition which opens September 7. ~
Kathryn Meisle Engaged for Toledo
Kathryn Meisle will be heard in Toledo for the first hmc °n NQvcmber 10 at the Coliseum, under the auspices of the Womans Auxiliary. Miss Meisle, who closed her season on May 19 as soloist at the Ann Arbor Festival is spending the summer at Tom’s River.
Alberto Jonas Going Abroad
Mr. and Mrs. Alberto Jonas will sail for Europe on board the Ryndam on June 24. They will visit Holland Germany, Belgium, France and Austria, returning to this country about October 1.
will make up for lack of teaching ability. You must not only be able to step into the schoolroom and show the teacher how to run her class lesson, but you must do it often. In this way you can show her more about music teaching in^ a few minutes than you can tell her in hours of teachers’ meetings or in watching her struggle with the class. Your success depends upon the teaching of the grade teachers, and this is the quickest and best way to show them how.
7.	Don’t forget that the vocal music in the schoolroom is the backbone of your work. Nothing can take its place. This is where you reach every one. No amount of fine orchestra work, appreciation, instrumental classes, etc., will be its equivalent. The human voice is still the finest and most useful musical instrument ever invented, and everybody owns one. A paraphrase of the old saying, "The Lord may have been able to make a better berry than the strawberry, but He never has,” might here be used.
Do not infer from this that I minimize the usefulness nor the importance of these other branches of our work, but they must be kept in their proper proportion and not allowed to crowd out the vocal music as they are doing in so many places.
8.	Don’t be afraid to standardize your work. There is one best and shortest way to do anything. Why not find this best and shortest way to teach music in the schools and do it that way? They are doing this in all other lines of work. Why not in ours? The man who made that piano was very particular to make a fine machine so that when the artist sat down to it his artistry could show through and get over to the audience. We should do the same thing in our public school music teaching. We should build up a machine of finely standardized processes so that the mechanical side of music teaching ■would be reduced to the minimum, thus allowing time for the artistry of teachers and pupils to show a greater and better musical product possible. Far from stressing the machinery of teaching, this will minimize it. In other words, if your work is standardized so that the mechanical plan of class procedure is habitual, the pupils will have time to do a lot of artistic singing unhampered by machinery.
9.	Don’t think to make pupils musical by letting them sit and listen to music. This part of music education is very important and much of it should be done, but it must not crowd out participation, as it is doing in many places. The best way is to have them make and listen to music at the same time. Also, be sure that the music they make is worth listening to whether it be a high school chorus, kindergarten or orchestra.
One of the most humorous things we are called upon to witness in the whole range of music teaching, is the eartraining class for piano students. Can anything be funnier than a class of advanced piano students learning to hear the piano? What have they been doing all the years they have been hammering the keys? Another thing just as funny is the class of would-be supervisors learning to hear parts sung by the chorus. What have they been doing with their ears all the time they sang parts in school?
10.	Don’t fail to teach your pupils to read music. If you do, you have failed in everything you set out to do. If they grow uj) unable to read music the next generation will not be musical any more than they will be literary if they cannot read languages. A person cannot be musical unless he can read music. This seems foolish to say, but many seem to think it is unnecessary to know anything to be musical. The Bible has some pertinent remarks to make about those who try to climb into heaven some other way.
11.	Don’t forget to have your pupils sing. Alas, that this should be one of the don’ts, but here is where so many supervisors fail. Absence of beautiful singing is the most widespread fault in public school music today. Its absence spells failure in many directions. Let us see why.
What are you teaching? Vocal music of course; yet in how many school rooms do you hear really lovely vocal music? Should it be heard in every school room? Certainly; in every lesson and all the time. Is it possible? Certainly; if the pupils learn to use their voices properly in the kindergarten and the supervisor sees to it that they use nothing but this perfect tone all through their school life. To establish and keep this perfect tone is the first
[The following extracts are reprinted from the address delivered by Mr. Giddings at the 1922 Music Super-visors’^ National Conference, Nashville, Tenn. Mr. Giddings is noted for his marked originality in teaching, and while there are many supervisors who do not wholly approve of everything that he does in method, his “don’ts” are pedagogically delectable. As a general proposition all instruction should be positive, but Mr. Gidding’s negative suggestions are not only practical, but humorous—a quality so often lacking in school work.—Editor’s Note.]
ELEVEN DON’TS
1.	Don’t be afraid to take yourself seriously. Don’t be afraid to assert yourself. You are the most important figure musically in your town. You are responsible for the musicianship of the next generation. You cannot escape this fact. You are one of the most important figures educationally, as you have charge of the best mind trainer on the list. If you do not function in both these capacities you will fail in doing your full duty by your community. If you are so important why not admit it, shoulder your responsibility, study the whole educational scheme and train yourself to make your work fit into and help the whole school system.
2.	Don’t do one thing at a time. In this hustling age we must do several things at once. In our work there are many small things that pupils must learn and be drilled upon, but an ocean of time is wasted by drilling upon these one at a time. ־ This not only wastes time but defeats the very purpose of the drill, for taking a thing out of its proper setting and drilling on it separately gives the pupil a wrong idea. He should be drilled upon the expert use of the thing in its proper relationship to the whole, rather than upon the thing by itself.
To illustrate: Do not teach the scale and its intervals as a step toward sight singing. Rather let the pupils learn intervals and rhythms by using them in sight singing.
When teaching harmony let the pupils compose first and learn chords and other theoretical facts by using them. “We learn to do by doing” is a fine old saying, and by following it exactly we will arrive at the end more quickly and surely than by any other route. With the two above illustrations, one at each end of the line, let us go home and inspect everything we do and see if we are really following this short and sensible road to success.
3.	Don’t ever allow your monotones and out of tunes to stop singing. “We learn to do by doing” again. What is it you want them to learn to do? Sing in tune, certainly. The only way a pupil can learn to do this is to keep matching his tones with others, thus developing voice and ear at the same time in combination. No amount of sitting still and listening to others will do this. He must sing and listen. This is the quick and sure way. Now while you are about it, go a step farther and teach all your pupils how to sing in tune. We teachers are very prone to just say “sing in tune” and let it go at that. The piano tuner tunes a piano by listening to the “waves” made when the wires are not at exactly the same tension.
4.	Don’t allow your pupils to read rhythm by ear. This is a pitfall into which many supervisors unwittingly step, and one very potent reason for poor sight singing. Unless the pupil is able to look at the printed page and have this page tell his eye how the rhythm goes, unjogged by some preliminary prodding from the teacher’s voice or other means, he is missing one of the best parts of his music education. Analyze your work and see whether your pupils read their rhythm by eye or ear.
5.	Don’t be afraid to experiment and try out new things.
If they work, accept them. If they do not work better than the things you already do, reject them. This is the only way to grow. On the other hand, do not waste time trying out old things that have already been found wanting and discarded. A lot of these are now being resurrected and placed before us as new and wonderful discoveries. When you hear of some new musical panacea, look over your musical history, use your common sense, find out when or whether it was on earth before, and why it was lost or discarded. I might here append quite a list, but will refrain and allow you to make out your own.
6.	Don’t hope to be a successful music supervisor unless you can teach school. No amount of musical knowledge
ANDRE POLAH
VIOLINIST
Will Teach a Limited Number of Pupils During the Summer
Masterclass of Violin Playing
For further information, inquire
MISS MARCEL CHOTIN, Secretary to Mr. Polah
New York, N. Y.
2 East 12th Street