Januar y 4, 19 23
MUSICAL COURIER
‘32
anthem, until finally we reach the supreme choruses of the masters of oratorio and grand opera. Or, to cite an example in the instrumental field, from ragtime through the Forge in the Forest, Narcissus, the Sousa march, the Andante from Haydn’s■ Surprise Symphony, the simpler Beethoven symphonies or earlier Wagner operas until we reach the culmination in the inasterpieces of orchestral composition. ITndoubtedly, under favorable conditions, a group of college boys can go almost, in a single bound, from Irving Berlin to Palestrina, just as lovers of Lange’s Flower Song may suddenly rise to Tschaikowsky’s Pathetic Symphony, when the circumstances are just right. Usually this is not the case. The great majority of our people start in at the beginning of our school system, and painfully work their way up grade by grade; the great majority of our future trained American music lovers must slowly move from their present level in music to successive upward stages. The educator, who is patient and far seeing will be mainly concerned with the question as to whether a real love of any kind of music exists at present and whether, even by almost imperceptible degrees, progress in the right direction is being made. It is less a question of where people are, than which way they are going. .
Building Foe Tomorrow.
Turning now to the second large aspect of the question, we may find much comfort in the general effects which the community music movement is having upon the music of this country. The present holiday season supplies a case in point. The Christmas caroling movement in the past decade, since that memorable first tree of light in Madison Square Garden just ten years ago, has spread throughout the country with astonishing rapidity. It is no longer possible to enumerate the places with community Christmas trees and with caroling around them and through the streets of the town. We are not inquiring as to the musical quality of this particular manifestation; we may merely note the effect of this movement. Thousands of people through this caroling have been led to a conception quite new in our American life, that music is a necessary part of a Christmas celebration and that much of it should be made by themselves. Moreover such a movement as the liow practically universal practice of singing at the' noon-day luncheons of men’s clubs may not be stimulating today the highest type of music but it is inevitably laying the foundation for a larger use of better music in the' days to come. , The man who has sung lustily on a chorus of even a popular song or a college ditty has opened the possibility of a further musical appeal. That the development of music in a nation is dependent upon wide-spread popular culture of the art has been frequently discussed, notably during the war period in a scholarly paper by Walter R. Spaulding. As he points out, the outstanding musical nations of the world are those with a rich development of the people’s music. The folk song is not only the great source of inspiration for the composer, but it is also the material which develops in the people at large that seed of appreciation which will later accept, encourage, and sustain the art product of the composer.
The recent formation of a Committee on People’s Songs occurred at a conference on community music in connection with the National Recreation Congress at Atlantic City. This committee is made up of a rather astonishingly cosmopolitan list of leaders and scholars in music, poetry, drama, and sociology. The object of the organization is to discover, inspire, and foster worthy songs which shall express the life and ideals of the American people. The committee has no conception that it can say to the writers of songs, “Come, sit down and write an ¿!biding American folksong of patriotism, sentiment, humor, or what not.” It does, however, maintain that while no man can tell when he will produce something that has permanent value, he is more likely to do something worth while if he has a large purpose in mind and if he is assured that, when it is produced, a body of sympathetic and influential men and women will strive to give it adequate recognition. Should this movement prove efficacious, who can say what further effects upon composition in larger forms the community music movement may have?
That strikingly successful plan for intensifying the study of music heard, the music memory contest, deserves another word of comment. Already this effort to make good music popular has met with most gratifying success. Started in 1916 in a single city, through the intiative of its founder, Mr. C. M. Tremaine, it is, this year, probably being carried on in at least a thousand cities, large and small. This means that several hundreds of thousands of people are becoming more or less intimately acquainted with a selected list of masterpieces of music. In a recent contest after 250 children had been sifted out through writing perfect papers on the recognition of the more obvious sections of twenty-four standard compositions, they acquitted themselves most creditably in naming two and four measure quotations selected at random. The National Bureau for the Advancement of Music reports a constant gain in earnest study of the possibilities of this contest. The phonograph companies, with commendable enterprise, have published lists of their material which are suited for these contests. Moreover, the influence of the musicians who are carrying on this contest is being felt by the phonograph companies in the demands for desirable numbers which have either not been recorded or which have been allowed to drop from their catalogs because of the pressure of large current issues, especially dance records. The educational departments of
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!»IE! MARTIN
Dramatic Soprano
“A Voice of Freshness and Beauty."—Morning Telegraph. Personal Address: 18 Claremont Ave., Mt. Vernon, N. Y. Telephone Hlllcrest 5149 W
Celebrated Spanlih Piano Virtnoio. Foremost pedagogne in Europe. Teacherof many famon pianiete
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THE MUSICAL ASPECTS OF THE
COMMUNITY MUSIC MOVEMENT
includes within its scope community singing both front song leaflets g.ving words alone and pamphlets with words and music such as the Twice Fifth-five Community Songs; training of volunteer song-leaders to conduct singing at countless formal and informal occasions; stimulating and developing of choral societies, giving of plays with music, minstrel shows, cantatas, and operas, light and heavy; assisting in the formation and perpetuation of bands and orchestras both in schools and in the community’at large; inaugurating of work in music appreciation, especially through the instrumentality of the music memory contest; encouraging of communities to establish concert courses; installation of classes in instrumental music both in the schools and outside. Moreover, this bureau gives much help along various other musical lines, largely through correspondence.
The Sociologist’s Standard.
It is worth while, as a means of establishing perspective, to inquire why music is included on the program of an organization like Community Service. One of their leaders who is recognized as an adequate interpreter of their musical activities has frequently made statements such as the following : Community Service is not interested in any of its activities merely for their own sake, but simply for what they will contribute toward the social program of making happier and more efficient c tizens. Their advocacy of games, sports, drama, public forums, and the other items of their program is based on the belief that all of these are important aids to developing the kind of citizens America needs. Community Service holds no brief for music. If the organization felt that greater■ value ccrnld be obtained by spreading the practice of taking snuff, rubbing noses, using kerosene for perfume, walking backwards, or reciting the alphabet in concert, it would be perfectly willing to abandon music and advocate some of these practices. But it agrees with the statement made by Lorado Taft at a recent meeting held under under its auspices at Atlantic City: “Music is the foundation of all social activities.” It was this attitude which characterized musicians such as Walter R. Spaulding, Wallace Goodrich, John Alden Carpenter, and Frederick F. Converse who served on the music section of the Commission on Training Camp Activities and who guided the work in that subject in the various camps through that remarkable chairman, Lee F. Hamner. I doubt whether these men started out with such a strong social conception, but it is significant that they came to it as they saw music at work in the lives of men in service. This same change has occurred with thousands of other musical leaders such as the Music Supervisors and members of the National Federation of Music Clubs. In case after case which has come to my personal knowledge, these musicians started out to work with music for music’s sake and were content in the end to adapt their music so that it would have a greater social effect. The test of the worth of their activities was not what music have we used, but how deeply have we affected the people?
But notice now what happens when the goal of reaching more people is set. In the army, from the community singing of the great masses, there came as natural offshoots singing by separate companies, by glee clubs, by quartets, and by soloists. The General Federation of Women’s Clubs introduce community singing in their meetings and find that women’s choruses are stimulated. Is it a mere coincidence that, shortly after America, with the active co-operation of the Music Supervisors’ National Conference, indulges in community singing to an extent never before known, there spreads over the country an almost unbelievable wave of enthusiasm for increased instrumental instruction?
New Standards op Measuring Necessary.
The musical element of the community music movement has two divisions: first, that which is immediately present in the manifestations of today, and, second, that'influence which is exerted upon the music of tomorrow. The first regards the product as completed, as an end; the second sees today s product as a step in a series, as a means or influence toward future development. In judging the first, it is necessary for many critics to set up new standards. Massive works of art must be measured with a yard-stick and not with the centimeter calipers of the physicist. A recent visitor to our shores, hearing the singing of sixty thousand voices at a football game, spoke of it as a gigantic art product of a new order. The surging waves of tones which come from the husky throats and untrained voices of the masses who make up oflr spectacular “sings” contain many discordant tones which annoy the vocal teacher who can see the singing only in terms of the soloist; but for the musician who can think in large terms, there is a majesty and awesome beauty comparable to the sweeping lines of a great cathedral and the jagged piles of the Pyramids of Thebes.
The same differing views may be had regarding the thousands of bands and orchestras which are dotting this land of ours as palm trees in an oasis. To the man who is accustomed to sit at home in his richly favored environment and revel in the shade of the wide-spreading elm or maple, the slight expanse of the palm is the meagre, almost negligible, shade of a few spindly stalks, but to the traveler wandering amid arid sands, these few feet of shade are the solace and rest which give strength for the rest of the journey. He who is accustomed to think of instrumental music in the terms of the great centers—and let us extend that term to mean towns of fifty thousand or over—may be disdainful of the music produced by the high school orchestras and community bands of the smaller towns, but he must remember that the great bulk of our population are found outside of the larger towns. To them the local organization with its less pretentious playing may be as the palm tree in the desert.
Is Growth in Music Always Gradual?
It is not always necessary in order to enter the university that a student should have gone year by year from the kindergarten through the grades and the high school. I know of numerous cases in which many of the intervening grades have been omitted. The same progress may apply to music, and thus justify the contention of some ardent advocates of the classics that progress need not include all the stages from the popular song through the ballad, the commonplace chorus, the selection from light opera, the church
[The following excerpts are from a paper read at the New York meeting of the Music Teachers’ National Association, December 27-29, by Peter W. Dykema, professor of music, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. —The Editor.]
Wiiat is Community Music?
Is the much discussed community music movement of the past decade anything new, or is it merely a revival or a masquerading of old developments? It would indeed be strange if all this acclaim had been given to an old, possibly forgotten aspect of music. Community music is old and it is new; the material is old, the application is new. Theoretically speaking, there may be nothing new under the sun, but, practically, the world, or at least those of us who live in the world, are constantly meeting new experiences. The historian may tell us that the community music idea of the past decade is merely a revival of conditions which have prevailed several times before, but the person who is interested in the development of America today sees something new. Newness is more a question of experience and interpretation than of lack of previous occurrence. In a country which, during the past ten years, has witnessed the marvellous developments of the automobile, wireless, and radio —to cite only three of the influences which have caused all cf our population to rub elbows as they never have before— it is hard to believe that we have no new conditions in the history of civilization. Likewise students of musical history may speak of the folk singing of the olden days; of the spread of instrumental proficiency in many foreign countries; ot the remarkable knowledge of the classics which even the working folk over there have; and still they cannot convince us in America that our wave of community music is merely endeavoring to bring about conditions here which have long obtained over there.
More People More Deeply Affected.
Community music is a term which, like most other phrases, is growing into its full meaning. It is by no means the same now as it was during the war period, and I doubt whether in the minds of the majority of musicians it will be the same ten years from now as it is now. Whatever may be the ultimate definition, it seems now that two ideas will need recognition, first, the mass element—the including of larger numbers of people—and, secondly, the social element—the definite attempt to use music as a social force. With the latter idea we may compare the larger leisure-time movement. While man has always had leisure time, it is only recently, with the great industrial developments, that the guaranteeing of leisure time and the study of the proper use of it has become a great social problem. The Community Music movement means that more of the people are to be more deeply affected by this art. The question of the kind of music to be used is not now discussed; in the course of this paper several pertinent remarks will be made. However. the developments of the past few years have indicated that this movement will probably place no limitations on the development of music as an art. Even the best of music may be used, providing only that adequate social significance results from its use To indicate the persistence of the mass idea in all community music endeavors, we may note four examples. The Commission on Training. Camp Activities, for instance, was interested in reaching every man in the service. The National Federation of Music Clubs and its community music endeavors are primarily concerned with affecting every woman. The Music Supervisors’ National Conference with its collection of community songs (going successively through the eighteen in 1915, the fifty-five in 1917, the twice fifty-five in 1919, and now in January, 1923, the twice fifty-five community songs, Number Two). Finally, we have such civic organizations as Community Service, aiming by the correlation of various organizations to make music a more vital force in the community.
Community Music in Actuality.
A glance at the activities of the music bureau of Community Service may help to make concrete some of the above general statements. We are immediately impressed with the falsity of the frequent conception that community singing and community music are synonymous terms. It is evident that the former is only one section of the large field covered by the other. The Bureau of Community Music
Samuel Richards Gaines
Part-Songs
Fantasy on a Russian Folk Song.. .S.S.A.A_$ .35
With Violin obi. and Piano or Orch. acc.
The Schumann Club of N. Y., 1920, First Prize. An arrangement of the Fantasy for Mixed Voices is now in preparation.
A Shepherd’s Song.............S.A.T.B.....15
The Chicago Madrigal Club of Chicago, 1920, First Prize.
Waken, Lords and Ladies	Gay...T.T.B.B.....20
The Swift & Co., Chicago, 1922, First Prize.
Robin Goodfellow .............S.A.T.B.....40
With 2 Flutes	or	Violins obi.
The Madrigal Club of Chicago, 1922, First Prize.
Spring and Youth..............S.S.A.A.....15
Midnight Carol: Ghosts of the Year..S.S.A.A.
Copies of the above mentioned compositions, all published in octavo form are obtainable on approval.
J. Fischer & Bro..............New York
Fourth Avenue at Eighth Street